Totally agree
Half-Life 3
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Totally agree
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I found HL2 and its expansions decent and fun for a single play. But I think that they are overrated. HL1 was great because of how fresh it was at the time. But HL2 is so painfully linear-feeling. It feels like you are on rails. Ultra-controlled scripted experience deluxe. I do think the universe and the settings are fascinating, but the gameplay is so bleh. I wish Valve could create a hybrid of STALKER and Fallout 3 with their universe!
I actually think I might put the original Jedi Knight ahead of Half Life. I know, shocking huh! I think I can hear an angry mob coming to get me.
If you really dig the creepy complex experience and in-game storytelling style of HL, be sure to check out Penumbra.
Heh, Rails = good. Stalker was OKish, but didn't like it much due to the fact there wasn't a tight storytelling focus for me. Different experiences for different people.
I think the best non-linear FPS games I've ever played was Deus Ex (first one) and System Shock 2. And even those could have been considered linear. Other than those I've almost universally disliked non-linears FPS games.
Regards,
SB
Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are very linear. Deus Ex gives you some "choices" yes and is a sort of very basic RPG-style game, but the choices really are very obvious and the alternate directions can be fake-feeling sometimes. System Shock 2 is even more linear because you can't progress at all without doing things a specific way for the most part. I liked both of these games the first time through (SS2 a lot). SS2's got amazing atmosphere to it. But playing either game again really isn't much different than the first time through...
STALKER is similar but at least the world was huge. I liked that a lot. I want to feel like I'm lost in a huge world that I need to learn about. There isn't the same feeling of intense directed gaming. I suppose it allows for a bit of a false sense of freedom in what you can do. The storytelling was problematic, but the atmosphere made up for it for me. You really have to enjoy that sort of exploring-loner-in-the-world premise I think.
But one has to realize that storytelling is linear by nature unless there are branches. Games don't like to do this because you then have content that the player will perhaps never see unless he plays the game over and over. It can multiply the workload to make the game yet maybe not add any value at all to the player's experience.
Half Life 2 is basically a corridor shooter. It also has a sort of pretentious cult following not unlike the Mac or Linux worlds. That intangible superiority complex thing.
Its fans and developers like to see it as some sort of second coming of storytelling/gameplay but I just don't swallow that whole at all. It's so plainly obvious which way you need to go. Lots of fake door syndrome and I don't like that stuff because it dramatically reduces exploration of the world. And while the storytelling is neat, it isn't interactive at all and there are lots of games that do storytelling way better anyway.It's not that HL2 is horrible or anything, but I think it is way overrated by people who aren't interested in other games or don't have enough experience to know better maybe. I have played the whole series and enjoyed it but I just can't come to play it again because it wasn't THAT great the first time through and there isn't anything new to do really on a second play.
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Branching storylines add to the experience even for a single playthrough. The player can tailor the experience to his liking.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I dont think its been as long as valve took with hl2 yet
But give them a break. They dont get paid anything, they all do it for fun so asking them to hurry up is a bit too much especially as I wouldnt be suprised if BMS turns out to be way better than most other games that you have to pay 60 euro's for.I've said it before, Valve should totally hire these guys. Give them direct access to texture libraries and everything. Then we could pay - and gladly so - for this new experience.
Guess I'll be refraining from re-playing the original HL until this thing comes out... Just to try and keep things from feeling a bit more new and fresh. HL is a really huge game on the whole, it's really hard for me to remember exactly which bits follow after the other bits, even though I've run through the entire game any number of times in the past...
The original HL2 was a really mixed bag. Out of everything there is to complain about, I would say that it is because the combines are too weak, dumb and GOOFY compared to the grunts of HL1 that made the second game a disaster. Not accounting for the "floating" freeman BS whenever he uses his "jetpack" to run across the map, and the horrible rubber bullet guns in that game (the mp5 looked like a toy compared to the beast in HL1)!
HL2: Ep1 was a huge money grab. It presented nothing new to the table. Only in Episode 2 did Valve actually TRY to make a good game rather than another tech demo. They upped the difficulty and shortened the game making it as concise as the HL1.
If HL3 was back in Black Mesa again I would buy in a heartbeat. What kicked ass in HL1 was the feeling that you are the only man left alive in the desert and only you will know what evil the government are capable of. The world "out there" will never know about Black Mesa. They ruined this theme in HL2 by telling us that the entire world collapsed. I don't mind Eastern Europe but most of the NPCs' dialog and attitudes in HL2 were pretty boring. They had little mind of their own. Rather than having Freeman as the "loner against all evil" you're forced to deal with Alyx and the MINDLESS ENDLESS amount of drones that praises your butt as if you're Jesus in a suit. Where's the fun when you're no longer the underdog? How can everyone in City 17 love Gordon Freeman so much? It was just too lame. In HL1 during my first playthrough I really thought the game may give us a happy ending where Gordon and a few surviving employees of BM would "make it out" and tell the world of the events, but of course we got a dark ending and this never happened. I liked that a lot.
HL2: Ep1 was a huge money grab. It presented nothing new to the table. Only in Episode 2 did Valve actually TRY to make a good game rather than another tech demo. They upped the difficulty and shortened the game making it as concise as the HL1.
If HL3 was back in Black Mesa again I would buy in a heartbeat. What kicked ass in HL1 was the feeling that you are the only man left alive in the desert and only you will know what evil the government are capable of. The world "out there" will never know about Black Mesa. They ruined this theme in HL2 by telling us that the entire world collapsed. I don't mind Eastern Europe but most of the NPCs' dialog and attitudes in HL2 were pretty boring. They had little mind of their own. Rather than having Freeman as the "loner against all evil" you're forced to deal with Alyx and the MINDLESS ENDLESS amount of drones that praises your butt as if you're Jesus in a suit. Where's the fun when you're no longer the underdog? How can everyone in City 17 love Gordon Freeman so much? It was just too lame. In HL1 during my first playthrough I really thought the game may give us a happy ending where Gordon and a few surviving employees of BM would "make it out" and tell the world of the events, but of course we got a dark ending and this never happened. I liked that a lot.
Whatever it is, it's goofy. Just like the combines, who can't attack, are slow as hell and don't intimidate you like the soldiers do in the first game. I think it has to do with her face masks as well, the grunts in HL1 were so angry and furious looking, you can't see this under a tame gas mask.
But then they can all look the same. Baddies in suits are always easier b/c there is the built in excuse to not have a bajillion different characters so the player isn't like hey I shot this dude like 50 times.
It's not that they did not have the tech to do a lot of variations on characters, see the human prisoners and the resistance fighters. The Combine were intended to be faceless, without individuality, representing the dark future for mankind, and giving a clear goal for the fight.
And yeah, I kinda think HL2 was a pretty good game. Maybe not the most clever enemy AI, but very good game design and lots of polish - not to mention the artwork.
And yeah, I kinda think HL2 was a pretty good game. Maybe not the most clever enemy AI, but very good game design and lots of polish - not to mention the artwork.
I know, from an economic point of view, it is less costly to have most of the baddies look pretty much the same.
But at the very least provide me with the ILLUSION of variations. There's been quite a few games that did this very well, namely Call of Juarez 1 and 2, in which both games I do not recall seeing the same faces over and over again. I'm sure they only had 7 or 8 faces but they managed to vary them enough so it's not noticeable.
Yes I understand it fits the theme, though I don't think this could have been the only way. It's just hard, even in a sci-fi setting, to fear an enemy which only represents mindless drones or robots.
Would it not be better to have enemies who look sinister and cunning? Even to a degree where you can relate to them because you can look like them too. Gordon is a human being and so were the military grunts. It's easier to relate in this sense than it is for Gordon (the player) to relate to mere clones with no expressions.
Yes I think it is an enjoyable game too but parts of the game really did not exceed the overall unity or greatness of HL1. HL1 was all about survival. In HL2, you are Jesus, infallible and can do no wrong. The only why you even need to move forward is not because there's something behind you or you are the last "good guy" alive, its behind there are hordes of "flat" characters behind you cheering you on, with loyalties that rival mad soccer fans... it got old pretty quick.
Honestly, I didn't really reflect all that much - if at all really - on that aspect until this thead cropped up. I just felt the HL universe took a gigantic left turn somewhere inbetween the first and the second games, and it felt like the two installments were totally disconnected. Other than the crowbar and HUD graphics, what really says Half-Life about Half-Life 2? Almost nothing.
It doesn't exactly help either that you as a player basically get no information whatsoever of what happened during the intervening twenty or so years that passed between the first two half-lives. That's the bit that really bugs me. Gordon isn't allowed to talk, so he can't simply ASK what the EFF happened to the world, because that's the (stupid) design decision made long ago, and nobody in the gameworld sees that as strange. The NPCs even joke about it, which rather breaks the suspension of disbelief IMO. We also get no real explanation of how exactly the director of Black Mesa ends up as supreme (and rather deranged) leader of all of mankind. Or rather the small splinter of it that seems to remain... As amusing as the rants of Dr. Breen was, he's as retconned into the story as Magnusson was in Ep. 2. And to top off the cake, add the lack of geographical connection with any real-world locations. City 17 (which is a terrible name by the way) is supposedly set in Russia, but it has plenty of english signs everywhere. Also, nobody actually speaks any russian, or even english with a russian accent... Meh!
It's not the same game anymore; the style of gameplay, the atmosphere, everything... It's all changed. The original HL wasn't perfect, god knows it wasn't. For starters, Black Mesa was just way, WAY too big to be realistic, and not to mention too random and computer-level:y. There isn't even any bathrooms in the entire game that I can recall other than the locker room right at the start... Then add all the environmental hazards the player has to negotiate. Bizarre trips on conveyor belts, random crushers that exist for no reason (other than act as a lethal obstacle for the player of course), vast pools of toxic waste, gigantic pits that serve no apparent function and so on.
Even with all that in mind, it's still on the whole a better game in my opinion, because it had a particular mood.
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