Huh, I’ve typically thought that the coast dragged on a bit here-and-there, and that Water Hazard was the strongest overall chapter in the game.dodges tomatoes
Just… let me explain.
These chapters get compared a lot because they are both designed around the player driving a vehicle. I agree that they hold that in-common, but I’d say the chapters are VERY different from eachother. Why? Because once you get about 10 minutes in, Water Hazard really only engages players while in the boat, and Highway 17 almost always engages players while they are on foot. Think about some of the most memorable set pieces from Water Hazard: The tower falling down, the APCs firing rockets at you, the choppers dropping bombs, the final battle in that gigantic empty late; All things that happen while in the boat. Highway 17? Operating the crane, climbing under the bridge, the battle at Lighthouse Point, all those little houses to poke through… all things that happen on foot. Only things I can think of where the car is involved is a few ramps early on (most notably after the crane) and the train-dodge. I think this makes Water Hazard much stronger design-wise. You use your vehicle that the level was designed for to solve problems. Not the guns you have all the time.
That’s not to say there aren’t times you step out of your vehicle in Water Hazard. There’s the barn base, the APC garage, Shipping Warehouse, 2 pully puzzles (one for items, one to be able to continue), and the rebels who give you the boat gun. And I will agree with you, Malidictus: these areas aren’t quite as interesting or open as the coast. However, their placement (and time they take to “complete”) seems more calculated (except the garage and warehouse. Those annoy me.) to give players a change of pace and a chance to catch their breath.
Finally, Water Hazard is much more dynamic and thematic. There’s an urgency to the Water Hazard chapter that gives it and inherent sense of meaning without story context. Not all players will be thinking “I gotta get to Black Mesa East!” or “I gotta get to Nova Prospekt!” through an entire chapter. I know I’m not. I’m just focusing on progressing! And Water Hazard’s use of the chopper, squads of Civil Protection officers, and APC rockets convey a sense of “I gotta get outta here! I’m a wanted man!” that Highway 17 lacks. The chopper itself is a thematic tool. Think about it. Outside of the Shipping Warehouse and the final battle… does it ever present a real threat to a halfway-decent player? Keep on driving and dodge 80% of the bombs and you’re fine, yet it’s there. Nagging you. And there’s nothing you can do… until you get the gun. Then you’re chasing it until it makes one final stand and you shoot it out of the sky. There’s some real growth taking place there, and I think it makes the chapter incredibly strong.
What does Highway 17 have? Some might say the Gunships, but the problem there is that the moment one shows up you already have the weapon to defeat it in-hand! You immediately have the power to defeat them. It may be difficult, but there is no gameplay-driven reason for why you should constantly be on the move, and any current sense of urgency really just comes from characters saying “You better get moving, Dr. Freeman!”.
I dunno, maybe it’s just a fine point, but it bugs me that the Combine’s big plan to stop you once you get to the coast is “Set up a force field, attack him with 8-10 troops, then send in one of those Gunships he just shot down!” about 3-4 times in a row, when they were dropping bombs on you and blowing up smokestacks the previous afternoon just to keep you from leaving City 17. It hardly feels like they’re even trying until you get to Nova Prospekt and there are mounted guns, soldiers EVERYWHERE, and they call in two gunships at once (a really AWESOME scene, in my opinion).
So, that’s my feelings on the Coast Vs. Water Hazard debate. I know this is a long response, but I’ve heard people compare the two a lot over the years, and constantly praise the Coast and bash Water Hazard and I’ve never understood why.
I remember a while back, there was a thread on here about games people thought were bland or unforgettable (something along those lines). Someone sarcastically said “Half-Life 2”, and I thought they were dead serious and agreed with them
Thinking about it now, a bit over a year later (I can’t believe it’s been that long already), that’s… really not how I’d describe my opinion of Half-Life 2. First time playing it, I absolutely loved it. No real complaints, I had a great time through the whole game. What changed it for me, though, wasn’t Black Mesa, but actually Half-Life 1 itself.
I could probably write paragraphs about why, but really, all it comes down to is that HL1 “works better” for me than HL2 does. All sorts of little differences throughout the game - in gameplay, in storytelling, in AI, whatever - just work a lot better for me in HL1. I think part of it was also finding out about how different the game was during early development - things like the darker, more 1984-esque atmosphere, or concepts like the Vertigo or Air Exchange chapters… I find them more intriguing than what the final game ended up being (though in some part, that’s probably because of the fact that they’re a “what-could-have-been”).
Having said all that, I’m curious - Does anyone else feel that, in terms of locations, Half-Life 2 is a bit… incoherent, for lack of a better word? Like… How to put this. Black Mesa East takes place in a building, with a cave/ravine-type area (the scrapyard) at the back. Even bearing in mind that it’s a ravine, am I the only one who feels really confused about how Ravenholm exists more or less right next to it?
For that matter, the coast. I know that Ravenholm was originally located by the ocean (or a lake or something), but, again, am I the only one who doesn’t get how going down some train tracks and through a building results in such a radically different environment?
To be fair, HL1 had issues like this, or issues with maps overlapping (the friggin’ tram line in Black Mesa Inbound doubles back on itself!), but for some reason it always stuck out to me more in HL2’s case
I don’t think it’s that confusing. Let’s look at the coast one backwards: The car is on a dock next to a crane. So, this was a harbor where they loaded/unloaded ships. The building you battle in is a warehouse, where they stored things that were coming and going. Behind the building is a train track, where they would load the items taken off of ships onto trains, and vice-versa. I think it makes perfect sense.
Also, Black Mesa East was a power plant, right? It’s at the foot of a dam that once harnessed power from the lake, and it supplied power to multiple places, including Ravenholm. Also, Ravenholm was a mining town, that’s why it’s connected to everything via tunnels.
What confuses me isn’t so much how the different environments coexist close together, but how they relate to each other spatially. For instance, in BME, you take an elevator down, and eventually leave in a direction that would put Ravenholm just down the river from the entrance. Despite that, there’s no sign of Ravenholm from outside BME (not the scrapyard, to be clear), and there’s no sign of anything from the canals (the river or the factories in the background) in Ravenholm. Granted, the passageway up to Ravenhom isn’t as high as the elevator shaft (I think? haven’t checked, actually), but it still seems really weird to me.
Frankly, I prefer it that way. My biggest problem with Water Hazard is that it feels like a video arcade. After the Hunter Chopper shows up, it’s basically a racing game with utterly dreadful controls. Don’t get me wrong, I like the airboat, but the thing controls like a fridge on rollerskates. Maybe that’s realistic to an actual airboat, but it’s no fun to drive, if I have to be honest. And in general, I just don’t like games rushing me. My take on Water Hazard is entirely the reverse of yours. I don’t remember ANY of the chase scenes. I mean, I know they were there. An APC fires rockets at me on I think three separate occasions, the Chopper drops bombs on me a lot, there are a bunch of places where Barnacles hang from the ceiling, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you where any of that is in relation to anything else. I can never tell where I am on the map or even which direction I’m going. BECAUSE it’s all one giant urgent chase, I never get to look at the frankly very pretty terrain which still holds up quite well. I can’t, because if I take the wrong turn, the Hunter Chopper will shoot me.
By contrast, I remember all the times I had to stop quite vividly. I LOVE the APC garage. It’s one of my favourite bits in Water Hazard. I like the warehouse as well, though I’m not a huge fan of dodging the Hunter Chopper across the stockyard. I like that one bit where you have to push a washing machine on a lift to raise a platform, too. Basically, I remember all the times when I had to stop and get off the boat, because those are the times when I could look around in peace. Truth be told, I was under the impression that every time I went into a pipe, I was underground the first time I played. It wasn’t until the aforementioned washing machine segment made me look up that I realised I was in the open air with what look like highway overpasses over my head. The “pipe” I thought I was running through was just unconnected segments of pipe. Would not have noticed that. And I enjoy those sections. Don’t really like the Hunter Chopper fight because FPS games rarely do boss fights well. This one, in particular, is dull, dull, dull. Chase the thing around and shoot it about 50 000 times until you wear down all its health bars while you dodge mines over and over again. That thing literally has two actions it can take. Pull back and shoot which requires me to dodge, then fly over and drop bombs. I’m much more fond of the little landing strip area it leaves behind, to be perfectly honest.
The truth of the matter is I hate vehicle sections in FPS games. I HATE driving vehicles from a first person perspective and they never handle any good. The car actually handles FAAAR worse than the boat, skidding all over the place, spinning at the drop of a hat and apparently having a sticky accelerator that I can’t release once I punch the gas. That section where I have to race the trail is GOD AWFUL and I really hate it every time it comes up. I don’t think I’ve ever done that one without reloading upwards of 20 times, and usually by sheer luck. That is to say, I make it across nearly every time, but I either can’t stop and collide with something, or usually spin out and fall off the cliff. No, thank you. I’d rather treat the car like an escort quest, i.e. as something I need to ferry me from one end to the other, but that’s going to stop and let me off every time I need to do some actual work. I don’t have that luxury with the airboat, simply because Water Hazard has a lot of airboat race sections, and those I REALLY don’t like.
Vehicles in Half-Life 2 always felt like a gimmick to me. They felt like “Oh! Look at what our engine can do!” Unlike the Gravity Gun, however, neither of the two vehicles are very fun to use. Sluggish, imprecise controls put through tests requiring tight, responsive controls just make me irrationally angry. It makes me feel like I’m playing with one hand tied behind my back. Any game in which I spend more time fighting the controls more than I do the enemies wears out my patience really quickly. Half-Life 2’s vehicle sections aren’t quite THAT bad, but let’s just say that last time I played, I muscled through Water Hazard as fast as I could just because I wanted it to be over sooner. Or if not that, I wanted off the boat sooner, so I can engage in some of the gameplay Half-Life 2 actually does well.
While I agree the car is a bit annoying, I’ve never had real trouble with the airboat’s controls. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about how they handle… never understood it. Besides the car’s dumb skidding issues, I’ve found driving them easy and fun. XD I kinda just wanna keep on going, so I’m not a huge fan of parts that gate me, like the APC garage and Shipping Yard.
I guess I can understand wanthing to stop and take in the scenery, and I certainly don’t think EVERY chapter should have helicopters gunning you down, LOL. But the problem I have with the coast is that the tension drops WAAY down. When you’re getting persued and chased, it feels like you’re DOING something. Like you have a purpose. When that’s not happening, you’re just out for a leisurely sunday drive by the beach and you pull over to pick off a few stay combine trying to catch some rays before heading back to C17. XD Ravenholm has the excuse that the Combine lost track of you, and once you get to Nova Prospekt you’re always either on Combine turf or fighting in street wars. The coast has no such excuse and it just feels to me like the Combine have given up trying or something. It just feels out of place and kind of takes me out of it. Maybe the best remedy would be something that kept Eli on the players mind, or a radio in the car with rebels from the next base saying they need reinforcements or something. Not something that would nag the player per-say, just to remind players that what they’re doing is of importance. Because unlike Half-Life 1 which tries to make the player feel small, Half-Life 2 is trying to make the player feel big.
While I can understand and can appreciate a game that lets you take your time (I had this problem in Crysis 1… the Korean baddies were CONSTANTLY breathing down my neck. It got tiresome.), and I think Half-Life is typically pretty good with pacing it’s gameplay, something that’s supposed to be a linear adventure with high stakes should keep the pressure up fairly often. Expecially in sections about travel.
Frankly, I think we’ll just have to disagree on this one. I’ve never enjoyed games which rush me - it’s just not fun for me. I play even L4D2 in a slow, methodical fashion, searching every nook and cranny for supplies while clearing every room of zombies before moving on. Yes, it means I take longer and get hit with more hordes, but that’s why I play on a lower difficulty setting. I’ve seen some people rush through entire levels in mere minutes, and while that’s impressive… Man, I SO wouldn’t want to play like that. In fact, that’s one of the primary reasons I never cared for the Dead Rising series - don’t care for a perpetual timer. I much prefer to feel like I’m in control of the situation, which the original Half-Life and in turn Black Mesa pretty much always does well with.
To each his own, obviously. I would never say that Water Hazard is a bad chapter, and I really don’t have the same kinds of map design complains that I do about Ravenholm and Route Canal. Outside the confusing sewer sections, it’s mostly well-designed and very pretty. Probably be a lot prettier if I ever got a good look at the terrain, but that’s besides the point. Frankly, going through the entirety of Half-Life 2 give me only the two problem areas of Route Canal and Ravenholm, with the Antlion caves of Episode 2 being a VERY close contender for confusing, boring, uninspired level design (though with “caves,” how much can you do?).
I don’t mind Water Hazard, but I can do without the missile-dodging chase sequences.
What, Source and Goldsource? No they’re not. I mean, they are related, but Goldsource has more relation to IDTech 2 than Source. They crammed a lot of new engine code in when they built Source.
I’m probably reading this too literally, but I’m not sure how to interpret that without context (i.e. “Source was built from scratch”, or “Source was gradually built off of GoldSrc until nothing of GoldSrc remained”). Having said that, I have trouble believing that Source isn’t built off of GoldSrc. I’d buy that Source began its life being built off of GoldSrc, with the GoldSrc assets gradually being phased out until very little of it remains, but not that Source was built from scratch.
The ancient version of Source that the Half-Life 2 leak runs on is extremely similar to GoldSrc - The flashlight behaviour (only lighting one surface at a time), +use slowing player movement, reloading weapons blocking the flashlight/+use, the bunny-hopping mechanics… There’s just way too much there that works either exactly like (or extremely closely to) GoldSrc itself.
You’re spot on with that- that’s exactly what happened. The names of the engines actually came about this way too - Valve kept their new engine code in a “src” folder, because it was source code, and the copy of the code they shipped in Half-Life in the “gldsrc” folder, because it was the source code that had gone gold. They started referring to each engine by their folder name, and it just kinda stuck.
It was very much an incremental build up, but it’s like any other engine versioning system - enough changes, and it’s a different engine. Think the difference between Unreal Engine 3 and Unreal Engine 4, or the IdTech 1 (Doom) engine and the IdTech 2 (Quake) engine - a lot of stuff was added, massively overhauled, incremented, or plain rebuilt from scratch with a more efficient implementation method.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
