blackboxme

Impressions from playing Half-Life 2 just after finishing Bioshock

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- Bioshock really didn't respect my intelligence.

- Gordon has no body, so when people look at Gordon, they're looking out through the computer monitor at me.

- Oh my god, these nonplayer characters have convincing emotions and respond realistically to my presence.

- The characters look like real people, actually, they look like yuppies who would live in Seattle. It's really compelling to look at real people in a game.

- Bioshock's Telekinesis power was a really satisfying response to Gordon Freeman's fucked-up way of picking up an moving around objects.

- Bioshock's libertarianism -> Half Life 2's Cold War Eastern Block style communist state. Wonder if Bioshock was a direct response to what Half-Life 2 did? After hearing about the East German intelligence service, H-L2's portrayal doesn't seems so cartoonish to me anymore.

- Wow, Half-Life 2's story sequences are amazing. I'm so freaking engaged with what is going on.

- Guns are pretty uncool in Half-Life. Maybe on purpose?

- The music is so tangential. When you get the power suit, it plays the creepy Valve song. This reminds me of something Jonathan Blow said, about how the pieces of a game shouldn't all fit together.

- Alex saving me after getting knocked out-I was actually really scared of getting thwacked, then I got taken down, then ah, someone comes in and saves me. Such a cool subversion of "game over."

- Looking out at the Citadel as the sun sets, with a flock of birds flying away, then zooming in by right clicking. Amazing.

- HDR lighting while playing in a pitch black computer room- very cool. Makes me enjoy looking at freaking light fixtures.

I used to think Half-Life 2 was somewhat boring and wonky. Playing it now, it's blowing me away. After playing Bioshock, which was so heavy handed and broad, this is amazing. It's like removing a layer of schlock from the process, and instead just having a window into this fascinated world.

Time to buy Orange Box, I can't believe this.

There's something really interesting about how Gordon has no body. I don't think Gordon actually exists as a physical presence who looks like the goatee guy on the box. I think it's just the player, there is no Gordon. When they recognize you, they're looking through the screen at the player and recognizing you from when you beat Half-Life.

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Half Life 2 did respect your intelligence?

What can I say? I'm really impressed.

The first time I played, I thought the game was so-so. Now I'm noticing a lot of restraint and subtlety in the way the game is constructed.

I know people call Half-Life 2 a roller coaster ride, but like I said in the OP, it's more like a window into a virtual world. That's really strange, and way more special than the concept of a roller coaster.

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Yesterday a friend of mine came around and we started playing Episode 2, which I had never finished, where I had left off. It took all night, but we blasted through it in one sitting. And damn was it hot! But also; GODDAMN that final battle with the striders! First of all, I am sick of striders. They were cool in the first game and episode, but they've squeezed them for all they were worth. We've stealthed around them, we've blown them gratuitously to smithereens with infinite rockets... though admittedly, the setting of the end-battle of Ep 2 was good.

But it was so stupidly frustrating; having to shoot those bombs up to them, when there were always a couple of whatchamacallits nearby shooting the thing from your hands. The sequence quickly devolved to a save-reload-save-walk a few bots with the bomb-save-shoot-reload-shoot-reload, etc etc. For way over an hour. What an absolutely stupid way to ruin the end of an otherwise excellent episode.

I am awaiting Episode 3 with baited breath though. The preview we got in Ep 2 was... pretty interesting.

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What? I thought there wasn't a preview in Episode 2, because they found out the Episode 2 preview was a mistake. Unless you're talking about the story stuff.

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The final battle scene was quite awesome, although in hard difficulty it was quite a mess because striders don't just die from being run into with the car, and the bombshit things explose so fucking quickly...

Anyway, I loved that scene and found that on the contrary it was a sweet way to renew the whole strider battle thing.

Ep1 was shitty but Ep2 was epic to me

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Wait, what? I could've killed the striders by running into them? FUUUCK

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Wait, what? I could've killed the striders by running into them? FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

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Sorry my bad, the striders do slow down and eventually stop when you run into them, the HUNTERS do die when you run into them.

In normal at least., so it's fucking easy you just kill the hunters, and the strider dies a few seconds later cause nobody's bothering you.

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On normal mode really none but the final sequence of episode 1 killed me much, I made it back there on hard difficulty and found it ok in fact... Hard mode is really rewarding, although it's sad the difficutly doesn't affect the puzzles.

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I think it's awesome. If they had, they should've at least have separate settings for puzzles and combat, like in Silent Hill 2.

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I think it's awesome. If they had, they should've at least have separate settings for puzzles and combat, like in Silent Hill 2.

Yep, did a conference a while ago on difficulty in video games taking about that :)

Had me figure out what makes difficulty and so on, real interesting work to be carrying

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I'd always go for hardest puzzles, easiest combat. I'm not interested in challenging combat, but I am in challenging my brain, environmental awareness and puzzle solving skills. But I digress.

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I does slide away from the original subject, although it might in fact not... Or does it ? not ?

Well, the double difficulty setting is a good thing because it allows a lot of opportunities for players to create a lot of different playstyles. Now does a game designer want to give a player so much control over his game or does the makers want the player to reach the game's level ? Kind of part of the whole casuardcore argument: do you have to make games that are funfunfun and pretty straightforwardly easy or do you prefer making a game that requires the player's involvment ?

The way it ties itself to the original point is that bioshock doesn't really have hard ass enigmas that just sit there and wait for you to resolve them (which is I think what blackboxme was talking about respect the player's intelligence: put a enigma that requires understanding and not iterating the fuck out of every possibility or going back to look for something you forgot and don't make any way around it).

But it does depend, my video gaming consort and I had a very different feelings, he was amongst the people who felt a rythm break as raping the shooter genre in the ass because he spent hours and hours trying to resolve every single one of them when (and that's probably the very sense of intuitive intelligence or might it be gaming culture ?)I just ran through and never really had any problem anywhere in any HL2 enigma.

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Yea, there's an option in the advanced graphics menu for High Dynamic Range.

There's an option there but it doesn't do anything. The original Half-Life 2 doesn't have any HDR in it except in the console versions of The Orange Box.

I'm surprised nobody has gone back and just modded it in themselves. I mean, other then that fakefactory mod, which even if you delete the horrible character reskinnings it still forces you to take some of his "artistic decisions".

As for the main topic at hand - Yes, the reason why I enjoy the Half-Life games so much is because they aren't patronizing. Most FPS titles just make some levels then have you following a glowing arrow or stare at a compass the whole time. Valve just puts care into the level designs, covers the invisible walls with obstructions, leaves environmental clues as to where you should go next, etc. It's an on-rails shooter that tries to hide the rails from you as much as possible. Monolith kind of does the same thing, as does the Max Payne games, but most other devs never even attempt to pull it off.

A good example is a place in Episode 2 where the solution to get to a higher area and turn a switch is to do something unintuitive to the logic of the game - throw a grenade at the floor then stand right over it - and all they did was leave environmental clues to show you how to do that.

Also, I think some of you people are perfectionist gamers, and have your finger on the quickload button every time you fail to make the perfect shot. The end of Episode 2 was supposed to be really thrilling, and mix things up a bit by giving you an open area instead of a corridor to shoot things at. I'm far from a skilled player, rarely playing above Normal difficulty, and I had no trouble taking out all the enemies in the time allotted. It was probably the least frustrating encounter I've ever had as far as the end of an FPS goes. (Well, except Bioshock, ironically)

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I don't remember having to stand on my own grenade in Episode 2. When was that?

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I don't remember having to stand on my own grenade in Episode 2. When was that?

There was a see-saw where you needed to drop a grenade under the low end to provide enough force to propel yourself up. So, it's standing on your grenade, but above a metal plank and I think a grate if I remember.

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Right, I wasn't remembering that either but I definitely did it... I thought you got the puzzle wrong because one grenade is actually enough to kill you... :)

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I really don't even remember it! Was it near the beginning? Because that was almost a year ago when I played it. The final 5 hours I played two nights ago, so that's still fresh in the mind.

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I really don't even remember it! Was it near the beginning? Because that was almost a year ago when I played it. The final 5 hours I played two nights ago, so that's still fresh in the mind.

It was an optional puzzle so you may not have seen it.

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That's probable. I didn't stop to investigate every nook and cranny. I usually do, but this was more of an organic, in-the-moment marathon session =)

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Yeah I think it was by one of the stashes that show up on your car's radar system. I liked that in Episode 2, that you could stop and investigate things or just keep driving as fast as you could (similar to the buggy section in the original HL2).

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