Cool, Ravenholm. Normal killing zombies and OH HOLY **** WHAT WAS THAT IT WAS ALL BLACK AND OH GOD MY HP IS DOWN TO ONE I'M GONNA ****ING DIE OH **** OH CHRIST

I really disliked parts of Episode 1 myself (mostly the glass elevator and the battle at the end), though Episode 2 has some of the best stuff I've seen. I have a soft spot for 'modern dungeons' though so I still prefer HL1 overall to HL2, though I found HL2 to be a lot better than a lot of people here (with the exception of the very end).

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed HL2. The episodes were fantastic. When I finished, I was anxious to play Ep3, which of course I have to wait for >.<

But I agree, HL1 is my preference. It was just so awesome.

Main reason for my dislike of HL2 though, is that I just really, really hate the sound design.

About halfway through, I'm wishing I'd conserved my ammo more in the beginning by using the gravity gun more.

Yeah you're expected to use the gravity gun a lot in Ravenholm so there isn't too much ammo, apart from the shotty and some ammo for it.

Uplink (rofl, I misspelled it "uplick") kicked serious arse! I love the way you were slowly introduced to the monster at the end.

And +1 to the grav gun. The only better place to use it besides Ravenholm is wherever that joint is that lets it grab people. That is fun. Ragdoll physics FTW.

All this Half-life talk is about to make me reinstall it after I finish Chaos Theory again.

Haha, yeah, that "joint" was awesome. The only time I actually enjoyed the gravity gun.

Loved using it in Ep1

The reason I don't like HL2 is because it's tedious.

Here is the game:

• Interactive cutscene gimmick.
• Hovercraft gimmick.
• Gravity gun gimmick.
• Horror gimmick.
• Driving gimmick.
• Pheropod gimmick.
• Turret gimmick.
• Super gravity gun gimmick.

It's a series of gimmicks. I thought it was boring and thoroughly insubstantial. The new episodes are worlds better.

Hell, most video games are a series of gimmicks

I first played HL2 on the Orange Box. I got bored somewhere around the pheropod gimmick, then played Portal.

Then I never played HL2 again.

THis is what I thought.

I use Halo 1 as an example of game that avoids the trap very well. It had gimmicks, but they were evenly mixed into and balanced against the rest of the game.

It's not the fact that HL2 had gimmicks, it's the fact that it was a series of gimmicks. The gimmicks weren't blended in, the game wasn't balanced against them. It was serial. In order. Unlike Halo 1, you were stuck doing something for so long that you got bored of it.

Jon`C, I think that is the best analogy of the game I've ever seen.

Hats off to you ^^

I still hate the sound design though.

Ok I agree with you I think. I definitely got to the point where the air boat was starting to get boring, and I got sick of Ravenholme which is why I turned it off last night, but can you be more specific? How in your opinion does a game avoid that trap? You mentioned that Halo 1 did so, but what was it about it that made it flow smoothly?

Halo is very cohesive. It is one of the first games to have a really ambigous story line that made you want to know a lot more when you played. You mix that in with cinematic cut scenes and an incredible sound track, it really gets you in the mood for slagging alien scum. What im trying to say is that its very engaging. The fact that gordan freeman is a mute, and there is a lack of cinematic cut scenes (all pov) there is very little character development. I'm not saying it can't be done, i'm just pointing that it didn't do it for me in hl2. There are also certain parts of the game that were dragged on waaay too long (ie boat), and when you're unexpected greeted with unfitting music, it just ruins the experience even more. Now before you slam me for saying halo has no character development, I agree with you. But keep in mind, halo 1 set a tone that seemed like it was gonna do a lot more, but it turned out bungee just rehashed it twice over and called it 2 and 3. But when halo 1 came out, it was a very good evolutionary progression for the shooter genre.

I said the exact same thing as Jon`C a long time ago, and people said I was just pooping on HL2. I thought Episode 2 was magnificent.

Do I need to have finished HL2 to understand Ep1 and Ep2? I don't want to commit to finishing HL2 if I don't really have to.

I suppose I could read the spoilers on gamefaqs or something...

I actually enjoyed the structure of HL2.

My main gripe was the mechanics.

Martyn, yes, you have to.

If you don't finish it, you'll still be able to complete it while putting pieces together, but you pretty much have to play HL2 to keep it cohesive.

Either way, it's always nice to play them in order

If I've got time I'll fire up my Orange Box again then - it felt like I was getting towards the end.

Uh? Have you played anything with an adventure element before? This is not new. It's a basic storytelling technique.

First play through I was more enjoying the game-play and atmosphere then worrying about storyline.
Second play through however (which admittedly was the day after the first) I paid much more attention to all the clues and things.

Sometimes if feels like 'Real Life' is a just series of gimmicks too.

I've just played Ep1 for the second time and it really didn't have the same kind of impact as it did the first time round. It becomes quite clear how much it relies on spectacular ambushes and unexpected behaviour (eg when the strider uses that extra powerful blast for the first time) for the raw visceral impact. On the second play, you inadvertently find yourself prepping for those moments beforehand and thus the surprise and the challenge isn't there anymore.

I'm starting Ep2 for the first time tonight

yay for mashing people to bits with cranes.

Not many did that in the shooter genre. I mainly play fps, so no?

Everything has gimmicks you *****. And there reason that many of those 'gimmicks' were included was to show off the technology of the new engine. Yeah -- it may sound kind of silly, but what developer wouldn't want to show off all the ways to utilize an engine that took them painstaking amounts of time to create.

I don't think he's arguing with you there. I think he's saying there are more creative, congruous ways to show those capabilities off.

Meh, I enjoyed the game. The only thing a strongly agree with though is the length of the vehicle segments.. they went from initially amusing to blatantly stupid after about an hour of it.

Pretty much, the vehicle sections were the only part I really disliked. The rest was alright.

And it can be even more boring than HL2

Yes that is an effective way of disagreeing with a person's preferences.

Source engine never really had any innovative new features. It's a Quake 1/2 generation engine with a bunch of middleware and a handful of (effectively) hard-coded shaders. Havok has been used by game developers for four years before CS:S came out. Color me unimpressed by the lot of it.

Stuck trying to kill an airship with the RPG. (Not the first one that was easy, but the second one seems damn near impossible.) Any suggestions?

Remember that it's a guided missile, guided by your mouse cursor.
The trick is to fire it off, make it spin a few times in the air and THEN have it drive towards the airship.
If you try to shoot it direct then the ship will shoot it down every time.

There's nothing fun about a tech demo for a game. Awesome, I see you designed a vehicle section that makes every other tool and gimmick useless, so I have to follow your lead until the next event happens and I am required to dance in a different way for you.

There's very little decision making in HL2, and I feel like only a little bit of non-linearity would be refreshing. Not an open world, or TOTAL FREEDOM like other games offer, but can there be more than 1 magical way to get past a part?

Like mentioned above, the second time you play it, the gravity gun parts suck and are not full of discovery, the vehicle parts are long and drawn out and not movie-like at all. The 3rd time I figure out that basement with the jumping and not getting electrocuted thing, it's no longer fun. HL2 is almost cheesey in the way they "set up" for the next gimmick, and even in the superior Episode 2, I constantly feel forced into using some gimmick. The bomb things at the end of Ep2 are unnecessary, and some rocket launcher ammo would've been far more useful. Instead I have to take the long way around since the designers wanted to force tension on the player.

You mean it would have been easier. The Magnisson Devices are a bit of a challenge which is the whole point (the Hunters can shoot them off).

A better way to handle the gimmicks would have been to give the player 3 alternate routes (land with the buggy, water with the airship, or some sort of ravenholm/underground type passage) to choose from, each lasting rather long but can still be mixed together, like maybehalfway through the buggy part you decide to abandon it and transverse through a cave on foot.

letting players choose but still guiding them is what makes a good fps imo

No, it would have been fair. Up until that point you had never been tasked with hitting something accurately with the gravity gun. When someone suddenly changes the rules on you it's called cheating.



Or maybe if your screen didn't flash "Mission critical vehicle destroyed: GAME OVER, YOU LOSE. Play it my way next time *****es. Sincerely, gaben" if you abandon the stupid thing.

But that's really the point. All of the 'gimmicks' in HL2 are consumed entirely, never to be seen again. They aren't part of a game. Every time they have a vehicle segment, or turrets, or pheropods, it's the game changing the rules on you. The game is cheating because nothing you have experienced or learned from previous areas will apply going forward.

And once you got good at it, the "last battle" was really boring. All I did was grab a bunch of logs, set them around the entrances and drove back and forth between the magnisson devices. There was no challenge, and it was just a practice in repetition and forced tension. Throw a gun ship and a few rocket launcher ammo bins in, maybe a handful of hunters and make it a real intense time, not a long drawn out gimmick.

Neat that there's a thread for this, I recently started playing through HL2 for the first time. I'm on the airboat section and it's getting to be a drag, I think (hope) I'm near the end portion.