[boojiboy7]

[Toups]

the game basically screaming at you would entail, I don't know, alyx communicating to (constantly) via a radio in your suit saying "WELL, LOOKS LIKE THAT PHD IN PHYSICS MIGHT GET YOU OUT OF THIS ONE GORDON" every time you came across one, which is how most videogames would've handled it... can we at least give valve credit for not being obsequiously patronizing?

they were a little garish but they were mostly grounded in the story of the game (ie, they seem to be intentionally designed checkpoints in a shackled-together underground railroad that could quickly be broken down at notice)...
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[Jam]

The physics puzzles, the ramp in particular because I can't remember too many others, were annoying because they weren't physics puzzles. Rather they were puzzles to highlight that the game had fancy physics. I.e., air barrels will float, and you can slowly topple a washing machine. Two problems with that though. The first being that the control is terrible. The illusion of physics goes out the window when it's impossible to manipulate the orientation of the objects in any intuitive way, instead bashing them against obstacles until they eventually magically right themselves in your telekinetic grip.

The second and more frustrating problem is that these puzzles have only one solution. This highlights the linearity of the game and makes the use of physics a joke. Why will a bunch of barrels supposedly filled with air or something lower the ramp, but gordon and the boat won't make the ramp budge? Why will the washing machine trick work but stacking debris does absolutely nothing? It comes down to being just really annoying lock and key bs. If your first inclination is to use the air barrels then I suppose the illusion is kept up. But if you had different ideas then the puzzles with constantly frustrate with their selective and sloppy use of physics. And yes, if something like the barrels weren't your first inclination then when you actually do solve the puzzle that way you feel like the physics puzzle is being shoved down your throat. Or like the game is basically screaming 'Physics Puzzle!'
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The King of America

[Toups]

the ramp raises up... it's already at its lowest point when you get there, hence no budging from additional weight on top.

and putting debris in the elevator will make it dip, just not enough to raise the second ramp... you're supposed to see a bunch of items that you can try throwing in there, realize that it's not enough weight, and then, after poking around, realize there's a washing machine (which was left there on scaffolding built by rebels as part of the railroad) which is more than heavy enough to make it work...

if you're willing to pay enough attention, the physics puzzles are in fact well integrated into the gameworld... I agree that the modes of interaction are clumsy, but given where game development was in 2004 when this game came out, any more sophisticated solution they could have tried probably would have backfired and been even more counterimmersive... I haven't really seen game design come up with an elegant solution to that problem since, to be honest.
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[Toups]

because half life 2 isn't a puzzle game... the puzzles are just there to pace things and build the game world. they're obstacles hastily assembled from garbage and junk by a resourceful group of resistance fighters... so it makes sense that they'd just have one solution, since they're designed to let people who know that solution pass.
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[Jam]

The ramp pivots Toups :( Just think about it from a different angle.

From the washing machine example as I recall the elevator reaches a point where putting more items on it does nothing. Like it reaches some kind of preset and just wiggles there no matter what you find to put on it. And the most frustrating part is that gordon is still non-corporeal, so his weight does next to nothing as well.

Let's assume that you're right though, and that the physics are implemented very well. That still leaves only one solution to each puzzle, which brings it back to the same lock and key design. You're not encouraged to think about physics, but to look at whatever brightly colored objects can be found near the obstacle. In many cases even thinking about physics is counter-productive.

I never thought of it before, but why is there a ramp with a cage and air barrels floating around? Even presuming this is a common resistance route you'd think they'd just make a ramp that connects the top and bottom.

We just look at things differently I guess. I found the inability to find another solution and not being able to budge the ramp by jumping all over it to be extremely counterimmersive. Much more so that someone just telling me to put the barrels under the ramp and move on. Sure, the latter is bad design, but it makes the bad design more forgettable. The former is a betrayal of an much lauded expectation - that is that physics should work properly - and so sticks in my craw well past the moment of frustration.
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The King of America

[CubaLibre]

More important is that there's only solution because only one is available, not because it's scripted. If you hacked some other thing as heavy as a washing machine into that level, you could throw it on the elevator and it would work just as well. The puzzles really do use physics to operate, and even (as toups points out) include red herrings and partial solutions that are supposed to guide you to the correct solution.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[CubaLibre]

[Jam]

[CubaLibre]

The Combine can't teleport locally, that's like the whole psuedo-tech basis of the plot of the game. It's the advantage that the Resistance has and is developing for use against the Combine.

Wow I can't believe I just made a canon post.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[boojiboy7]

Does Gordon weigh less than a washing machine? He's a pretty effing tiny dude, then. Or that is a ridiculously heavy washing machine.

[boojiboy7]

[Dracko]

[Toups]

[boojiboy7]

[Jam]

[DJ]

There's also the complaint that Half-Life 2's puzzles emphasize linearity of the gameworld and player restriction; to be fair, I don't think Valve ever went into the (finished) game with any intention besides making it extremely linear. Whether or not that's your thing is one thing, but "linear" isn't necessarily a dirty word. It's generally a negative when you're talking about RPGs (see: Final Fantasy XIII) but for FPS games, not so much.

Again, with some of the original level design you can see by playing the leaked alpha/early map pack/missing information mod/etc., hell even the Lost Coast level supplied by Valve for free, you can see how originally they were going in a sort-of more open direction and that there was a willful move away from that. Whether that was a design choice or whether it was because they just decided they wanted to sacrifice player freedom for emphasis on coherency/speed or they just plain ran out of time and started chopping shit down, I'm not sure.

If it was the latter, I'd agree they kinda failed. I recently re-played HL2 and both Episodes, and the two episodes are just as linear but much, much speedier/coherent/involving than the original game.
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[boojiboy7]

[boojiboy7]

I tested that when I played it awhile back, and sadly it doesn't, or at least not to any great degree that I noticed. I still am (forever) trying to figure out why I don't get the same sense of physicality from gordon that so many people seem to, though.

[oh my god immaculate]

[DJ]

[boojiboy7]

[boojiboy7]

[oh my god immaculate]

[Ronnoc]

Jurassic Park: Trespasser, everyone! Oh man!

[Jam]

Yeah, that's enough, I'm out. This always has to turn into a fight.
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The King of America

[monaco]

Was El Eternauta ever published in the USA? It shares a lot of stuff with the HL games.
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fbk . skp . ggl

[shrugtheironteacup]

You can't drive a goddamn boat up a goddamn ramp if your ass is the couterweight holding the ramp up and oh my god people are discussing the relative weights of player gunarm vs. washing machines in a videogak,oagjkgawlhvflljkasgasdflisdfjkl;;gohlsefgjo[sgbjkl;asdfjhoqwd;hiowdJIOP
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[diplo]

is this the part where i embed a black lagoon boat vs. helicopter video

[les meat]

[les meat]

[CubaLibre]

[DJ]

The article's probably already been linked around here, but there was a bit written by one of the level designers for BioShock 2 who had gotten his start making stuff for Doom. He made an interesting point that first person shooters (specifically; this could really be applied to videogames in general that strive for realism) are not particularly well suited to the "realistic" angle of things just by virtue of requiring some pretty ridiculous stuff in order to even be fun.

So, here you have people arguing about tossing a washing machine as a counterweight to a ramp and why you can't do other assorted things that should work just as well and how these things that are supposed to add to immersion are really just thinly-veiled lock and key devices and etc. etc. etc.; if anyone starts complaining that Doom's military base setting had a completely ridiculous and un-functional layout that doesn't even begin to make any sense whatsoever, though, they're going to be accused of missing the point.

It's just as accurate to say "Doom's military base was laid out the way it was because it's a fucking videogame and you need to stop trying so hard to grasp for shit being wrong" as it is to say "You throw the washing machine in the pulley system to raise the ramp because it's something for the player to do besides combat and it helps break up the pacing of the game a bit and you need to stop trying so hard to grasp for shit being wrong." But, because Half-Life doesn't have the same level of abstraction that Doom does, suddenly the obviously video-gamey stuff sticks out a lot more and people begin tripping over it mentally. It's like a game design version of the uncanny valley.

This was one of the reasons Valve went with the cartoony look and feel of Team Fortress 2. If that game was more realistic, you start to ask a bunch of questions that don't have neat answers. Why are Red and Blue's bases within pissing distance of each other? Who are Red and Blue, anyway? Why is there health kits and ammo littered around the map? Why can the soldier rocket jump? How does the spy's cloaking system work? Why can the Scout double jump? How the hell is the Medgun supposed to work? Why are we confined to this one small area? Who's keeping track of all this shit, anyway?

That's all stuff that would have to be addressed in, say, a sci-fi shooter. The cartoony look adds that layer of abstraction back to it, so the answer to all those questions can safely be "Because it's a videogame".
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[Volnado]

Enjoyed some of this thread, but it got stupid quickly when people complained about physics shenanigans.

Some people like playing what is ostensibly a fun, pulpy science fiction film that they like to "feel" they're apart of. Thats what the Half-Life games are, that's why its fun.

Who cares if its linear? The set-pieces are fun, the characters endearing, the world is fantastic, there's the slightest challenge to make you feel threatened, but otherwise its a breeze and that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

If anything its simplicity makes it easy to play it over again. I do at least once a year - its like popping on Star Wars for a spin. Maybe you don't like Star Wars.

Besides as it was mentioned earlier, the linearity has become a conscious allegory for a dialectics of freedom and constraint, not only present in the game's narrative, but intrinsically in the game design.

Actually all video games are very structured systems of control, Valve just emphasizes it as both a theme and a design principle.

[CubaLibre]

[Jam]

Hey, this was the thread where I asked for those L4D multiplayer explanations. Thanks for putting those up guys.
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The King of America

[oh my god immaculate]

there've been several threads where L4D's multiplayer has been explained in great detail (often in response to people that dismissed it without knowing what they were talking about)

but thanks for the dick post in a thread that you oh so dramatically vacated in order to avoid fights.

[boojiboy7]

[boojiboy7]

[DJ]

[boojiboy7]