Half Life 2 overrated?

Well I just finished Half life 2, the game that's been hailed as the best PC game ever, and I must say it never really made my pants explode from awesomeness. Maybe I was expecting too much. I don't think I've ever played such a linear shooter before, all the corridors and maps felt suffocatingly small. I was impressed with Ravenholm and the final parts of the game where...your arsenal changes, but other than that it felt like a decent shooter, not exceptional. Anyone feel the same or differently? Are the expansions better? Dang cliffhanger endings.

Oh but I must say, TF2 is gorgeous.

 

I thought the same thing when I was playing on easy. I then cranked it up to the hardest setting and I was amazed. It was great at hard. I beleive it earned its reputation.

 

HL series are popular for the storyline... and the curiosity generating things like the G-Man etc. etc. And HL2 is a very well optimized game, running well on older systems. The episodes (1 and 2 released thus far) are great too, as they expand the story. And playing HL1 really helps in knowing the story! All in all, it's a great series, indeed!!

 

i think it is rated properly. hl2 was also the first big-name game to incorporate decent physics. the graphics were advanced at the time, and still hold up well today. it had a creepy underlying story, high production value, and it also ran well on hardware at the time.

 

I think its safe to say HL2 was fantastic for its time but if you for example play crysis and then HL2 your kinda like... um what is this? Atleast I was. I felt it was a very suffocating game as far as free roam goes. The story line, however is good and thats half the battle (no pun intended). Assassins Creed, a new game with a fantastic story line is kinda similar in a way because you only are ever tasked with doing about 4-5 different things. It gets repetative but if you get into the story the game can be very enjoyable. It all depends on your expectations and what you get from the game. I think the splinter cell series has been a pretty well rounded one.

 

gotta agree... so far its not as good as I thought it would be based on what everyone is saying... im on the part where you're on the dune buggy.

im hoping it gets better. my 2 game purchases so far are orange box and crysis. i've gotten thru half of crysis, but am putting it on hold until im done w/ at least the original HL2... that way im not playing only source games for the next 1000 hrs (ep1, ep2 lost coast, etc)...

one thing that bothers me about the game is how the character 'coasts' when you let go of the controls... for example i would expect that the instant i let go of the 'left strafe' (a) button the character would stop instantly. unfortunately, there is 'momentum' that screws up my aiming. wish they could fix that.

i know im in the waaaay minority, but i really like crysis ALOT better.

 

...you're complaining about realistic momentum physics?

Half Life 2 is best experienced in sequence with the original Half Life so you get the story line. Also keep in mind that most of the gaming world was waiting for years for the sequel to Half Life. Also, it was the first game to incorporate physics extensively into the gameplay. Doom 3 came out a few months earlier but doesn't hold a candle to HL2. So in summary:

-Storyline is highly engaging
-When it was released, nobody had ever seen the kind of physics gameplay
-Playing it on hard, like somebody said earlier, is a must
-Gameplay may be somewhat linear but the environments are highly varied--Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt, Citadel, etc.

I've played everything... Half Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, etc, so for me having all this backstory, the game is that much more amazing.

 

Remember, HL2 appeared in 2004,and just look at that graphics and weep.
It runs on pretty much any hardware but looks and plays stunning.
That`s it ,I`m replaying the whole Half Life series,starting with HL1 Source up to episode 2.
See you guys in 2 days

 

Half Life 2 was amazing when it came out, just like Half Life was back in the 1990s. It was a great achievement from both a gameplay perspective and a development/technical perspective. For example, the physics engine in Half Life 2 was outstanding, and it was a very hardware friendly game.

 

Yeah eleron911 I think the release date is something a lot of people are missing. This game came out almost four years ago and it still holds up remarkably in terms of graphics, physics, and gameplay. Four years in the gaming industry is a lifetime.

The gravity gun allows for a near endless possibility of gameplay styles as well. When you look at the game and series as a whole, there may be games with better graphics, there may be games with more engaging story, but no single game encompasses all that Half Life 2 does, and does flawlessly.

 

LOL way ahead of you! I loaded HL1 Source up last night

 

I already am at the second chapter,and got my HL2 ,HL2EP1 and HL2EP2 Dvd2 standing by

 

I agree HL2 is the best fps out there. Man when I played this game on my XPS M170 and at 1920x1200 Wuxga Resolution, the game looked and still looks reallly really good compared to other shooters. The textures are awesome in the game and the levels are very smart designed and fun to play through. I think it is the whole setting that attracts me, the fallen buildings and so on

 

The OP poses a valid question; but my personal opinion is that HL2 is not overrated. In fact, the game seems strong in every respect:

- storyline
- graphics
- scalability
- innovative features
- level design
- NPC AI and facial expressions

 

As most have said previously.. Half Life 2 does everything well, something not many games achieve. The fact that four years later I can still play it and enjoy what it offers is fantastic. A plus for me was the diversity in the game itself, from driven the dune buggy to playing through ravenholm, never a dull moment.

 

Did anybody else carry 7 saw blades with them all the way to the end of the Ravenholm? Up until the point where the leaper zombies were climbing the drainpipe while you were waiting for Father Grigori's cart, I carried 6-7 blades with me the whooooooole level and used them to kill everything..

 

I did that, otherwise you run out of ammo and have to use the crowbar. But who doesn't love the crowbar? Especially with godmode on DIE YOU STRIDERS!

 

Here's why I think Half-Life 2 is overrated:

- The storytelling is from the "Lost" school of writing, where they do nothing but ask more questions than they answer.

- Visually it doesn't hold up as well as you guys think it does; I can tell exactly where they got the performance (low-poly environments), and it came out during the same era as Far Cry and Doom 3, which are both much better looking games.

- Technology does not a good game make. I think Crysis has proven that.

- I don't have a problem with linearity; I do have a problem with scarcity of ammo that more or less FORCES you to use the gravity gun, and I have a problem with poorly localized damage on enemies...frankly the actual SHOOTER mechanics, much like Chronicles of Riddick, are at or below par.

- The game just isn't that much fun. Certainly it's above par, but it's not a mindblowing experience.

Now, all that said, I feel like Episode Two really goes a long way towards remedying the problems with Half-Life 2. The UI is refined, gameplay is more interesting, the story starts spitting out answers instead of questions and moving forward, and the visuals are much better and better integrated with one another.

 

You're supposed to get most of your ammo from the guards you kill... and there is plenty of that.

 

YES! I love you.

EDIT: Oh right, and yeah, I was one of the people eagerly anticipating HL2 from enjoying HL1. I personally found HL2 to be better looking than Doom, though not quite as pretty as Far Cry. What I really love about Half-Life is the narrative skill employed in the game. It is one of the most immersive and engaging games I've played, which is what makes it so great!

 

I wasn't to impressed with half life 2.

Never played 1.

But the episodes really made HL2 shine for me. I think with the series in mind it's deserving of its title.

Not to mention the last chapter or two of HL2 was one of the funnest things I have ever played.

 

Yes, slightly overrated.

The engine and graphics were amazing when it came out. I know watching the first e3 vids... nearly crapped my pants from how amazing it was. And today, it still looks amazing.

But beyond that. The game took a SHARP nosedive a bit past 50% of the game. The first half had a lot of fun, exciting parts. The vehicle sections were really memorable.
Then... it just stopped being creative. It was like they went... oh lets just stop having creative ways to tell the story... and just throw tons of guys at you. That got boring really fast.

I thought HL1 was an overall better experience. But even that didn't hold up compared to System Shock 2 for me...

HL2 is amazing. Was pretty ground breaking. Just... didn't keep the momentum up through the whole game :-/

 

I'll admit, Nova Prospekt - Follow Freeman got a little dull, but then once you got into the citadel things picked up again.

 

Half Life 2 is one of the best games ever made. It was the king of cinematic gameplay, with an unsurpassed level of immersiveness. When I first played it, my first thought was that... "this is what virtual reality must feel like".


To the OP: You played Half Life 2 too late. It was released four years ago, which is an eternity in the video game industry.

Most games today have been inspired by Half Life 2. COD4 for example, has the same kind of cinematic quality that made HL2 the king of modern games. Bioshock has a simillar kind of storytelling method, leaving it up to the player to discover the storyline, rather than forcing it on them.

Crysis is a game with a lot of physics... which means that it basically follows Half Life 2, except that it is no where near as good.

 

What the heck are you talking about? Cinematic realism has been part of video games since freaking Parasite Eve on the Playstation. Even Doom 3 was only slightly less cinematic than Half-Life 2. And what about System Shock 2, or even Half-Life 1 for that matter?

Four years is long. It isn't THAT long. You're tremendously overstating the impact of Half-Life 2. Vehicle sections have been in shooters since Halo on the Xbox, for example.

This is what bothers me, Half-Life 2 fans are as bad as Mac owners. Half-Life 2 may have been a refinement of a lot of existing ideas, but it's not the explosion of innovation a lot of you make it out to be. Likewise, while it may certainly have been able to call "firsties" on things like the physics engine, if it hadn't been Half-Life 2 it would've been something else. Physics was a natural progression, it's where we were headed anyhow.

Games like Street Fighter II, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, these are genre-defining. Half-Life 2 was evolution, not revolution. It's an excellent game, but it's not this genre-defining beacon of amazingness people make it out to be.

 

i thought it was one of the best PC games i've ever played. it's one of the few games i've played where upon finishing it, i said "that was great!"

 

Totally agree. Yet it still was an amazing game all around; strong storyline, physics, optimized graphics, good sound, fun gameplay, and strong characters. It may be slightly overrated but its easily one of the top 5 FPSs of this decade.

 

Breathe easy. Alright?

I never said it was the first... I said it was the "king" which is obviously a subjective statement and my own personal opinion. We are all entitled to own own opinions, are we not?

Secondly, check Metacritic. Half Life 1 & 2 are the higest rated PC games of all time, from a weighted average of all the major reviewers. So clearly, a lot of people disagree with you.

From your previous posts, I can see you have a real problem with HL2. I am not sure why... but I respect your right to make up your own mind. So why don't you allow me to do the same?


P.S. And how dare you compare me to a Mac user.

 

If you add up the sum of its parts, HL2 is the best game to hit the market. Most of the big games excel in one ot two catagories, HL2 when it was released was very good or better in all the catagories that count, and its really hard to dispute that. It was beautiful to look at it, controls were top notch, story was engaing, gameplay varied widley, it was highly accessible, name another game that excels in all the mentioned aspects upon release?

 

You bring up a very interesting point. Apple hardware/software is popular because it refines a lot of existing ideas into a very polished and stylized product, much like Half-Life 2 did for the FPS industry in 2004. Someone just above me put it plainly, and I agree, HL2 is more than the sum of its parts. Points taken individually, the game wasn't wildly innovative (though the physics implementation was impressive at the time), and it wasn't even the best looking game around. What it did have was fantastic narrative and a very polished and effective storytelling vehicle. Taken as a whole, the game significantly raised the quality bar for PC FPS games.

I loved System Shock 1 and 2 as much as the next guy (SS1 was so epic when I first played it), but they functioned in a similar way. SS1 was the one that really brought about the extreme awesomeness feeling (I liken that to HL1) and 'innovative' narrative edge. SS2 improved/added many concepts to the same narrative formula and certainly spiced things up, but it wasn't quite as jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring as the first game. So, essentially, what I liked most about HL2 was the fact that the narrative style/quality was effectively preserved while including additional types of effective gameplay (i.e. physics). I'd go a little further and say that HL2 had more polished/fun gameplay than SS2 did, but not by that much. I found SS2 much better with tweaked/modded rules than vanilla.

Anyway, cool thread.

 

you do have to consider that half-life 2 is insanely old now, 4 years even, the fact that the graphics and gameplay, and that people are still talking about it, shows that it definetly was one of, if not the best game at that time, obviously now other things have taken over with graphics/gameplay/INSANE realism, crysis and cod 4 owns it on all those

but remember, at the time it was released, on full graphics it was a monster, nobody had seen anything that good, if they actually made a full half-life 3 (even though theyre not, theyre just doing episodes), half-life 3 would probably blow them to pieces with the things the source engine can achieve now. I suppose we have to just wait and see if they conjure up something better than all the games out at the moment, half-life is my best game, always has been, completed it on every difficulty, got all of them, and a machine basically designed to run it brilliantly.

maybe im just biased, but frankly i could play half life and love it more than cod 4 and crysis, even tho they are better.

 

Just finished HL1 Source, I`m starting HL2

 

I own HL1 original and HL2. But so I'll actually have to pay for and buy HL1 Source ?

 

HL2 on release day was spectacular as far as graphics, physics, AI, story, varied weapons and vehicles, plus solid system compatability and stability.

While it is fairly linear, the gameplay is so varied, and keeps accelerating all the way to the end. If you notice, there is very little load time in between levels as it is almost seemless.

Play Episode 1 and Episode 2 to continue the story and I think you'll be more impressed.

There was a lot of thought put into the plot, characters, and the flow of the game. Something you rarely get in any game these days. While it would be great to have a free roaming HL2, it just wouldn't fit with the game. Maybe HL3 will be more free roaming. Who knows. Some say Ep. 1, 2, & 3 *IS* HL3.

 

Yeah, graphics were nice, sure, but really, it didn't hold a candle to Operation: Flashpoint. And that was a game from three years earlier.

 

Huh. I thought Opeartion Flashpoint was one of the worst games in history.

Terrible, terrible mechanics.

 

Actually I thought HL2 were overrated first when reading about, but I quickly changed my mind when I started to play it. It is hands down the best fps, no one competes with it. Sure Crysis were fun but it didn´t last long like HL2 still does. I can play HL2 even today and think the game is really really fun even today. And for a game that is 4 years old it surely holds up graphically to newer games.

 

What about Half Life on PS2?! I've never played the PC version... but the PS2 version is boring as hell. I'm currently playing it now... found a used copy at my local media store. Figured I'd give it a try considering it was hailed as one of the Best FPS ever. Hell... Wolfenstein 3d is more fun than HL! Is there any difference between the PC and PS2 versions? Is half life 2 better than HL1?

 

Um... eww. why the hell would you even think of playing it on the PS2?
Okay... so I tried it on the PS2 also. And wow was it bad. While it is the same game... its not. It's a completely different experience on the PC.

 

I thought Half-Life 2 was a average game. I liked the first one a lot but the 2nd one didn"t grab me at all and the ending was a real put off as i really was hoping to see an end to the story but now we have this episodic content.

Atm the only reason i have Half-life 2 installed is to play user mods. I have no urge to play through the single player experience again as i found it quite dry and a bit of a chore compared to some of the more exceptional story lines present on console games during the time. Maybe the change of "theme" didn"t do it for me like the 1950's sci-fi theme of Bioshock (meant to be revolutionary) which i didn't find attractive.

One thing i can't deny is the existance of HL2 that has brought Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, numerous mods and more importantly "Steam" (love or hate it). So, in a revolutionly sense from this perspective, yes. But best PC game of all time? Depends on what type of gamer you talk to.

 

Holy crap! That was fast... How you find so much time for this?

There was a time when HL1 Source came with a HL kind of anthology, but I have not seen that foe a long time. But it's only $10 on Steam. It is a little harder than HL1 (non Source) and of course there's some Source type characteristics to it: physics, lighting, character models and textures. It looks very much the same just a little better. And they added a bunch of funny stuff that you may or may not catch depending on how much you know about Valve. If you liked HL1 and want to play it again (or again and again and again like some of us) HL1 Source is a worth while investment.

 

I love the look, atmosphere and storyline (so far) of HL2, I also think the graphics are amazing (even being 4 yrs old)...

What I don't like is the gameplay 'feel' for example, the shotgun impact 'feels' a bit mushy and not as devestating in other games. the aformentioned 'coasting' when stopping and starting, lack of impact when hitting differen body parts, etc.

I also don't like the 'physics puzzles'... they seem to get in the way. What I want is good action and a good storyline.

 

I`m actually looking forward to Black Mesa Source, which will be basically HL1 done in HL2 style,not the HL1 source which only has the water changed ...that`s gonna be sweet

 

Same, that mod has been in development WAY too long. I've been salivating over it for years

 

Wow. that sounds really cool. I'd pick that up.

Reminds me of the Doom mod for Doom 3. Much better than Doom 3 Almost makes buying Doom 3 worth while heh. They did an AMAZING job of remaking Doom on the new engine. Too bad they only did the first episode. But it is my favorite of all four episodes, so I'm okay with that.

 

As someone mentioned before you've to give credit for all the other things that came with HL2, steam, CSS, Portal, tf2, DOD:S... Allthese games that many people enjoy are all build on the source engine.

 

Personally I didn't feel motivated enough to play through the entire HL2 storyline. But it is a very different game from the average "blockbuster" fps like Doom 3 and Crysis in that there is actually a story being developed vs. just moving from one stage to another (and details such as the voice acting). So in that regard I have to say it is beyond many fps games today.

 

It's just a game, man. You're thinking too hard about it. Sure, I think its one of the greatest, but its still one of the greatest games simply because its strong in all areas. The Chronicles of Riddick and Far Cry (especially Far Cry) fell short in some areas.

Also, considering that a minority found that they ran out of ammo, maybe its the users, not the game.

 

All this talk of half life 2 prompted me to install it today haha. I have already played it a couple times and every time I find something new I didn't notice before haha.

 

Don't forget the Fake Factory Cinematic Mod. Is a must if you've played through at least once.