Sexy hi-res pic!!!

I'm gonna have to agree with some of you. HL2, although a good experience as a whole, was quite flawed in some areas. I actually liked Ravenholm a LOT, but it didn't fit in with the rest of the game. It felt like a completely different game.

The car and boat parts were way too long. At those moments I felt like I was playing a race game, which was disappointing and frustrating. At those moments I couldn´t wait for another level to begin. However, the last couple of levels were quite satisfying, despite the rebels blocking you ALL THE TIME.

But yeah, good game, but nothing more than that. Same with Doom 3 in my opinion. I haven´t really played anything wonderful this year, just good games.

Actually, I was trolling. And damn right the thread sure got a lot more interesting!

Fredrik said:

Actually, I was trolling. And damn right the thread sure got a lot more interesting!

I should ban you for obvious trolling and then ban everyone else for not realizing it

Shaviro said:

I agree with Fredrik about the valve-horny game-sites, magazines and fanboys. Nobody seems to care about all the lies Valve gave us. The whole "AMAZING AI" campaign was nothing more than a filthy lie.

I was fully aware of all the stupid shit Valve has done but I still loved HL2 http://www.failmath.com/reviews/valve98.htm

Linguica said:

I was fully aware of all the stupid shit Valve has done but I still loved HL2

Concur. Even with the flaws in HL2 I enjoyed it very much.

Although Valve is about set to ruin my enjoyment of HL2 too. With the most recent update I'm getting memory read GPF errors about every 10-15 minutes.

My statement still stands.

I only had 2 problems with HL2 and one of them isn't a big deal.

1.(Big deal) They left out a LOT that they showed us in concept art and at E3
2.(Not a big deal) It took 5 years to make.

Other than that, I have no problem with HL2. The HL2 modding community is going to do MORE than enough to compensate for a lot of it's faults. You can only imagine how many SP mods and MP mods that will be made. Since HL's been out so long, there's going to be at least 100 mods for HL2.

Scuba Steve wrote:
I think the problems are moreso the game industry's itself, not the players. It's not just Doom3 and Half Life two, but all the hyped releases of late. Halo2, GTA3, WoW... all wheter actualy deserving of the praise they recieve, are touted as "The greatest goddamn game ever created"... and it's not until months later that after the review sites and magazines spout out thier views which fall vastly short of what could be called a review, that we finally start hearing REAL reviews.

Half Life 2 is just the current Hype Monster, and no gaming magazine would want to tell people that it might be anything less than flawless. We saw this with Doom 3 in August, and we're seeing it now on a somewhat grander scale with HL2. Just like traditional media and news, gaming news has become nothing but Hype and Infotainment with little substance or analysis of games.

i agree, many games that have come out recently are somehow all "game of the year," while they're all pretty much mediocre. not to say they aren't enjoyable, but they're sure as hell not as revolutionary as they're portrayed to be.

Szymanski wrote:
...they've spent a year hyping the game (the graphics ,AI etc) and asskissing to gain the exclusive review.

there's the bottom line.

Revenant100 wrote:
I don't know if this video has been posted here before, so don't kill me if it has, but this video (http://www.nofrag.com/fichiers/halflife2/videos/938/) pretty much summarizes how I feel about the AI in HL2. Extremly dissapointing and even a step down from the original. :<

hahaha.

At least Half Life 2 had some variation in the gameplay. I really could only play Doom 3 for 15 minutes at a time because it was so boring and repetitive. Same old shit over and over. It stopped being scary. Having monsters jump out at me became more of a chore. At least in Half Life 2 the gameplay was slightly diverse. You had vehicles, for instance. And for those of you that say "oh but it's an FPS, it shouldn't have racing bits", get your head out of your ass. These days genres are mixed all over the place, it makes games more interesting than just "run around and shoot and hit buttons" ala Doom 3.

It's okay to have 'racing bits' in FPS's. I just don't like it when those 'bits' take hours. But like I said, other than that I really liked HL2.

Unfortunately, since the latest Steam update my stuttering problem has gotten worse. Some parts (Anticitizen one's beginning) have become unplayable.

Heh that pic looks awesome. Of course thier are some minor giveaways but I wouldnt have noticed them if it werent for people pointing them out. Except parts of the rowboat.

S1lent said:

Umm... where did you get the 12 hour figure? Considering that the record time is about 14 hours...

Try Three hours.

I thought the vehicle parts of Half-Life II were a fucking blast. So refreshing to go full bore, touring down a beach or a down a curvy bit of highway littered with abandoned cars.... running over Combine and fucking off again. Id replay H-L 2 again just to do some of those jumps.. Bwahahahahahaha I thought that was fun and I don't care for Racing games and the like.

Szymanski said:

Depends which forum you visit. From comments on shacknews there's been plenty to moan about :

1 How lame is the ending?
2 How annoying is the friendly AI, especially in 'follow freeman'
3 Where's the stuff from the videos? (hydra etc)
4 Why is the sound so fucked up on level loads and other stuttering problems etc
5 How does ravenholm fit in
6 Where exactly is the story?
7 minor stuff like 'I miss the snarks' etc

1) Very lame, but the game itself is very good.
2) Not very annoying, they actually get out of your way if they are blocking your path.
3) It was cut from the final game
4) Many people have the stuttering problem, go check the Steampowered forums
5) I don't know
6) http://fragfiles.org/~hlstory
7) Not in the game either

Mr. Chris said:
1) Very lame

How was it lame? It fit right into the plot and the storyline. Not to mention it left mystery and things to use your imagination on. You can really call an ending that make perfect sense and fits in perfectly to be "lame"

4) Many people have the stuttering problem, go check the Steampowered forums

Correction = HAD stutering problems. The released a patch a few weeks ago that fixed that. If you're still getting "stuttering" than it's your computer.

I won't spoil the ending for those who have not completed the game.

Linguica said:

I was fully aware of all the stupid shit Valve has done but I still loved HL2 http://www.failmath.com/reviews/valve98.htm

Oh I enjoyed it too. When it shined it really shined. The problem, for me, was the middle game which did not cater to my taste. I think it was a good game, but not a great one. Certainly a lot better than I expected. It's still way overrated by gaming sites and magazines, though :P

Mr. Chris said:
1) Very lame

I actually kinda like the ending. It sure is a lot better than your standard "OMG YOU SAVED THE WORLD" ending.

http://www.failmath.com/reviews/valve98.htm

Woah wtf that Andrew is you? I loved the DX2 review.

edit: go go quoting powers.

Zaldron said:

Woah wtf that Andrew is you? I loved the DX2 review.

I can't read the DX2 review now, except for the red sidebar bit I think it sucks

Yes, Half Life 2 had its flaws that are overlooked in professional reviews, but I still like the game all along. It's far too early for me to get annoyed at all its flaws (except those elements that actually piss me off like crowding NPCs getting in your way and vehicles).

Eh. Actually the 'squad' NPCs that you get later in the game are actually very good at getting out of your way. So much in fact that it's hard to get the medics to stand still and help you out. :P

There are other instances of scripted NPCs randomly just stopping dead in doorways where you need to go though. That's kinda annoying.

Although that screenshot does look good, the level of detail isn't much higher than any other FPS game out there. The major difference that I can spot is the water and the resolution of the textures and that's it. I mean, I've seen locations in games like Devastation, Dead Man's Hand, Unreal II, Unreal 2k3, Call of Duty, Tron 2.0, etc. that were just as breathtaking if not more so than that screenshot. If that's honestly the prettiest thing to come out of Half-Life 2, I'm not too impressed. Keep in mind that I am not judging Half-Life 2 or saying that it sucks, this is just my opinion about the screenshot.

AirRaid said:

There are other instances of scripted NPCs randomly just stopping dead in doorways where you need to go though. That's kinda annoying.

And their pathfinding will just knock YOU out of the way.

Enormously annoying.

Yeah. Ever gotten between a wall, and an NPC trying to stand next to that wall? it'd really quite hard to get out. :P Specially when I was charging my suit at the generator thing in Anticitizen One, and Alyx cornered me when she went to the console. I couldn't move, heh.

There was actually one time I had to load an earlier game to get through a npc crowded hallway. It worked much better in non-cramped locations :P

And I hear you can't blow away the NPCs if they get in your way. What's the story?

Nope you can't kill any NPC. If you aim at them, you lower your weapon, if you fire anyway, it just goes right through them.

I pose a question to the people here.

I believe that PC Gamer said this about Half-Life 2:

"The best game ever made."

Now, I don't agree with this because the game annoyed the living piss out of me by having stupid "look at our l33t physics" puzzles, the standard Half-Life "take the most indirect route we can think of" and the least exciting Boss battle ever. EVER.

Doom 3 wasn't being deemed the best game ever by magazines, was it?. Neither was Halo 2. Neither was San Andreas. And none of them are the best game ever. I enjoyed Doom 3 more than HL or Halo 2. Why? Because I didn't expect it to be a groundbreaking shooter. I expected it to be a pretty and scary romp through the mars base. That's what I got, that's what Id promised. Valve promised far more than it could deliver.

Hell, Valve puts the HL2 site as Gameoftheyear.com, replacing/moving the old HL1 site.

Back to my point:

"Best Game Ever"

Does this game deserve such a title?

Fiend said:

I believe that PC Gamer said this about Half-Life 2:

"The best game ever made."

No, they called it:

"The Most Important Game You Will Ever Play"

"The most important game you'll ever play".....wow, that's a pretty grandiose thing to say. I didn't even know games were that important in the first place.