[CubaLibre]

Whatever you think of their game design, accusing Valve of creative stagnation is breathtakingly myopic. I can't even begin to wrap my head around it.
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[CubaLibre]

I don't feel like talking about HL2 per se but saying that Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead are somehow the same is idiotic. Which is what this argument was originally about. There are tons of people who hate Half-Life 2 but really like Half-Life 1; that's because they're different. Hence Valve is not creatively stagnant. I mean L4D and TF2 are such categorically different experiences in every way, including mechanically, I don't see any way you can accuse Valve of repetition whether or not you agree with where their experiments have taken them.
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[CubaLibre]

You have a weird definition of civility.

It's one thing to call Left 4 Dead "shallow" (with no attendant reasoning), it's another to say it's uncreative - which it isn't; there isn't another game like it.

Saying Portal is "not theirs" is wrong, because it is. Have you played Narbacular Drop? Saying its humor is "not theirs" is even weirder. I mean it was written by one of its employees. I'm as wary of anyone of personalizing corporations but if you define "things Valve has done" as "things people employed by Valve have done for Valve", which I think is a pretty reasonable (even inescapable!) definition, you're left with Portal as an original effort.

Saying TF2 is like TF for Quake is like saying Virtua Fighter 4 is like Battle Arena Toshinden.
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[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

I would add that this interacts with a relatively stable level design that leverages the strengths and weaknesses of different combinations of enemy spawns and player resources to create familiar-yet-new situations. Once you've played the levels enough, every significant room might have "a plan," but each time the choice of which plan is workable is dependent upon what your group has and what kind of zombies are lurking about.

Plus, L4D2 significantly improves upon all of these aspects, including adding more special infected that can disturb your group in new ways, exponentially increasing the amount of tactical situations you'll have to manage (since specials almost never spawn alone on the harder difficulties). The levels also tend to have more alternate routes, increasing the amount of time you'll need to spend on decisionmaking. There are also more environmental hazards and the level designers were much more conscious of "sit in a corner and shoot everything" tactic, with each of the levels constructed to minimize its effectiveness by limiting blind corners, increasing paths to the player while decreasing lines of sight along which to shoot, establishing moving objectives that require the players to stay in motion, etc.
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[CubaLibre]

Haha, I wouldn't call us military, even at the time (and most certainly not any more). More like a jazz band - play enough together and your improvisations take each other into better consideration.

I guess I see what you mean about the infected HUD, but there's an incredible and special joy to playing the infected team and executing a particularly delicious plan. The fact that virtuosos can pull off shit like this belies any notion that the mechanics are shallow or simplistic.
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[CubaLibre]

Didn't play Psi-Ops, but I thought the physics puzzles were awesome in HL2. They're maligned now as boring or obvious or silly but I thought they were great. There's a simple kinetic joy in manipulating objects and watching them interact. I still remember that one where you have to use the floating barrels in the underwater cage to lift the hovercraft ramp to the surface fondly.
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[CubaLibre]

We did. That's like, all the same strider behavior from the released game.
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[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

But in MW2 the shooting is good autokrator. In HL2 the shooting is bad.
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[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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[CubaLibre]

[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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[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

The keyword is verisimilitude, not realism. HL2's physics are self-consistent. They resemble the real world's not out of an inherent desire for "realism" (contrast ArmA or Rainbow Six) but simply as a shortcut to help visually indicate how things interact. But those shortcuts are imperfect and eventually you must discover how objects interact in Half-Life World. The gravity gun is a great tool to help you explore this. The key is that this process of discovery should be immersive instead of distracting. I found it immersive.
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[CubaLibre]

This thread makes me want to replay this game. Again.
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[CubaLibre]

[CubaLibre]

Yeah, the thing is, I did really actually play WoW, from release right through Burning Crusade, and I hate it. Hate it.
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