Impressions from playing Half-Life 2 just after finishing Bioshock

[Roderick]

Ah, that clarifies it, because I totally speeded past those. I was like, let's get that information to the resistance, pronto!

[OssK]

Ah, that clarifies it, because I totally speeded past those. I was like, let's get that information to the resistance, pronto!

You're quite right, I hate timed missions, but very often games try to pitch you some kind of sense of urgency "the city will explode soon, let's get out of here" and you could stay one week and it wouldn't...

From a design standpoint do you see a way out of here ?

[toblix]

How about being chased by a slow-moving wall of fire?

[Thrik]

I think HL2 did a pretty good job when the city started fuckin' walking towards me.

[toblix]

Jesus Christ, those games are awesome.

[Churchy]

HL2 was a weird experience for me, While I was actually playing the game it wasn't all that fun, I didn't think the shooting itself was all that satisfying and the weapons were pretty dull outside the gravity gun, but after a bit of separation from the game I'll think "hmm that part was actually pretty awesome, and that is a really well fleshed out world".

[blackboxme]

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.

About respecting intelligence: I mainly meant in terms of story elements, though it did pop up in gameplay from time to time as well.

For instance, Tennenbaum telling me that

"Letting even one little one die is a sin."

Thanks Ken Levine.

I don't think that the found-audio-diary technique was very effective either. People were talking all this time that it was a very clever and nice method to do it, but actually this is just a hackneyed version of a technique that was much more effectively in other games. It was so artificial, it was the Museum of art deco Rapture audio tour.

If the thing you find makes perfect sense for the setting, it can be a fantastic way to tell a story. For instance, in Fallout 2,

watching surveilance tapes in an empty vault...

Bioshock did have the kernel of a good story telling technique: the flashes of memory. Between the flashes of the photographs, and the flashes of people in a location, these were intriguing (until

ruined by a plot twist and a hackneyed audo-diary respectively

).

Bioshock suffered from the thing that Jonathan Blow talked about: Everything in Bioshock was a puzzle piece that fit together perfectly with every other piece. Not only that, they gave you all the pieces. So, as you said, there's no enigma, so I can't put my own interpretation to it, so it's not interesting.

[nonamermcgee]

I love Half-Life 2's ending.

[blackboxme]

HL2 was a weird experience for me, While I was actually playing the game it wasn't all that fun, I didn't think the shooting itself was all that satisfying and the weapons were pretty dull outside the gravity gun, but after a bit of separation from the game I'll think "hmm that part was actually pretty awesome, and that is a really well fleshed out world".

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. When you think about what makes a good FPS, you think about the guns, or the battles, or the great graphics, or something very tangible. Half-Life 2 kind of says, forget all that stuff, here's a whole other thing.

They probably improve on those three elements in the episodes, but in HL2 they were no good.

[toblix]

What? What? What was no good in HL2?

[blackboxme]

What? What? What was no good in HL2?

aahh, no comment.

[DanJW]

I think they are saying: the gunplay.

But from a physicists point of view, guns are not interesting. Freemen uses them as a necessary tool, but he doesn't like them. So guns are not cool in the Half Life series. It is always much much cooler to catch an enemy in a physics based trap than it is to shoot it with a submachine gun.

[toblix]

But... the guns and combat are awesome in HL2, so I must me missing something. Are we talking about another game called Half-Life 2?

[kuddles]

I love Half-Life 2's ending.

I think the ending bucks the trend of how most game devs don't seem very good at writing endings, by interweaving the cliffhanger directly in sync with the closure of the primary theme of the game.

The ending of Episode 2, though....all I have to say is that when Episode 3 arrives (sometime in the next decade), shooting combine in the face will have a much more personal touch.

But... the guns and combat are awesome in HL2, so I must me missing something.

I like the combat a lot, but I can understand why a lot of people feel underwhelmed with the combat in HL2. Other than the gravity gun the weapons are pretty typical in design, things we take for granted like the iron sights are still absent, and the A.I. is average at best.

That said, it does a lot of things right with it's combat that a lot of shooters to this day don't seem to get right. For instance, the immediate, clear feedback as to whether your shots are hitting.

Edited March 10, 2009 by kuddles

[OssK]

My exact feeling, I don't know what weapon I will have but every single ammo will have a place in their heart.

And advisors have a rocket with their name on it...

[blackboxme]

I think they are saying: the gunplay.

But from a physicists point of view, guns are not interesting. Freemen uses them as a necessary tool, but he doesn't like them. So guns are not cool in the Half Life series. It is always much much cooler to catch an enemy in a physics based trap than it is to shoot it with a submachine gun.

How can you expect to know what this "Gordon Freeman" likes or doesn't like? The guy isn't Duke Nukem, spouting a running commentary. The game doesn't insert "Gordon Freeman" moments, ever, even in cut-scenes. In general, I would argue that Gordon Freeman really doesn't exist. If you enjoyed using the physics, that wasn't Gordon Freeman enjoying things, it was you.

[DanJW]

Ahhg semantic rape!

YES, the player replaces Gordon Freeman when they load the game. But the guy still has a backstory and the Half-Life series still has an authorial voice. That authorial voice includes an overlay of scientoist thrust into a war. The leaders of the resistance are not military leaders, they are physicists. YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.

Dick around with the wording a bit and rework my point into something you can agree with.

I enjoy using the guns too. But it never goes near the gun porn of the more visceral shooter games.

[OssK]

The game is the very demonstration of "you are defiiiiined by yoooour actions"

And as it is a game on rails in which even if you're not really told: your actions are predictable, Gordon Freeman is predictable, he's the one that can single handedly manipulate the gravity gun when everybody finds it so heavy, he's the one that can save the world, not because he's bad ass, not because he's smart, but because he will, because he can, he's hope...

Gordon Freeman is Barack Obama.

[blackboxme]

YES, the player replaces Gordon Freeman when they load the game. But the guy still has a backstory and the Half-Life series still has an authorial voice. That authorial voice includes an overlay of scientoist thrust into a war. The leaders of the resistance are not military leaders, they are physicists. YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.

Gordon doesn't have any back story that you did not play through in Half-Life. The concept of authorial voice has nothing to do with the idea that they are imprinting Gordon Freeman with a personality or a back-story.

I think you think Gordon exists because it is conventional to play as a character who is separate from you as a player. I would argue that Half-Life is more subversive than that.

[DanJW]

Perhaps what I am trying to get at is a general world-view of the authors rather than that of Gordon Freeman. In the half-life world, science is a better weapon than guns.

Freeman has a deductible backstory (he is obviously a physicist, working in Black Mesa), that can be pieced together by paying attention to details of the world (like so much backstory in Half Life. People that complain about there being no background to the Combine invasion are just walking right past it)

edit:

Anyway I liked your run-down of impressions; I thought they were pretty astute.

Edited March 10, 2009 by DanJW

[blackboxme]

Perhaps what I am trying to get at is a general world-view of the authors rather than that of Gordon Freeman. In the half-life world, science is a better weapon than guns.

Freeman has a deductible backstory (he is obviously a physicist, working in Black Mesa), that can be pieced together by paying attention to details of the world (like so much backstory in Half Life. People that complain about there being no background to the Combine invasion are just walking right past it)

edit:

Anyway I liked your run-down of impressions; I thought they were pretty astute.

Cool, thanks.

I'll go play some more and we can have a debate about Gordon. I'll admit that I'm kind of a n00b with respect to this series, so all the crap that I'm saying isn't really that well-informed.