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

I thought the Citadel fights were pretty lame once you got past the neatness of the super grav gun. Though the fight with the strider was pretty tough.

There was all together too much health available in the citadel. I always had 100/200 with health to spare on each wall unit.

 

How do you fight the strider in the citadel? I just ran under it and escaped... you have to throw the metallic coffins at him, don't you?

 

There are areas on the walls where you can aim the balls, while hiding behind "coffins", where the bounces take it through the Strider's position.

 

Yes, I just spammed the crap out of the area. Was rather easy to beat imo.

 

Hmm. Best - the general quality of the simulation, perhaps. The way the physics, light, sound, art and animation sometimes created really believable dramatic scenes. The most enjoyable specific sections, however, were the cutscenes. Why? Because they were about people, and drama is about people, not wall textures. Occasionally, the friendly AI levels had moments of greatness, but only occasionally (Like when my buddies shouted ZOMBIES as they rose out of the water around us, and opened up with everything they had, illuminating the darkness with their muzzle flashes...) All too often, it was scarily like Devastation, the FPS also-ran from years ago.

So that was the worst I suppose - the generic FPSness of quite a high proprtion of it. Walk round corner. Shoot. Walk round corner. Walk round corner. Walk round corner. Shoot.

The timed forcefields/waves of soldiers also didn't do much for me. At least you could turn the difficulty down at those points. The friendly AI's inability to get out the way was also not impressive. And there was too much 'physics'. All that will get us is pinball, which has already been invented. They need to work on people, not projectiles.

It would be nice if instead of the Gold, Silver, Bronze versions, there was perhaps a lite version, with the tedious bits cut out. Or if we could do it all over again, they could just leave out the most generic 5 hours and make the more interesting bits better. Or perhaps the different sections could be paid for separately via steam, and those of us that fancy airboats/corridors/graveyards can pay for them, and those of us that don't, won't.

Enjoyable game, probably an 8 out of 10. Not sure it makes the personal top 10 though. Too old a genre now. Things need to move on, and HL2 only really manages this in its cutscenes.

Rant/muse off.

 

Exactly.

 

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Ya know, I've played just about every "AAA" fps since Wolf3d and honestly HL2 has to be considered right up there with the best of each in their own era. I think a lot of us are pretty experienced and borderline jaded about what we expect from games (since we play so much heh).

Since we also know how to solve the "typical" Unreal/HL style "get past this spot" FPS-puzzle (air ducts? dark corner? double back, walk on pipe? etc) we finish the game WAAAAY faster than joe n00bie, too. Thus our expectations of games "length" are way off merely because of our experience. This applies about 5x as much in RPG's, imo.

I, for one, was able to set aside my jadedness and flat out ENJOY the game so much. I really didn't die except in momments of rampant supidity and the one standoff part and it wasn't incredibly "innovative" in its "FPS-puzzles" but I found that I only noticed this when I *wasn't* playing. When I was/am in the game it truly is one of the most immersive experiences I've had playing a game in a long time. Like, standing onf the first cliff of Unreal-immersive. That, to me, is the mark of a FANTASTIC game.

Fav's:
Facial expressions. It's amazing what this "little" thing does for the characters, etc. I found myself staring at others staring at the speaker and THEIR reactions are perfect, too. I will probably buy bloodlines JUST for this in an RPG, alone. (plus the obvious that it looks good, otherwise).
Physics: Ragdolls are great and I was amazed by them in UT2k3 & MP2. However, to see just the sheer number of assests in the game that you can throw, etc PLUS break and throw is truly amazing. Dropping a crate of bottles in the first "level" and some break, some don't, but the thing just LOOKS real was my 2nd "WOW" out loud at this game. (The first was walking into the train station w/ jerko$$ talking on the monitor).

Honorable Mentions:
True "movie-like" experience. I honestly felt pretty G. Freeman: badass in this game, rather than AS:hardcore gamer/badass. That's pretty special to get me into the atmosphere like that. examples include the intro/running away, the combine's chatter, etc.
The bullets go where you aim. Missing the center pixel of the crosshair is something some games seem to almost do on purpose to add "realism" or something. BS. I want my shots to go where I aim, when I shoot 'em. It seems small but I can't STAND "recoil" or whatever. The messed up aiming in bloodlines will probably result in me being very mele-oriented (yay, like morrowind!) Every hitscan weapon in HL2 seems to hit true. Since this is a personal pet peeve I suppose others probably didn't notice it.

Minor stuff:
Sometimes the scripting is "funny" and doesn't flow QUITE as well as it does when conditions are optimal. The only time this really jarred was when i was with Alyx and took my time mopping up combines and grabbing stuff while her hellacious gunfight continued on the other side of a door. It went on "forever" and when I walked in (guns still going off, though three combine "tones"/gasps had been heard) there were three bodies in the hallway and a smiling alyx. Weird and completely broke the illusion for a momment. Still, the fact that this once incident really stuck with me speaks to the quality of most of the other scripting. I died once during a strider fight and saw the same sequence but it was, well...the same sequence. Heh.

Kudos to valve for a great game and a seemingly awsome engine in their first try at one (I don't program so who knows if there are "problems" other developers will run into). I, for one, was harping that the engine might suck since it was their first. They proved me wrong and then some.

 

wonderful.

Mods, PHP error hitting me. Sorry for the 34534535x post.

 

Good point, no one reading the boards here is what I should think of as a "typical gamer".

 

This problem is caused because you don't sight down your weapon in FPS. As a result, you have to discard either the idea that the bullets leave the prop gun you're carrying or absolute accuracy to the crosshair. Games usually choose to have the bullets leave the gun, which means that the sight is only calibrated correctly to the farplane.

For 'laser' type weapons (e.g. the shock rifle in UT) this is pretty much enforced by the graphic. It's easy for the player to compensate for, of course, particularly if they are prompted by the graphic that this is the problem.

 

Too bad, too! Probably the one thing I do like in the occasional WWII shooter I happen to come across is the ability (but not necessity) to use the iron sight. HL2 pretty much screams for this - heck, they went as far as including the little dots of fluorescent paint on the pistol and the shotgun, so being unable to utilize them pissed me off on many occasions.

 

It's hard to do. It causes nightmares for your nearplane, because you need to move it as close as 1 centimetre, and it looks a bit daft.

 

Fighting Striders annoys me.

 

Gob-smacked by the super gravity gun and the way it was introduced (I had kind of guessed the gun would resist desctruction being energy-based on something but I didn't think it would improve!).

Not sure anyone already mentioned this but I didn't like the fact that the game automatically reloads your other weapons after switching to another gun. I would always switch back to my original weapon to reload, and realised it was already reloaded?!

Unlike some previous posts I also think recoil actually adds to the realism of FPS so I was surprised and disappointed it wasn't implemented in HL2.

 

Accidental Success...Would you mind editing your posts to remove all the crap, so it is just 3 repeated blank posts? It seems curteous.