Reading Games

I have this dream of being trapped in a house with a thousand doors, but 999 of them are locked or lead to dead ends. This dream is Half-Life 2.

As for all the hallelujahs bursting forth about Half-Life being the game of 2004, I have no idea what is wrong with you people. HL2 is a nice but unexceptional game with an uninspired story, an unsatisfying ending and gameplay mechanics straight out of 1991. Beyond the smoke and mirrors of beautiful images and an underused physics engine, Valve actually forgot to elevate the gameplay out of the stone age.

The flow of the game is an aimless series of incoherent scenes. It's the Batman and Robin of games. You die all the time for no reason except not having memorized the scene before. Fights consist of aiming your gun at the general direction of the enemy and pulling the trigger. The brutally linear maps stiffle any suspension of disbelief you would be willing to indulge yourself in. You have these breathtakingly beautiful scenes laid out in front of you, but all paths except one are blocked by random pieces of scenery. You feel locked in a world of false facades.

You know, this afternoon I took a look at the new Zelda game for the GBA and suddenly I had played for almost five hours straight. The first hour alone had more creativity and ideas in it than the whole game of Half-Life. The gameplay is so polished and fair and balanced and constantly rewarding you don't ever want to put down the game.

What I realized today is how much the PC gaming industry has become out of touch with the art of entertaining people. Gameplay is the spray-on stuff you add after you punched your rendering engine to the point where it can handle five hundred fuckillion polygons per second.

Now excuse me. I have a princess to save.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

This post was edited by Jaz on Feb 04, 2005.

I have been amazed by Half Life 2's pixel shaders (the water is just incredible), but I have to agree with you on gameplay and the physics engine (though the physics engine is utilized more so than other games with it. It's actually a part of the game).

I started playing it and I realized that Half Life 2 isnt' really worth the effort that I took into getting the, uhhh, *cough* demo. Of course I was never into storylines and single player gameplay like in Half Life. When I play an FPS, I play it multiplayer (which in my opinion is reserved for the Unreal series).

Also, the creatures are unimagionative and the variety is small at best. You have head crabs, other head crabs, more head crabs, zombies who don't do crap ('cmon, the zombies in Doom 1 were more imagionative), the guards are WAY over balanced as far as difficulty (It's like going up against tin targets and marksmen when you set them next to a zombie), and the only other enemy besides them are antlions, which I havn't fought yet. I had more fun playing 20 minutes of the Doom 3 demo at lower res and lower frame rate.

But, like I said earlier, in my opinon First Person Shooters are reserved for the Unreal Series (and Quake III, but I dont play that).

And on the subject of zelda, I loved them up until the Ocarana of Time (which was good). Everything after just kinda sucked (I'm a classic zelda lover).

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

Yes, the ending of half life 2 sucked. I hated it at that...

However, the game was fun. I don't think a game neccessarily needs to be creative to entertain. It can do the same things over and over, if it inspires the same feeling as it's predecessors. I loved the game, but that's because the games was just random fun. I can't put a finger on why (the guy part of me says alex) but it just is...

Don't need a reason why, it was just random fun...

I should be ashamed of myself.

All of a sudden I'm not sorry anymore that I didn't invest the several hundred bucks for HL2 and the new machine it would've required. When I feel the urge to see the awesome graphics I can still just play the preview video.
A nice and informative review, thank you.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

Half Life 2 ran just fine on my Athlon 1800+ (1.53ghz) and a Geforce 2 MX.

The engine is amazing.

The game itself is fun, but not revolutionary.

HL2 Deathmatch is a lot of fun. Killing your friends by throwing a toilet at their head is quite satisfying. Or running them over in a buggy. Not to mention Counter Strike: Source.

Well I'm going to give the unpopular opinion and say I enjoyed what little I played in the half-life 2 demo. It has a similar feel as half-life. It starts you off with unexplainables, and then the pieces unfold and you are left with a good idea of how the area became to be as it is.

Okay, it isn't the best game I've ever played, but merely the thought put into the areas is enough to enjoy it thoroughly. It leaves me wondering how he heck a place like that could come to be. It is like walking into a new dimension completely mysterious, but then explaining itself as you go along.

In any case, don't take my word for it, nor anyone else's here. Play the demo.

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

It's my understanding that a lot of the little twists and turns in the plots are ones that you can see from a mile away. I watched my friend playing for a little while, like when Gordon is told "That's the way to Ravenholm. We don't go there anymore," and you learn that there's Ravenholm and Ravenwood, I imagined some kooky scenario where you'd end up having to crawl into the dimly lit tunnel with all the dramatic tense-ness just oozing out of it because of a confusion between the two. Lo and behold, I catch the phrase "Whatever you do, don't take Gordon to Raven-" as I was leaving the room to get something. Suprise, suprise.

Thbbbbt

I never saw that one woman turning evil on us. I half expected alex to...

Anyway, storyline...

Who says there needs to be one? Depth is all that matters. Guess how doom 3 achieved depth: The PDA. Half Life 2 got depth with alex and the memorable characters, plus, contrary to popular beleif, it was a damn good game!

I should be ashamed of myself.