[Unknown Target]

Doom 3 at least had gameplay and a coherent story. Half Life 2's "story" was just a bunch of running around and Valve poking fun at you, going "oo, this is mysterious, you won't understand it, so it makes it deep." Good analogy? The Matrix 2 with less words. What story did Half Life 2 have? All the good story happened BEFORE the game! That's like having the events of Freespace 1 be backstory, and you just play through the portions AFTER it.

Blaise: A lot of people still think Half Life 1 is god amongst games and no game has come to top it. Not true.

Omniscaper: Interaction with the enviroment? It's a freaking physics demo. The only thing original in this game was that you could actually lift heavy objects, rather than just blowing them up. The only original implementation of physics I saw was during the part of the level with the sand wasps, where you had to cross the beach. I did that by lifting up big pieces of board and laying them in front of me, then walking across it.
Everything else was just "OO! Look! You can pick up everything! Not like it matters, because it's just easier to shoot the bad guy #2312312321 in the head!" I hardly, if ever, used the grav gun - your regular weaponry was so much easier.


And the thing that just BUGS me about HL2 was that it could have been SO COOL! I mean, you've got these giant striders that lumber over top of you, shooting, you've got tanks, these massive bug-like drop ships. That would have simply been the COOLEST city fighting in a game EVER. Could you imagine dodging between strider legs, tanks firing off over head, ducking and dodging into every building? No, instead you were forced to walk to point A, kill baddies, go to B, kill baddies, go to C, kill more baddies, go to D, get insignificant plot point and kill more baddies, etc, etc.

[Omniscaper]

Tough critic. Can you name a game that utilized the physics engine as dynamically as Hl2 at the time of its release? And I dont mean simple ragdoll effects.

I'm not here to convince people its a great game. Those who loved it know what I'm talking about. Though its ending was a cliffhanger esque (LIKE HALO 2), the overall game experience was like a high budget scifi movie. It exceeded my expectations.  

BTW I loved War of the Worlds because of Halflife 2  LOL

[Ransom]

Originally posted by Omniscaper
...not to mention a great story. The story unfolded in away that did not make you feel like a rat in a maze. Of course this may not sit well with folks who like the simple "find the key, explore, find exit" formula.

As I've said before, all the good story is just backstory. Now, I like the backstory and the way they didn't just lay it all out for you. The problem is that all the wonderful clues and such Valve left behind that everyone raves about don't help move along the main story, they just tell you about things that happened before the game started. All that happens in the actual plot is a bunch of cliched character development, some buildings and things exploding and Dr. Breen going 'Ho ho ho I'm ever so evil'.

Doom 3, I agree, was basically just a tech demo, but at least it wasn't as exceedingly pretentious as HL2 is.

[aldo_14]

To be honest.... I didn't find the physics in HL2 all that special.   I can't actually remember any truly interesting physics based gameplay offhand (excluding the dull picking up of blocks to balance stuff).  The ability to fire barrels & gas cans about was kind of neat, but ultimately it was simply easier to use a gun.

I think the one time I tried to play about with the physics was in a little house in Highway 17, where I blocked all the doors (with hindsight) off to try and stop me being attacked.  Although I don't think it made any difference; the AI just sort of loitered outside waiting.

Ultimately I just felt the game flattered to deceive.  There were bits where I thought 'I could have done this in exactly the way the developer intended and it'd have been pretty cool', but that's not exactly a good thing.

[Unknown Target]

What WAS so great about HL2's physics? Name me one part in the game that couldn't have been done with any other game and some careful scripting. Wow, HL2 had parts where you balanced bricks to lift something so you coould walk across, and other games didn't. Wonder why.

By the way, when you were supposed to balance those bricks? I just stacked them and jumped on top of them, rather than doing all that work.

[Omniscaper]

Why are you so fired up on bashing HL2? Are you trying to get affirmation for your disappointment. Chill out dude, you've already got 5 pages of *****ing and moaning.

Word of advice, next time, a new game comes out like FEAR, dont let the marketing hype get to your head.

This is thread about the HL2: Aftermath expansion,not "Why does Hl2 suck" You had a bad exerience with it, great. Sucks for you.

[Unknown Target]

Um...what? That was a pretty personal attack on a pretty un-confrontational post. Methinks you're the one who should chill out.

And anyway, HL2 was all about the hype, that's what made it such a huge dissappointment. If it wasn't hyped so much, I don't think people would be as pissed about it as we all are.

[Blaise Russel]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Blaise: A lot of people still think Half Life 1 is god amongst games and no game has come to top it. Not true.

That wasn't my point. My contention was that you thought HL1 should somehow 'stand up' to modern games, as though a comparison between a game released today and one released - what? seven years ago? - was a fair and valid one to make. Even more so considering that FPS games have traditionally been centred around game engines and graphics, which improve greatly with time.

It's unfair to take an attribute based in a wider examination of games across time and hold it against a game in a specific, individual context. It'd be like saying because a 1920s Model T is a terrible car next to any modern-day vehicle, it was a terrible car in the 1920s and people would say "I'm not driving that, that's a pile of junk!"

[Unknown Target]

You're missing the main point of that entire post, which was this: Half Life 1 can't stand up to today's modern games, so it doesn't make sense why Half Life 2 should either. Why? Because like I said, Half Life 2 is simply Half Life 1 with prettier graphics and a different setting. Hell, even almost all the weapons are the same.

But to reply directly to your post - I wasn't saying that HL1 should somehow stand up to modern games, my point was that people think it does, and it's dumb to think that way. I'm not saying specifically you, but I've heard that argument before.

[Ulala]

You're pissed off because you got hyped up? Don't get hyped up. You're actually pissed off because you didn't like the gameplay? Don't play the game.

If it wasn't hyped up as much people wouldn't be pissed? What company isn't going to hype the crap outta their game, and get magazines, previewers, and gamers hyped up about their game? It's marketing, and Valve did a great job of it. And they don't give a crap if people are pissed as long as their marketing ploy worked and their product sold. And they'll do it again, with their next product, and their next, and next....

Sometimes there's revolutionaries (HL1, C&C, etc) and sometimes there's letdowns (Tiberian Sun, WarCraft 3, etc)... but what a revolution is and what a letdown is is solely based on opinion and personal preference.
[soapbox] We here at HLP have different opinions and different preferences, even when it comes to something like the Freespace series. But that's part of what makes this community great, and I have a dream, and insert some more motivational words of wisdom here to get you all to stop pissing at each other about some different opinions over something as trivial as a computer game. [/soapbox]

Personally, HL2 seemed pretty cool, but I never got very far through it. The load times were a lil' long (and I have a fairly high end machine), and school was going nuts at the time, so I lost time and interest. Haven't really desired to go back.. maybe someday, maybe not. But I bought the game, threw away the receipt, opened it, and installed it, so I deserve to keep it, no matter how crappy Valve or whatever company I bought whatever game from made it. They made it, advertised it, sold it, and I bought it... end of story, sometimes an unfortunate ending, sometimes not.

[Unknown Target]

I'm angry because the game was crap, especially compared to what it should have or could have been. I also got the game as a gift (note: I didn't buy it), so I ended up playing through it, and I got tired of it about halfway through, so I figured I'd invested the first half, don't have any other games to play, so I just went ahead and finished it.


But there were so many things that should have been...like that blue water tentacle monster in one of the screenshots - that just looked so cool, but in the end, it just wasn't there.

[Ulala]

Bummer. *shrugs* It happens.

[CP5670]

I thought that HL2's main shortcoming wasn't so much the story (Far Cry's story was just as thin but it was a way better game), but the mind numbingly linear and sparsely detailed level design. The linearity was especially annoying; there was always exactly one path you could take to proceed from an area, which tends to give levels a sort of artificial feeling (that rubble has to fall in such a way that you can conveniently use it as a ramp to get over a wall ).

Don't know why anyone would get all mad over this though. It's just a game and there are lots of other games out there. It was extremely overrated, sure, but at least it was similar to the original. Anyway, I think the biggest letdown of recent times was not HL2 at all but Deus Ex Invisible War, despite still being a fairly good game.

As for lifting objects and using them to get places, you could also do that in Deus Ex, which came out five years ago. The physics was the one nice thing about this game though, if only because it's very easy to get Havok to screw up, so you can have some fun.

On a side note, did anyone else notice how you could move around three times as fast as usual by bunny hopping in HL2? I basicaly only hopped through the entire game and never ran normally.

Dont get all pissy because it wasn't an easy warez find.

um, it was.

[SadisticSid]

A year ago the battle lines were drawn up between the Halo 2 and Half Life 2 camps. For me, Halo 2 won because of its immersive storyline. I felt as if I was in the middle of a situation, rather than having a situation cobbled up around my presence. Despite what I thought was an amazing engine, HL2 was bland and uninspired, trying (and failing) to add extra dimensions to the events of the first game and only ending up with a cheezy sci-fi plot that took itself far too seriously. Both games did not live up to their predecessors, but Halo 2 did a significantly better job of trying.

[Flipside]

Heh, I got bored with the FPS genre a year or two ago, I played about 3 hours of HL2 and never played any more, not because it was a bad game, but simply because it was a FPS, which is, apart from a few exceptions, Wolfentein with pretty graphics. Almost nothing has changed about them since then, in fact, Wolfenstein had more bonuses, more levels and more creatures than many of the games that it has spawned.

[Corhellion]

To everyone who said I left because you guys bashed a game that I liked: **** you...I left cause a bunch of you are ****ing stupid...And you just proved my point...And I left way before this thread even started...

Hell, Warpstorm has more brains then everyone in the forum combined...

I'm gone...

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Dude if HLP is so beneath you why even bother saying you're going?

Sigh.
[/color]

[Corhellion]

I only said it to properly address what the people thought I left for...

And I still come here for the mods and FS2 goodies...everything else is...well...different now...

*shrugs*

Sorry for being all pissy...bored...need school back...

[Flipside]

More importantly, if he already left, how can he place a post in HLP telling us that he left before the thread he was posting in had even started....

[Corhellion]

O_o

...whoa...that made sense...somewhat...

o_O

...maybe I'll stick around a bit more...