[Deepblue]

Overall a good game. I really enjoyed the story, the level design, the puzzle bits, and the sheer interactivity of the environment.

However...

I found the actual shooting in the game to be... lacking. The enemies exhibited less than spectacular intelligence, doing nothing whatsoever to take cover from my fire. Furthermore, the vehicle sections in the game are really bad, as the vehicles do not handle very well at all. Both of these factors make the game suffer in the gameplay department. I found myself completing the game not because I was having a lot of fun, but because I wanted to finish the story... And then there was the ending. I can't believe people complain so much about the ending to Halo 2 yet there is nary a whisper about the end of Half-Life 2.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, but it did not quite live up to the hype.

And yes, the gravity gun does indeed rock.

[CP5670]

eh, this was a forgettable game IMO. Although the super green gravity gun was very cool. I had lost all interest in the story long before I reached the end but screwing around with the ragdoll physics in the last level was great fun. Also, make sure you try shooting the hanging legs at the beginning of the Ravenholm level. If you hit them from just the right angle, they simply go ballistic.

the level design

You're kidding, right? This was one of the biggest shortcomings of HL2.

[Ford Prefect]

I loved everything about HL2. Guess that makes me a gaming Philistine.

[Turnsky]

this is just my opinion, but the storytelling in HL2 sucked, now, i didn't say -story- i meant how it was delivered, i know it's the whole "walk a mile in gordon's HEV suit" and such, you find the story yourself, but, as the old saying goes: "it's all in the execution" there wasn't that greater deal of story bar City 17 itself and a few misc photos and newspaper clippings that you see in various places here and there.

[Fineus]

I also fall into the "HL2 wasn't right for me" bracket.

As an FPS is didn't technically do anything wrong. Heck it's a perfectly good example of the genre. But when I first played through it (and I was paying attention) I felt totally out of place in the world and as such didn't get any enjoyment out of the hoop jumping that I had to do.

In the original Half Life, I knew why I was in Black Mesa and why the whole place was going to hell. In HL2 everything was unexplained.

[Descenterace]

the level design

You're kidding, right? This was one of the biggest shortcomings of HL2.

In what way? The lack of any alternative to the 'main' route through the levels?
Yes, but how is that different from the majority of shooters out there?

The non-linear games tend to be RPGs anyway.

[Turnsky]

knew[/i] why I was in Black Mesa and why the whole place was going to hell. In HL2 everything was unexplained.

yep, HL2 didn't really answer its own questions, and barely answered existing ones. i've heard tell that aftermath will be one in many expansions to HL2, heck, it's going episodic, i just hope they're gonna make it worth our while in terms of story and gameplay..

truth be told, i've always been a little leery of games reputed to have "a great story" 'cuz either they have none, or it's completely cliche'd or just utterly lame.
Pariah is a perfect example of this.. reputed to have a really good story, but in actual play, it didn't have any to speak of.

[Polpolion]

I sorta... hijaked my brother's computer a couple days while he was at work and played it. The ending confused me. Are you supposed to shoot those enrergy-booger type things at the teleporter-type thing? I tried that but it got angry asploded at me.


Oh, and there was too much outdoors. Needs to be indoors. Or in canyons and stuff. HL1 was (pretty much) perfect. Surface tension = my favorite level.

[Deepblue]

The last few hours of the game are definitely the best. Highway 17 was easily the WORST level in the game.

[Mefustae]

Just because you're somewhat inept at driving HL2 vehicals doesn't mean that they are invariably badly designed and/or poory executed in the game. Honestly, I found both the Air-boat and Buggy both easy and damn fun to drive, and really broke up the monotony of aimlessly shooting everyone/-thing in sight.

[redsniper]

I thought the airboat/helicopter chase was quite awesome.

[Martinus]

I can't decide if HL2 sucked or blew.

Either way a massive transferance of air occured.

[Unknown Target]

Lmao Half Life 2's vehicles were pants; get with the times Valve, use a mouse to steer your vehicles. If not that, then at least make them easy and responsive like Far Cry.
And the earlier patches of HL2 (like the one I played through the campaign on) were horrible. Five minutes for a level load? Ten minutes for the main menu? THE MAIN MENU?!

And anyway, the gameplay was pretty boring and formulaic. Woohoo, guns. Random bad guys that look like your basic gas mask human. Yay.

[Descenterace]

truth be told, i've always been a little leery of games reputed to have "a great story" 'cuz either they have none, or it's completely cliche'd or just utterly lame.
Pariah is a perfect example of this.. reputed to have a really good story, but in actual play, it didn't have any to speak of.

Wow... someone else paid money (I'm assuming) to play Pariah...

The game wasn't that great from a story point of view, and the game engine sucked royally (yes, I know it was a modified Unreal 2 engine), but it was fun anyway.

Anyone else sick of games that don't work on dual core CPUs? Yeah, there's no excuse for it. Maybe three or more years ago, when multi-CPU systems were very rarely used for games, but for the last couple of years they've obviously been on the way and should therefore have been catered for. Or are developers really stupid enough to assume that since a game runs on a multithreaded environment on a single CPU it will run fine in the same environment on multiple CPUs? Are these people really stupid enough to think that multithreaded == concurrent code execution? If they are, they should not be writing multithreaded code, but that's the price we pay for letting companies like Microsoft develop 'event-driven' APIs, also known as "let's allow people with no knowledge of concurrency to write code that appears to work but actually has assloads of latent bugs buried in it."
First rule of API development: don't let anyone fiddle with stuff they are able to break. Anyone who breaks this rule shouldn't be doing professional software development, period. In the case of concurrency, if the 'user' of the API doesn't have to consider mutexes they shouldn't be using said API unless all (and I mean ALL) that stuff takes place inside it with NO POSSIBILITY AT ALL of spilling over into luser space.
And here we see the problem with this particular game engine: not only did the developers stupidly let programmers fiddle with concurrency without understanding it, but they also assumed their code would be running on the same core all the time.

IF YOU'RE BASING YOUR TIMING ON A CORE'S INSTRUCTION COUNT, YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING INHERENTLY RETARDED.

Aaaarrrghh, I hate programmers who make arbitrary and stupid assumptions about the execution environment.

[Janos]

I really liked the athmosphere and story, but the combat lacked certain... rage?

[Ulala]

I think my favorite part of the game was the music. It always got me pretty pumped up. That's about it though.

Oh, I like the engine (well, the physics anyway... that is when they didn't freak out.. okay, maybe I didn't like it so much..) too.

[Nix]

One of the things I liked was the responsiveness of the pistol.  I could mash that button and it'd fire each time I'd mash it, comparing it to say, Wolf ET's Luger.  I didn't notice a delay inbetween shots as much as I have in other games.  I did like the whole polished look the entire game had, and when I finally got my 9800xt, it was very decently playable with some extra settings conservatively enabled.  I didnt care much for the vehicles, but I DID like the crane. Oh boy that was fun.  Picking up a boxcar and ramming it into a bunch of those combine soldier thingees.

I honestly felt though the game didnt live up to it's hype, and I absolutely detest the steam system (who doesn't?)  It felt kinda blah, with a few spectacular moments.  (Under the bridge, out in the sand with a piece of tin, a door, and a pallet to walk across the sand)  The engine is quite nice, but I feel the people who really put the Source engine to the test were Troika with VTMB. But, on the flipside, it also shows just how bad coders can goof up a nice engine.

[CP5670]

In what way? The lack of any alternative to the 'main' route through the levels?
Yes, but how is that different from the majority of shooters out there?

The linearity was particularly bad in this game though, as the path you had to take always seemed very artificial and unrealistic, frequently going through strangely placed, conveniently located holes in walls and over ramps formed by piles or rubble. There are definitely more nonlinear games out there, like Far Cry.

What I was referring to though was the fact that most of the levels totally lacked any detail or variety, which made it something of a chore to go through them. Look at Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (or any of the SC games for that matter) for an example of what level design should be like in these respects.

this is just my opinion, but the storytelling in HL2 sucked, now, i didn't say -story- i meant how it was delivered, i know it's the whole "walk a mile in gordon's HEV suit" and such, you find the story yourself, but, as the old saying goes: "it's all in the execution" there wasn't that greater deal of story bar City 17 itself and a few misc photos and newspaper clippings that you see in various places here and there.

Exactly. The problem was that although the handful of cutscene type maps were pretty good and the general premise of the story was quite interesting, there was a complete lack of detail to flesh things out. When you look at the vast amounts of little details in games like FS2 or Deus Ex, and heck, even Doom 3's PDAs, HL2's story is very thin in comparison.

Anyone else sick of games that don't work on dual core CPUs? Yeah, there's no excuse for it.

So there are games actually incompatible with dual cores no matter what you do? You can't just use the processor affinity setting?

It will probably be a little while before I get a dual core myself anyway. I doubt I would get one that can come near my $200 3ghz single core and I'm not that keen on upgrading to SP2 in order to use the Windows dual core hotfix.

[achtung]

I played it through, it's alright.  The story doesn't stick to me like Freespace's or anyything but it's not terrible.

The aiming system is almost funny, in most cases the pistol is better than any other weapon, and it's nearly impossible to miss with it.

Really, Gary's Mod is giving me of fun with the game.

[CP5670]

I like how you build up speed while bunny hopping and can go around extremely fast like that. It didn't make any sense, but was actually pretty cool and made for some interesting gameplay possibilities.