I always thought Half Life 2 was okay. From the day it was released.
The gunplay was okay. The level design was okay. The immersion was okay. The world was okay. It was a fairly enjoyable game although overrated to hell and back.
The only thing that blew me the fuck away were the facial animations. The rest was just okay.
[editline]3rd August 2014[/editline]
While we're onto Far Cry 1 it was a much more enjoyable and amazing experience imo.
Even when the game came out I thought HL2's weapons felt really dull compared to other games (including HL1's) with a few exceptions. (I felt the same way about UT2k3/4 vs UT99)
Oddly enough for me HL2 is one of those games where I actually felt like a floating camera with a hand and I was never quite sure why.
Also it didn't help that the AI didn't seem to have many tactics. I've always enjoyed games where the AI shows a reasonable amount of intelligence. And even the ragdoll wasn't as natural looking as how other games at the time handled it (Far Cry, UT2003/4). When shot depending on the weapon they either seem to do cartwheels or if they don't they kind of collapse to the ground like their bones suddenly vanish as soon as they die.
The graphics IMO still impress me though, even if they haven't aged as well. The game still looks really realistic, especially with shaders and the texture design. I think it was one of the first games I thought actually kind of looked like real life (well when it came out anyway) - though I guess the issue with that is other games with a more stylized art style at the time seem to age better, but still, doesn't lessen the impact it had when it came out.
Don't get me wrong, I still really like HL2, and the sense of journey is pretty amazing without any breaks(one of my favorite things about it, same with HL1 and the original Unreal which seem to be some of the only games that successfully do this). But especially now, I find it much easier to replay other games.
I think the main reason Half Life 2 was pretty great for me anyway is because it worked I played through the entire thing like 5 times before I found a noticeable bug, and it just feels nice having a product that worked thoroughly.
[QUOTE=Dr. Fishtastic;45576108]for real, I honestly don't know what makes Half Life 2 so good. It's literally set-piece firefights after another, and the AI was never that good either. I guess it was the feeling of adventure, I dunno. But gameplaywise, besides the small handful of physics puzzles and dicking around with the grav gun it isn't anything amazing.
I still love this game but why, I still scratch my head over.[/QUOTE]
Well that and the game is always throwing some sort of new challenge or situation at you, the game never feels dull because there is always something new that makes you go "well that is new."
I've always liked Half-Life 2, it's a good game. But for me the stand out game is the original Half Life. It's just something I can go back and play over and over
Come to think of it, there are games to this day that don't have as good of a facial animation system as HL2 did.
[QUOTE=Rufia;45576235]I don't know. The Half Life series is still probably the most fun I've had with an FPS campaign.[/QUOTE]
Its the fact that you aren't handed briefing/loading screens every 20 minutes or less nor are stuck doing the same thing over and over again, nor have something telling you "PRESS X FOR DIE" every 5 minutes
It's more old school, it has a story instead of "generic war story" and... something else.
But I feel like more games than just HL2 fall in this category.
[QUOTE=papaya;45576137]it was a genre defining game, though
but just as SMB 1 or OoT have not aged gracefully despite being genre defining, neither has half life 2[/QUOTE]
Nah. Super Mario Brothers has aged like fine wine that's still one of my favourite games to pass the time. Miyamoto struck gold in like 20 different ways.
I can't believe HL2 is 10 years old. That's old enough to justify an HD re-relase in some cases.
I will say that my favorite thing Half Life 2 did was make you actually travel through the world. No hopping on a helicopter to go to the next mission a million miles away. It really made things much more immersive and made every room feel like progress. If you had to go somewhere you had to [I]go[/I] there whether by foot, car, or airboat and had you fighting along the way. No teleporting across the world... Save for that time you teleported that is.
I've been replaying HL2 on the shield recently and I can't quite tell what it is but even though it's really similar to a lot of FPS these days, it still stands out as a game that gets everything just right. It has no one stand out feature, everything just kind of comes together to make it a good game.
A lot of the comments in this thread are looking at it from their fondest memories, you guys should go back and play it - and not just the first hour (because we've all played that a million times) go and take it all the way to the end and you'll appreciate it a lot more.
What makes the gameplay so bad in Half Life 2? I hear a lot of people rag on something's gameplay, but what, in your mind, is a game with great gameplay? I'm genuinely interested.
I thought Half-Life 2's gameplay was awesome.
[QUOTE=StrawberryClock;45586043]I can't believe HL2 is 10 years old. That's old enough to justify an HD re-relase in some cases.[/QUOTE]
The 10th Anniversary would be the ideal time to start some ARG/Announcement for HL3 :(
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;45606683]What makes the gameplay so bad in Half Life 2? I hear a lot of people rag on something's gameplay, but what, in your mind, is a game with great gameplay? I'm genuinely interested.
I thought Half-Life 2's gameplay was awesome.[/QUOTE]
Dark Souls
Deus Ex (the first and HR)
STALKER
Sleeping Dogs
Far Cry 3
Metro 2033/Last Light
Crysis
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
These are all games with astronomically better gameplay than Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is a generic on-rails shooter, but it did a good job at disguising itself as something else with other elements that most developers chose to neglect at the time the game was being developed.
Half-Life 2 was more like a tech demo, featuring elements that had never before been seen in video games. It [I]did[/I] raise the bar for video game development, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it was always stale. Nobody ever bothered to think about that because they were all going "oh wow the character's eyes, they follow me when I walk around!"
[QUOTE=Ardosos;45582787]Come to think of it, there are games to this day that don't have as good of a facial animation system as HL2 did.[/QUOTE]
mass effect comes to mind
and by that I mean it has shit face animations
[QUOTE=Ardosos;45582787]Come to think of it, there are games to this day that don't have as good of a facial animation system as HL2 did.[/QUOTE]
It's like everybody's on botox in games these days
I'll be playing it for a 3rd time when the Rift is released. Ravenholm! :)
I remember in 2002/2003 the 11 year old me getting pumped over the HL2 trailers...The game just looked so incredibly amazing compared to basically any other FPS. It won a ridiculous amount of awards for being ahead of its time in so many different ways ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2#Awards[/url])
I found Garrysmod on Planet Half-Life while I was busy installing, and after playing the leaked beta with the physgun type thing I was super psyched and actually wanted to play Gmod before I even started HL2, even though you literally just got the rope tool and baby/melon launcher, and then eventually the map based prop spawner, and then the super primitive spawnmenu.
Although I still enjoy it when I go back to it, I don't really think its fair to judge games by today's standards. Yes its a super linear shooter, but very few FPS games weren't, and even though some were immensely good (Deus Ex etc), HL2 surpassed expectations in every area compared to other shooters.
Another notable game is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park:_Trespasser]Trespasser[/url]. That game was very ahead of its time and I used to love playing it when I was little, but it received terrible reviews and no sales. It was released in 1998 and had things like object LOD, inverse kinematics, ragdoll physics etc and is still unique in that no other game has come close to it.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45608716]Dark Souls
Deus Ex (the first and HR)
STALKER
Sleeping Dogs
Far Cry 3
Metro 2033/Last Light
Crysis
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
These are all games with astronomically better gameplay than Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is a generic on-rails shooter, but it did a good job at disguising itself as something else with other elements that most developers chose to neglect at the time the game was being developed.
Half-Life 2 was more like a tech demo, featuring elements that had never before been seen in video games. It [I]did[/I] raise the bar for video game development, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it was always stale. Nobody ever bothered to think about that because they were all going "oh wow the character's eyes, they follow me when I walk around!"[/QUOTE]
This is what I mean though, apart from Deus Ex every game you listed was released 3 or more years AFTER HL2, well after the bar had already been raised, and even then its not a very good comparison because they were both aiming for different things and they both did really well at them.
If you focus on linear first person shooters that were around that time, HL2 followed the same formula but excelled in almost every way. People rail on the gunplay and such but how was that any different from any other storytelling FPS game at the time?
[QUOTE=Cushie;45613484]
This is what I mean though, apart from Deus Ex every game you listed was released 3 or more years AFTER HL2, well after the bar had already been raised, and even then its not a very good comparison because they were both aiming for different things and they both did really well at them.
If you focus on linear first person shooters that were around that time, HL2 followed the same formula but excelled in almost every way. People rail on the gunplay and such but how was that any different from any other storytelling FPS game at the time?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, not the fairest example, and also not the most accurate. The majority of those listed are open world/hub based games with stealth elements which are different gameplay types to a linear action shooter.
My own personal defense for Half Life 2's gameplay: the Gravity Gun.
[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;45606623]I've been replaying HL2 on the shield recently and I can't quite tell what it is but even though it's really similar to a lot of FPS these days, it still stands out as a game that gets everything just right. It has no one stand out feature, everything just kind of comes together to make it a good game.
A lot of the comments in this thread are looking at it from their fondest memories, you guys should go back and play it - and not just the first hour (because we've all played that a million times) go and take it all the way to the end and you'll appreciate it a lot more.[/QUOTE]
When you've got a series of games that has set the standard for the majority of its genre, you do get that sense of similarity when looking back at it. Like Minecraft or the original Dota
[editline]7th August 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45608716]Dark Souls
Deus Ex (the first and HR)
STALKER
Sleeping Dogs
Far Cry 3
Metro 2033/Last Light
Crysis
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
These are all games with astronomically better gameplay than Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is a generic on-rails shooter, but it did a good job at disguising itself as something else with other elements that most developers chose to neglect at the time the game was being developed.
Half-Life 2 was more like a tech demo, featuring elements that had never before been seen in video games. It [I]did[/I] raise the bar for video game development, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it was always stale. Nobody ever bothered to think about that because they were all going "oh wow the character's eyes, they follow me when I walk around!"[/QUOTE]
You've gotta remember that HL2 came out at a time when having physics in games was super rare. The way physics was implemented into the gameplay through puzzles and combat (gravity gun, grenades, etc) made it just as interesting and non-stale for its time as Crysis and all of those in the above list were for their times.
Bugbait, breaking shit, physics puzzles, physical combat; I can't think of any significantly polished analogues to these gameplay elements from around that time
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;45606683]What makes the gameplay so bad in Half Life 2? I hear a lot of people rag on something's gameplay, but what, in your mind, is a game with great gameplay? I'm genuinely interested.
I thought Half-Life 2's gameplay was awesome.[/QUOTE]
What bugs me about Half Life 2's gameplay aside from really ineffectual feeling weapons is mainly that it spends too long on areas. It's like hey, guess what, you're going to spend the next hour or two or so riding around in this fuckin' boat in acid sewage sections, you're done, ok, great, now you're going to spend the next hour or two or so fighting zombies in the dark, you're done, ok, great, now you're going to spend the next hour or two dealing with antlions
I don't know none of these sections ever felt really that fun to me and I just dreaded them because they took away from shooting combine and shit and felt like they went on forever
[QUOTE=Maloof?;45613891]You've gotta remember that HL2 came out at a time when having physics in games was super rare. The way physics was implemented into the gameplay through puzzles and combat (gravity gun, grenades, etc) made it just as interesting and non-stale for its time as Crysis and all of those in the above list were for their times.
Bugbait, breaking shit, physics puzzles, physical combat; I can't think of any significantly polished analogues to these gameplay elements from around that time[/QUOTE]
I don't know, when I was a kid, I didn't like the physics puzzles, and now that I'm older, I still don't like them.
Maybe I would have been impressed if I was as old as I am now then, but I doubt it. No matter how much more capable I am of appreciating something, manually putting concrete bricks on to a see saw one by one is just fucking boring, no matter what the perspective.
[QUOTE=Skyward;45586081]I will say that my favorite thing Half Life 2 did was make you actually travel through the world. No hopping on a helicopter to go to the next mission a million miles away. It really made things much more immersive and made every room feel like progress. If you had to go somewhere you had to [I]go[/I] there whether by foot, car, or airboat and had you fighting along the way. No teleporting across the world... Save for that time you teleported that is.[/QUOTE]
To be fair, even the lone teleport is entirely in-perspective, required for escape and explained in-story. Sorta. It's also pretty neat how you pass through like two entire days before blowing up Nova Prospekt, seeing the time shift between areas and tunnel passages, before being stuck in a slow teleport for a week and finishing things off in one final day reaching the evening pass.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45608716]Dark Souls
Deus Ex (the first and HR)
STALKER
Sleeping Dogs
Far Cry 3
Metro 2033/Last Light
Crysis
Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
These are all games with astronomically better gameplay than Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 is a generic on-rails shooter, but it did a good job at disguising itself as something else with other elements that most developers chose to neglect at the time the game was being developed.
Half-Life 2 was more like a tech demo, featuring elements that had never before been seen in video games. It [I]did[/I] raise the bar for video game development, but as far as gameplay is concerned, it was always stale. Nobody ever bothered to think about that because they were all going "oh wow the character's eyes, they follow me when I walk around!"[/QUOTE]
im sorry but there's not a chance in hell that the original deus ex has better gameplay than hl2 lol, don't even try to pretend that it does. same with stalker. deus ex and stalker are both incredible games with amazing immersive atmospheres but both of them are clunky as shit in comparison to hl2.
[QUOTE=Dr. Fishtastic;45576108]for real, I honestly don't know what makes Half Life 2 so good. It's literally set-piece firefights after another, and the AI was never that good either. I guess it was the feeling of adventure, I dunno. But gameplaywise, besides the small handful of physics puzzles and dicking around with the grav gun it isn't anything amazing.
I still love this game but why, I still scratch my head over.[/QUOTE]
For it's time, it was revolutionary aside from UT2k4 no AI acted this way.
It wasn't bent on huge puzzles it was "how you do them" which was the wow factor.
10 years later it's just shit
My point is that the generic FPS shooter ingredient was in the game and it had no redeeming gameplay factors going for it other than "ooh, technology!" Sure, the way they implemented physics into things was interesting, but come on. A stale shooter is still a stale shooter.
Had they done something to spice it up and make the [I]gameplay[/I] more innovative, I'd have a different opinion. The game just raised the technology bar and other developers quickly followed suit, some even outperforming HL2 in gameplay.
And the original Deus Ex totally does have better gameplay than HL2. HL2 is an on-rails corridor shooter. Deus Ex was way more open and it too was a shooter, and it too provided more in the way of gameplay than HL2.
HL2 had technology going for it. That's it. For its time, it was great. You can say that about absolutely anything. Of course for its time it was great. No game did anything like it. And, of course, the steam powered automobile was also great for its time. Nobody had anything like that, but you sure as hell wouldn't say it's better than a car you can go and get now.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45615108]My point is that the generic FPS shooter ingredient was in the game and it had no redeeming gameplay factors going for it other than "ooh, technology!" Sure, the way they implemented physics into things was interesting, but come on. A stale shooter is still a stale shooter.
Had they done something to spice it up and make the [I]gameplay[/I] more innovative, I'd have a different opinion. The game just raised the technology bar and other developers quickly followed suit, some even outperforming HL2 in gameplay.
And the original Deus Ex totally does have better gameplay than HL2. HL2 is an on-rails corridor shooter. Deus Ex was way more open and it too was a shooter, and it too provided more in the way of gameplay than HL2.
HL2 had technology going for it. That's it. For its time, it was great. You can say that about absolutely anything. Of course for its time it was great. No game did anything like it. And, of course, the steam powered automobile was also great for its time. Nobody had anything like that, but you sure as hell wouldn't say it's better than a car you can go and get now.[/QUOTE]
the gravity gun was innovative and rethought the way that the player interacted with the environment and levels. they used to effectively be static in videogames, potentially some breakable objects or whatever. this turned any actual object, no matter how mundane, into a weapon, and by extention necessitated that nearly every object in the world be physics driven so that the player could interact with it in some way. levels ceased just being set pieces and started being something that was real and concrete because you could use it to your advantage in a lot of serious ways
it was a big deal
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;45615255]the gravity gun was innovative and rethought the way that the player interacted with the environment and levels. they used to effectively be static in videogames, potentially some breakable objects or whatever. this turned any actual object, no matter how mundane, into a weapon, and by extention necessitated that nearly every object in the world be physics driven so that the player could interact with it in some way. levels ceased just being set pieces and started being something that was real and concrete because you could use it to your advantage in a lot of serious ways
it was a big deal[/QUOTE]
You're still missing my point because I assure you that outside of forced scenarios nobody bothered using the gravity gun for the purposes you're stating. Maybe to play around with it but in the end using an actual, you know, [I]gun[/I], was still better. Games like Deus Ex didn't do anything like that. Outside of boss battles, there was no right and wrong way to do things. When that's the case, the foundation for good gameplay has been built.
I'm not denying that Half-Life 2 didn't do anything for the industry. What I'm saying is that from a [I]gameplay perspective[/I] it was terrible. It was covered up with all of this great technology and as such it was revered as being the best game ever. Gameplay is what makes a game. Not technology.
the gravity gun was my main weapon throughout hl2 lol maybe i'm atypical in that way
it was basically crowbar, pistol, and gravity gun: the game for me
the other shit i only used when things got intense and i had little time to plan / organize
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;45614405]im sorry but there's not a chance in hell that the original deus ex has better gameplay than hl2 lol, don't even try to pretend that it does. same with stalker. deus ex and stalker are both incredible games with amazing immersive atmospheres but both of them are clunky as shit in comparison to hl2.[/QUOTE]
beyond both being fpses, the gameplay isnt really comparable. deus ex's gameplay is great in the huge range of choice you have to approach any situation, while stalker's gameplay is great in the brutality it presents
[QUOTE=Dr. Fishtastic;45576108]for real, I honestly don't know what makes Half Life 2 so good. It's literally set-piece firefights after another, and the AI was never that good either. I guess it was the feeling of adventure, I dunno. But gameplaywise, besides the small handful of physics puzzles and dicking around with the grav gun it isn't anything amazing.
I still love this game but why, I still scratch my head over.[/QUOTE]
It feels generic because this is the kind of game everybody emulated for a short period after. Think of how often developers just go "woah that was sick lets make a game" and end up making the same game.
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