The great Valve re-play

[Ben X]

Does that have a double-meaning? Are you saying it was called that because they thought the PS2 was shit?

[Joewintergreen]

Decay was on the long-lost Dreamcast port too! And it's been ported to PC now. It's pretty good.

 

Aaand my Hydra is in my hand(s.)

 

So, what do I use this thing for? What are the sweet games I can play with the Rift and the Hydra? HL2?

Pretty much just HL2 and Portal 2 so far for me. For HL2 you need the VR mod everyone's using with their Rift, and a bunch of patience to make it playable without a Rift. For Portal2 you need the motion DLC which you can email Sixense to get for free.

[Dirk Anger]

You know, it took me a long time to realise that those two add-ons have clever names

 

Uuhm... what does this cleverness entail, exactly? That both names are physics-related?

(I'm not a native speaker, so please forgive my linguistic thickness )

[Ben X]

Yeah, "opposing force" refers to the soldiers but also is a physics term (as in, for example, Newton's Third Law), and Blue Shift refers to the work shift of the security guards in blue, as well as being this. "Half-Life" could as a double-meaning be also referring to your ever dwindling health, or maybe they only did puns for those two add-ons...

[Dirk Anger]

OK, I knew that. I guess my English back in 1999 was better than I thought

(Still, it was really damn irritating that the original HL and all of its' addons did not have fucking subtitles.)

[Joewintergreen]

Today I played some more with my Razer Hydra and HL2 with my semibrother. It actually turns out to be really really rad once you get the hang out it. After a while I was headshotting dudes like a pro with the magnum, and because you're physically aiming the gun it kind of feels like you earned it. I made a video illustrating a few of my favourite things you can do with it - shooting around corners, stabbing stuff with the end of the crowbar, shooting backwards over your shoulder, using the crossbow scope as binoculars. Quality is terrible but it may interest ya'll.

This one time in Nova Prospekt I busted through a door, fired my magnum, headshotted a dude, realised I was out of ammo, got auto-switched to the crossbow and went nuts - without aiming down the scope, fired three times and headshooted three combine soldiers. I basically quick-drew a crossbow and fired "from the hip" and miraculously won. It was awesome.

 

Video not up yet at time of writing but should be in a few minutes.

[Sno]

I've still been slowly going through HL2.

I always remembered not liking the last few levels of the game as much as the first two thirds, but now i can articulate why. A lot of narrow paths, a lot of obstructive debris, and the expectation that you fight alongside a squad of, admittedly competent, AI's inside of these confined spaces. Whenever i need to backpedal out of an enemy's line of fire, i keep getting caught up on things and dying.

Fighting off the Combine Striders is still awesome though,

I think i'm about to head into the final level of the game, and then i'll be into Episode One.

[Roderick]

Yes, easily the least pleasant bits of any game are when you're dependent on any sort of AI buddy that you have to protect. The most stressful HL2 (possibly Ep1?) times were when

you have to get some people onto a train a bunch at the time and repeat that a few times.

I'm telling you, there are only a few games that get excort missions right. Resident Evil 4 among them.

[Sno]

Well, that wasn't exactly what i was getting at. In fact, there's only a few brief sequences in HL2 where you have to protect a mission-critical NPC. Most of the time when you're accompanied by AI's, it's just hordes of nameless and disposable non-characters.

My issue with the later parts of the game really is just that they're throwing you into a lot of really narrow, clausterphobic environments with a posse of AI buddies obstructing your routes.

 

Though, actually, i think the hardest parts of HL2 are by far the sequences in Nova Prospekt where you're trying to hold out against waves of Combine soldiers. One of them has virtually nothing for you to scavenge, while the other stores everything in dangerous, far-off spots, and the auto turrets you're presented with for each sequence just end up getting knocked over every five seconds by Combine grenades.

That said, HL2 isn't an especially difficult game. I'm playing through on Hard and have not really had any especially noteworthy trouble. (I noted in a previous post that the original Half-Life is actually a substantially more difficult game even on its normal difficulty, and i still think that's accurate.)

Also, just... The HL2 shotgun is really just the best Video game shotgun, that is some satisfying punch.

[Sno]

[sclpls]

That's the craziest speed run I've seen since that first Dark Souls run happened.

[SecretAsianMan]

There have been a few updates to the TF2 blog lately.  Apparently Valve can do more than just add hats and they're going to do some rebalancing of maps and items.  I'm glad that they're still paying attention to the actual game and not just the trading side quest.

[Thrik]

I started fancying a bit of HL2 recently after going through the splendid beta content wiki. What a fucking treasure trove, with endless links leading to even more incredible stuff. For example, there was going to be the Manhack Arcade which was exactly what it sounds like: an arcade where citizens play a video game that involve chasing people down and slicing them up, not realising it's actually happening.

 

Loads of other things too, such as an in-depth look at the cut version of the Borealis which was meant to be a large part of the campaign (a whole extra day in the story), child workers who were going to be found as corpses (Jesus.), and an awesome early version of the Citadel.

 

 

I don't know how much of this is featured in the 'Raising the Bar' book I never got to own, but it's a great resource for anyone into this kind of thing (or just a total Half-Life nerd). I did download the Half-Life 2 leak when it hit the web, but having not played the final game (as it wasn't even finished) I wasn't really able to appreciate anything in it and never looked at it again. Turns out there was a lot of sweet stuff in there.

[Thrik]

The only thing is, if I did play through HL2 again (and BM:S) I'd really want to do it on my TV. Playing with a mouse and keyboard felt horrible when I tried it before though. Maybe someone can engineer the PS3/PS4's Move stuff to work with a game like this. 

[Sno]

So i bought Portal 2 in the Steam sale. Never played it, haven't had a gaming-able PC in a long time and i absolutely refused to play it on a console.
 

Hold on though, first things first, i decided to play through the first Portal again. Took about two hours, that game is still really good.

Here's the point i want to make, in that first game GlaDOS is at times funny and silly, but can also be pretty genuinely creepy and menacing. I was a little taken aback by how foreboding that game actually is, it's completely lost in the culture of memes that surrounds the game now. Then you go to Portal 2 and just for like the first half of the game, GlaDOS keeps making fat jokes about Chell. Less menacing, more vindictive shrew. You can argue that it works with the direction the story ultimately goes in, but it's a jarring shift at first, and i still don't think those gags are all that well written.

That series is also taking a weird trajectory from breezy experimental puzzle game to behemothic triple-a monster. Portal 2 is massive in every way.

 

It's certainly beautiful though, there's some really incredible scenery, and Valve is making good extensive use of that pre-baked physics simulation thing Source can do. That opening sequence especially leaves one hell of an impression.

However, i'm super bummed out by those fade-to-black loading screens. It feels like such a betrayal of Valve's commitment to seamless gameplay, and they just kill momentum when they pop up in the middle of what seems to be a frantic chase.

Anyways, i think i'm near the end of the game now.

Portal 2 - It's pretty alright.

[miffy495]

You need to co-op that game. Preferably with someone else who hasn't experienced it before. I did this with Patters back when the game first launched and it is better than the single player. Buy someone else a copy if it means finding someone new to the game. Seriously. So good.

[Sno]

On your recommendation, i organized a Portal 2 co-op playthrough with another who had never played through its co-op campaign.

You're right, it's pretty fantastic.

[SecretAsianMan]

Portal 2's co-op mode reminded me in a way of the co-op in 'Splosion Man.  Going through it the first time with someone who had also never played it was one of the best co-op experiences I've ever had.  Portal 2 is similar in the way you both have to work together to figure out what you're trying to do then how you're supposed to do it.  It's such a shame that it can't be repeated to the same satisfaction, but I guess that's what makes it so amazing.

[Daniel]

I missed out on the Half-Life series growing up, but after playing Portal I decided to go back through the main games and check things out. This was January or February of last year, I think. I played through HL1 and really enjoyed it, but I've only been able to play HL2 in small bursts every month or so. Certain sections like Ravenholm and the giant bridge are amazing, but others seem lacking.

 

Apart from anything to do with vehicles, I have no problems with it mechanically. The atmosphere and story is engaging enough. I'm not really sure what it is that doesn't feel consistent, but I've left Gordon on a beach head covered with multiple bunkers for weeks now.

[Sno]

I see this story so much, people coming to HL2 after-the-fact and not really getting what the deal is. It's hard to pin down why, and i'm not sure there's anything i can say that will change the experience you're having with it. (Well, maybe one thing. Stop trying to shoot the manhacks. Everybody tries to shoot the manhacks. They don't have to be tedious to fight, use the crowbar or the gravity gun.)

I personally think it probably boils down to both HL games having been on the outermost bleeding edge of significant trends in FPS design, and years later seeming somewhat less impressive surrounded in the context of what they influenced.

I think it can be hard to objectively look at HL2 as a product of its time when so much of it still seems so modern. That game is nearly 9 years old, but there are things about it that still surpass the standards set by modern games. (For example, i think the attention Valve gave to character animation is really, really remarkable and casts significant shame on many current titles.)

 

[Daniel]

I don't play many modern FPS games, so I feel like I'm approaching it without much comparison bias getting in the way. I think it'd help to play through it in larger chunks than 20-30 minutes, maybe? Comparing different sections of the game broken up over a few months is altering my perception of the game as a whole, making Ravenholm feel inconsistent with avoiding antlions by jumping on sheet metal.

[Dewar]

Ravenholm was very inconsistent with the rest of the game, and was the best part of the whole thing if you ask me. The feeling that I got out of HL2 that I haven't gotten out of any other game (well, maybe the original Halo) is a sense of wandering adventure, like you're traveling from one spot to another and you experience every step, instead of being randomly teleported to the start of each level. That being said, it didn't really do much for me either. I played it mabye a year after release when I bought it in a pack to get in on CS with a few friends.

[ihavefivehat]

Ravenholm was very inconsistent with the rest of the game, and was the best part of the whole thing if you ask me. The feeling that I got out of HL2 that I haven't gotten out of any other game (well, maybe the original Halo) is a sense of wandering adventure, like you're traveling from one spot to another and you experience every step, instead of being randomly teleported to the start of each level. That being said, it didn't really do much for me either. I played it mabye a year after release when I bought it in a pack to get in on CS with a few friends.

 

That's very true, and it's something that I haven't put my finger on until now. I once did a playthrough where I didn't use the car or the airboat, but simply walked through those portions of the game (I did have to no-clip a couple times). It really made the game feel like an epic trek. The feeling when I finally arrived at Black Mesa East after the whole airboat section really great, like arriving home after walking cross-country or something.

[Thrik]

I'm disappointed. It would have added to the realism of a trek if you'd gotten all the way to some insurmountable obstacle and then thought 'Ahhhhh... SHIT' and then had to go all the way back again to get the vehicle. 

[ihavefivehat]

Haha, I might have to do a yet more masochistic play through!

 

I've been thinking about this though... the idea of a long, seamless and lonely section in between 'busier' areas of gameplay, where the game doesn't really throw much at you aside from beautiful scenery and a sense of ambiance. It's a really specific feeling which, in order to experience, I normally have to ignore what the game is actually telling me to do, for instance walking across the map in open world games which normally expect you to use fast travel or drive a vehicle. If anyone knows of games which create this experience purposefully I would love to hear about it.