Best and Worst of Half Life 2 ****MAJOR HL2 SPOILERS****

I agree with most of that.

The worst, however, was a huge flaw in the game for me. The story-setup in the very start of the game is superb and one of the very best of any game. But then Valve made the massive error to drive you totally away from the story-line and on to a console drive-a-airboat and drive-a-buggy for what seems the longest time with the result that you totally loose that great setup of Police State / 1984. Ravenholm was great too but had absolutely noting to do with the story either. Only at the end do you return to the great sense of fighting of the Police State.

The more I think about it, the more I can't believe Valve made this absurd error.

 

I'm all for limited ammo count, but HL2 went a bit far with it - to the point where you were barely using some of the weapons save for a few very specific scenes (Nova Prospekt guard towers, I'm looking at you). I can grudgingly accept the severe shortage in shotgun shells if you push me, but I laugh in the face of anybody who tries to tell me .357 bullets are so huge you can't carry more than a mere dozen of them.

 

What weapon did you use for the guard towers?

That's where you have those friendly Ant-lions don't you?

 

It took me a while to figure out how to accomplish this without wasting all my crossbow ammo.

Turns out you can come up in the pool, toss the bugbait, and then backtrack through the tunnels and see at least two of the towers through the gates and take them out with the 9mm pistol. Once you get rid of one of the towers, the bugs won't get decimated and can clean up on the others.

 

crosbows? backtrack, pistols?

Never needed those. My antlions pretty much could take care of themselves.

I might have fired some shots from my machine gun at the nearest tower. But nothing special that I would remember.

My Antlions probably had a better leader

 

Well, I got out and investigated everything too, and while fun in the short term the long term effect was that I lost all of the otherwise immersive feeling of fighting against a Police State. The detraction from the story line was far to great IMO.

 

Maybe so. I had a problem with the crossfire between the three guard towers killing the antlions faster than they could get to the towers.

 

My favorite part of a video game when I was younger was that it seemed you were responsible for what happened.

In the new FPS they have not allowed choices in significant ways. FarCry was the best in that it at least allowed different tactics, but Doom3 and HL2 have no decisions. Some say it is supposed to be like a movie, but to me that is a mediocore excuse, sure it is fun, and I enjoy a good movie. However, I would rather feel that I could change the way the interactive movie, story, game whatever you want to call it ends by how I play. That is one of the reasons I liked to keep the follow freeman idiots alive, I would rather that if you kept them alive the game would allow them to be useful and you could just keep adding until it was as bad as the comic. Not necessarily that you could control them, but at least they would still stay around and shoot guys even if you couldn't direct where and how.

Anyway the easy way out of this is to have multiple endings for different difficulties and that would at least by a step in the correct direction, but not adeqaute in the end. IMHo...

 

I don't think it detracted from the story line of fighting against a police state. That fight just wasn't told in a continuous state of oppression and helplessness (at least on the level of the Combine)...I simply don't think that type of close and confining oppression was the whole story.

One of the things I found sophisticated about the story was that there were two levels of oppression and helplessness, and that the story left the second intact throughout (G-Man) while taking you on a journey that maintained hints and helplessness about that while horrifying you and emotionally involving you with the first and letting you accomplish victories against it.
It let you fight that first on a grand scale sometimes as well as driving it home face to face: alternately having you experience magnificent vistas remaining in the world while dotting it with continuous evidence of it being corrupted; and dealing with gritty and hard-fought areas where you try again and again to overcome being confined and restricted by the Combine's ugliness.

...

For the vehicle rides, I think if you think back to things like tortured corpses in Combine installations along the way, and the evidence of how devestated the world and people are by head crab bombing and other alien life forms, that you might consider that the "ride" areas were not escapes or detractions from the horror of the Combine as a storyline at all (unless you consider continuous confined oppression the only way to relate such a storyline), but opportunities to provide a much grander scale for that oppression while allowing you to sometimes fight it on that grander scale. At least, until you were again forced into close proximity with either your allies and their hopes and struggles, or into dealing with the Combine at close range. I think this made each type of experience more potent due to contrast, if you are able to accept the story on those terms, and enriched it beyond being completely defined by Orwellian comparison.

Also, a detail it is possible to miss is the continuous presence of the G-Man watching (with hints of behind the scenes control) throughout those vehicle rides, which I found a nice subtlety in maintaining a nebulous and mysterious sense of that other level of helplessness which the ending encapsulated so well.

 

But even Halo allowed you to carry more than 3 shots for the rocket launcher.
C'mon Valve, you gotta be joking... it's a very lame way to increase difficulty, by forcing you to run through enemy fire again and again to restock your ammo. It's just not fun, which it should all be about.

 

My thoughts exaclty. All the advance in computing power is put to waste if all we get is better looking scripted sequences. Warren Spector's approach in DX and Thief is one that I'd like to see in more games...

 

I'd say then when some adventurous company decides to take a risk on something like this, we will see a new genre finally appear. A new paradigm in gaming.

In every interview I read with developers of FPS games, they all say they feel it is a waste to develop extra material to make the game less linear. I think they all feel we are just morons looking for a arrow-straight route thru a kill-everyone blast fest (in other words, another FPS just like Wolf3D basically). I think they are quite mistaken and somebody will put all of our industry "heros" (Valve, iD, etc) to shame. There HAS to be a way to develop a more dynamic FPS world!

Farcry was a step in the right direction, but it fell apart as the plot developed IMO. It just got stupid.

I guess that's why I like The Elder Scrolls' concept so much, and why I am so excited to see Oblivion completed. That company has been evolving the limits of a dynamic 1st person experience since Arena in '92.

Here's a question....why do we measure game length in the number of levels instead of how many ways we can complete a level? Why do we even distinguish between levels? Shouldn't it be a solid, contiguous experience? WTF?

Another thing I really disliked about HL2 was the invulnerability of allied characters. Valve took away a freedom there. If I want to kill a friend, give me consequences such as "oh gosh what have I done, reload save"...but don't just make the people invulnerable.

 

You know, I've actually liked that Alyx wasn't shot in the scenes where she was involved in firefights. Reloading for stupid AI is no fun... better keep friendly NPCs invulnerable.

 

This approach is very true and there is some justification behind it as well, but I personally think that it'll be a dead end in the long term. Already in HL2 we're seeing various side effects that will in the end reduce the gameplay and eventually turn everything into a movie or a theme park ride...

Like, exploration changed into finding the only exit and the one 'switch' (action) that opens it. The increased 'interactivity' (realistic physics + ability to stack items) has lead to invisible walls so that they can keep you on the railway and you won't miss the costly content (scripted scenes) they've prepared. It might also become frustrating when you're only solution to a problem is one that you wouldn't like to use.

Gamers can be intelligent. They might be able to find all the cool stuff if the game is fun enough to play and replay, to explore. GTA, Deus Ex, Thief, Baldur's Gate and other great successes are the proof. I believe in the sandbox, so to say
There's been a lot of talk about freedom and / or the illusion of freedom in the game dev community for years. The problem in HL2 is that you don't even have an illusion...

 

She actually died on me once. Of course, I was letting her do all the fighting...

 

Heh, I tend to let her draw the fire as much as possible.

I managed to kill Eli Vance last night quite by accident. I was messing around going through the game on hard mode and I took the friendly deployable turrets with me. Collecting all of them as I went I got five extra ones into the Combine Portal room in Nova Prospekt.

Ignoring Alxy and co. I immediately started setting up the turrets in the room. Much to my surprise when Eli started to be transported into the room the turrets opened fire on him, killing him. Completely broke the scripting so I had to reload once I stopped laughing...

 

Just finished, great experience Fun to the last moment (and since I didn't expect any explanations in the ending, I enjoyed it as well). As for the lack of non-linearity, I actually liked it - I'm a very casual gamer, and having dozens of choices frustrates me, because I feel I do't get everything out of the game I possibly could (never finished Fallout, never even started Baldur's gate). Variations in the line - do I let the antlions clear the path for me, or do I take more initiative are enough for me, nothing more serious that would let me "miss" some part of the game.

Best moments: the escape, the red barn, antlion assault, the bridge, the first part of the citadel & the citadel rides. Dog. Actually, the whole game was one great experience, except...

Worst moments: Ravenholm. No, I don't find the gravgun as fun to use as I'm supposed to. Besides Ravenholm had nothing to do with the story, just a sensless killing spree and an "opportunity" to use the ggun. Also, using the gravgun to build a path. (TWICE! first the sand, then the radioactive water, used noclip in the end )

Also, I couldn't spot the GMan, no matter how hard I tried - even when I knew he'd appear in some sequences, and i looked around a lot (maybe too much too quickly)... then again, I played the game on easy, could he be a difficulty bonus?