[^^^^^]

[Marshmallow]

[Toups]

[Marshmallow]

NO, NO, IT'S FINE, DON'T MIND ME. I EVEN GOT JOHN ROMERO TO BACK ME UP, BUT WHATEVER.

[CubaLibre]

[boojiboy7]

[Pijaibros]

[Predator Goose]

[internisus]

I just finished Half-Life 2.

There's really nothing I want to do for the rest of my life but play Valve games.

[shnozlak]

[Intentionally Wrong]

Shnozlak, have you listened to the developer commentary in HL2 Episode 1? That pretty much indicates to me that the people who are most likely to top Half-Life 2 are Valve themselves.
_________________
JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[shnozlak]

[negativedge]

That's what people said about the original Half-Life, you know. That it couldn't be topped. That the sequel couldn't do it.

Well, it did. It took them six years, but they got it.

Of course, most of those people think Half Life 2 sucks compared to the original.

The point is, the WOW factor is more and more difficult to replicate as the years go on. Any idiot coming from Quake could see what Half Life did that was so amazing. It takes a bit more brain power to notice the same thing in its sequel. If there's any developer to have faith in right now, it's Valve.

[Toups]

[negativedge]

...

*cry*

[CubaLibre]

[Sketch]

Compared to the first Half Life, I though HL2 was utter crap.

Less weapons, less variety in terms of enemy design, less weapons, and no sense of pacing. You just kind of coasted from place to place, rather than feeling as if you were actually getting anywhere, like in the original. Also, the second hald of the game (jeep) was just a clone of the first half (boat), except with wheels. Nauseatingly lazy design all over the place.

Oh, and as for that stupid ending...

Oh, and less weapons.

In short, not as good as the first HL.

EDIT:
Did I mention it had less weapons? Because it does.

[Felix]

bearing in mind that i only played about half of the original half life and am two-thirds of the way through the sequel at present..

i will grant you that the basic "combat" isn't as "fun." i am putting these words in quote marks because i really don't know how to objectively judge an FPS game in this regard. however, hl2 has infinitely better setpieces, production, and jesus fucking christ narrative not only than the original, but than 99% of american videogames ever made, and probably 95% of videogames as a whole.

[Broco]

You will really hate Portal then, stretch panic, since it only has one weapon!

HL2 is an improvement on HL1 in every way except pacing, as far as I'm concerned.

[Felix]

[CubaLibre]

Also the "boat" and the "jeep" were both squarely in the first half of the game.

I guess facts don't matter when you're trying to be cool by shitting all over something everyone else likes tho
_________________
Let's Play, starring me.

[negativedge]

guys if I make a game with fifty weapons will it be better than half life 2

[shnozlak]

[chevluh]

[negativedge]

I don't really get the ragging on the ending. You want to know what the real ending was? The last hour of gameplay. There are no cutscenes in Half Life, people. What were you expecting?

[Rucio]

Guys I just figured out what I don't like about combat!

The weapons don't feel powerful. The enemies will take anywhere from 2-10 shots to kill. When they take non-fatal damage, they don't recognize it. They just keep shooting. There is no indication that you hit them other than maybe a blood spatter on a nearby wall. There is no RE4-esque knee shots, headshots, or likewise. Then, as soon as the arbitrary hit ratio is reached, the enemies collapse ragdoll style.

The game is really pretty though.
_________________
"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[chevluh]

NegativeEgde> Well, most normal videogame players assume the ending starts after the last enemy, preferably a boss, is dealt with, and Breen's dimensional thingamajig does feel like a boss, though a weak one.

[The Troops]

[Rucio]

At least the enemies wince in FF7.
_________________
"Say, that's a nice fez!"
"Thank you very much. Why do you like it?"
"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

[chevluh]

Well, they do in HL2 too. In that department, it does just about everything other PC FPS do.

[CubaLibre]

[remote]

[Rucio]

[negativedge]

No, I'm with Rucio on this one. The mechanics of Half Life combat have never felt all that substantial to me. In fact, I remember when the game was first unveiled at E3. Everyone was going gaga over it, but I was a little skeptical because the combat didn't look that hot; coupled with all the tech talk/demos, it made me a little unsure of where the focus was. Luckily, that worry was completely unnecessary.

While I don't think the mechanics are that hot, I must say there were some memorable combat scenes in the game for me. I remember one time in particular, right before you get your buggy taken away. There's sort of a "last stand" moment in one of the little towns. You've got some friends, and the combine has some choppers and a bunch of guys. I barricaded myself in one of the houses by pushing dressers and other random pieces of furniture in front of all the entrances and popped some rockets through the windows at the choppers. I remember the combine trying to force their way through the windows. It was pretty fucking awesome, actually.

[internisus]

[Broco]

Good post internisus. I agree, especially about letting the player construct the big picture without any explicit exposition.

Saying the ending is great because of "symmetry and thematic integrity" doesn't quite do justice to it though. It's more about gleeful wish-fulfillment! That, and the cold, minimalist aesthetic of the Citadel is the diametrical opposite of the rich organic detail of the rest of the game, and really shows the incredible range of the art direction at Valve.

[The Troops]

Internisus, did you notice that in the airlock chamber in Black Mesa East, the different "phases" of gassing and lasers and such is represented by a common streetlight. When it turns green, you're cleared for entry. Just like how Dog's face is that of a scanner, and how Grigori's spinning blade traps are simply lodged in stationary engines (the same engines you can pick up and hurl in other parts of the game). There's a very gamey reuse going on, and it both contributes to the hodgepodge, "scavenged" feel of City 17, and strengthens the consistency.

That's what I meant when I was talking about Half-Life 2 as a "language." Take the three headcrab zombies. If the agile spider headcrab possessed a human, it becomes simply a zombie that can run really fast. It's like a spider with a capital letter. It makes complete sense within the game. Almost everything in the game builds off elements that already exist, like Voltron, so they are immediately sensical. The Gravity Gun is just an extension of picking up crates. The Super Gravity Gun is just an extension of that.

The four-hour ending is genius in the same way that World 8 of SMB is genius. I can probably pinpoint for you the exact moment that Half-Life 2 feels like 8-3, where you are running by the walls of the fortress. 8-4 is the Citadel. That room in 8-4 with the underwater fireballs is the same hallway where you fight the Strider head-on and INDOORS. Bowser is the two airships. You've fought Bowser before. You've fought airships before.

[Broco]

Speaking of effective use of repetition, when I first saw a Strider striding behind a wall very early in the game, I thought "Holy shit! ... but it's probably just an inert decoration." Much later when it actually turned out to be a fightable enemy, it was a real "shit yeah!" moment.

[negativedge]

It's also worth noting that the linearity and "cut scenes" are so well done that I never batted an eye. I remember one part in particular in one of the offshoot towns under siege by a chopper where some grizzled old dude is giving a lecture to the troops on how to deal with the situation. You walk in an everyone is like FUCK YEAH IT'S FREEMAN. When this guy is telling everyone how to destroy the chopper, sure, I could run around smacking boxes with my crowbar, but there was no fucking way in hell I wasn't going to look at the map he was pointing too. It just wasn't going to happen.

[The Troops]

It's funny, because the game DARES you to look away. My brother is a person who takes such a dare. In every story sequence he will only run around and try to break shit. Perhaps just to spite me. He says, "I am participating in the story! This is the character's personality. A psychopathic box breaker."

I'm fine with this, really. I know CliffyB says people are always trying to undermine his narrative, but, you know what, you get out what you put in. If you watch a feature film in the tiny soundless picture-in-picture window while enormous red pundit faces scream at each other on Fox News, you're going to get what you deserve. It's like drug policy. Don't design it with the assholes in mind.

The early HL2 videos showed Gordon knocking over a monitor in the middle of Kleiner's technobabble, and he stopped to say, "Oh, do be careful!" They should do more with that. Maybe tell kids to pay attention. The citizens could tell if you were looking at them, or whatever. That's because they had else nothing to say. For story events, you'd have to write these interjection opportunities to occur within a few seconds of finishing a line, to appear natural. Then they'd have to begin again with, "Well, anyway. . ." or "As I was saying. . ."

But this is kind of counter to Valve's philosophy that they only do the work if at least 90% of people will notice it. This is opposite to Kojima, who let's you tranq EVA to hear her fantasies and call the Colonel while standing under someone's pee stream (which is accompanied by the MOST AUTHENTIC PEED-ON RUMBLE ever featured in a videogame) and wear the Raiden mask while fighting Volgin so that he doesn't hit you. No one does this stuff until they read it in a GameFAQs article or see it on YouTube. Is it worth it? Maybe. In the same way there are houses out on Highway 17 that have little relevance to anything. It legitimizes the world.

Interested to see Episode Two. It still looks fairly linear. It's just that the lanes are wider. Green things chase you. It shall be a hoot.

[Sketch]

Did anyone else find that the jeep sections reminded them of the Mad Max films?