With each passing moment you speak here, I feel like I’m going to be fucking sick.
Can’t tell if I should feel good or bad for that.
What’s worse is the implication that the game somehow becomes less innovative with time because everything it did is now commonplace. That’s just backwards.
Most realistic realist 2012
Prefer to be an a-hole than being a (Do) tard
Just sayin’
I don’t know where the complaints about HL1 being overrated first came from. My brother and I, unlike a bunch of random kvetchers it seems, were good at playing Half-Life. I don’t even know where the complaints about the jumping in HL1 came from either, because it wasn’t the first FPS to have platforming. Quake had it. All the Build games, the Hexens, and Unreal had it. Jumping was as an integral part of those games as Half-Life, it’s just that Half-Life taught the player to be more acrobat in order to prepare for crazier challenges ahead. Considering that it was one of the first games to allow for smooth platforming with the mouse, spacebar, and WSAD keys, it was a lot easier than the Build games to jump in (because Duke3D didn’t have a freemouse look then, from my memory). I actually beat Half-Life with just the keyboard before I learned the simpler approach, and I still kicked ass. It took me a while to play it on Hard, but when I did, it was a challenge worth it for me.
As for Half-Life having little to no story, so what? To explain why HL fans praise the story, it’s not the detail of the story which makes it good, it’s how it’s conveyed and presented. Yes, it involves a plot similar (not super exact) to Doom, but as Doom was primarily about experience with a simplistic text story attached, Half-Life had a very experimental and cinematic mode of storytelling driving the experience. Even if someone complained that the plot is generic, I’d respond that it so with the plots of even the greatest games: it’s all a matter of how the story is written and presented. What sets the story of the game as unique is that is not a conventionally told story: it’s as experimental as, let’s say, Full Metal Jacket or Memento. HL1’s story sets the mood, immerses you with the environment, builds up the horror of the event gradually, teases you with suspicious references to the hidden players behind Black Mesa, makes you anxious when it’s apparent that the government wants you dead for something that was not your fault, and then plunges you into complete mayhem when you have to ward of everything that wants to kill you in order to get closer to the natural habitat of the things you fear most. This is how the story is unique: it begins with regularity instead of starting with violence which most FPSs have done, it establishes that things are going to go wrong by dropping suggestive story hints of sabotage and conspiring forces surround the experiment, the player is directly involved in unwittingly bringing events into motion and directly foreshadows where the aliens come from, the NPCs relate to you what is happening throughout as you progress, the military and black ops extermination of everything suggests government conspiracies, later levels reveal both visually and orally that the scientists knew of the creatures before the experiment, and the G-Man’s constant sitings in the oddest places arouses curiosity as to why a professional man like him is wondering around like there’s nothing wrong. It’s not all explained, because Half-Life is an experimentally structured horror movie. Others may not be compelled by HL anymore, but I still am. I can never forget how HL pulled me in through its unconventional narrative.
Yahtzee said what makes Half-Life work best when he explained why he went away from adventure game design. He explained that while adventure games were just unfolding interactive movies, games like Half-Life, Thief, and Deus Ex involved you into the story. Not enough games have followed HL1’s example. I do wish that HL2 didn’t deviate from the writing style of the first HL.
For me, Half-Life 2 is the 2004 equivalent of Blood 2: The Chosen and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. It’s similar to Blood 2, because it features a protagonist who awakes in a dark dystopian future with completely new enemies and a few familiar ones from the first game, and the events of both second games involve human company leaders in league with supernatural as well as interdimensional creatures taking over the city. I like to think of HL2 as being an homage to Blood 2, but succeeds in spots where Blood 2 failed to do. In speaking of Build game homages, the dune buggy and swamp craft totally feel like homages to Redneck Rampage Rides Again (the crowbar as a weapon goes without saying). The Soul Reaver similarity applies in that the protagonist is thrust into a completely different time by time-streaming individuals for the purpose of changing, or fulfilling, history, and that there was always the feeling that the hero was being used as a puppet by larger unseen forces. Also, Soul Reaver 2 has a lot of characters assume Raziel is someone who he is not, and he has troubled getting straight answers from him (think of when the HL2 NPCs assume Gordon knows everything, and doesn’t tell him exactly what’s happened after Black Mesa). However, I do feel that HL2 could’ve benefitted from better writing, more enemy variety, less human enemies, and gameplay elements from other HL-inspired games (like Deus Ex, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and No One Lives Forever).
I main problem with HL2 is that the characters sound kind of dumb, there aren’t any unique bosses like in the first game, the Combine soldiers felt like blunt pushovers in comparison to the Marines, there wasn’t any alternative paths in a level, and Gordon didn’t get to kill the NPCs with or without penalty. I didn’t mind it being short or ambiguous. I learned that it was meant more as a bridge between HL1 and HL3, although the Episodes have lengthened that bridge somewhat. I definitely want to reimagine HL2 into a game which encompassed not only what made HL great, but all the other progressions if the first-person game genre during that time. If I reimagined it, I would keep the concept, but it expand it in a manner more befitting a sequel to the first HL.
As for HL3 being the savior: I am looking forward to it, but considering Valve’s fussyness for aspects which I really don’t think are worth fussing about, it might go in a rather weird direction. I’m hoping it’ll be good. The problem is that Valve is not only fussing about their idea of perfection for the next episode, but it is also waiting for an opening when no major games are being released. I think they’re waiting for a moment where they can take over a more opportune game season with their game being the only major one of note. I just hope it’ll be satisfying.
Side Note: I love the polygonal graphics of HL. I don’t care if others complain if they are ugly. To me, they are beautiful modern art sculptures that are animated.
Nah, I don’t know how HL2 could have better writing than it already has now
Remove the Terminator subplot, do not introduce characters out of nowhere, explain things, done :3
Hopefully HL3 doesn’t start on a train or any other rail vehicle, flying through some space-time continuum/universe or what shit this time.
Seriously, if I told you before the HL2 announcement:
That the game is set circa 1x-20 years later after Gordon’s interdimensional stasis, and you fight cyborgs controlled by your ex-boss from Black Mesa, who is in turn controlled by starship trooper brain bugs, which did in fact enslave Nihilanth from the first game, who had control over Vortigaunts, them being suddenly your allies for “freeing” them (aka. slaughter) and that it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Eastern European city… would you believe me?
Expected reaction to such statement (being sadly true) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dljqjo90j4s&t=1m26s
Luckily, the whole Matrix subplot “Manhack Arcade” was scrapped.
So there you go;
Where the fuck do new characters usually come from?
I, again, feel like xalener
I’m getting sick and that’s not a good thing
For such a logical realist, he sure likes to make our arguments against his points for us.
Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure he is going to realize that this is a videogame, not real life
[COLOR=‘Black’]…not[/SIZE]
Yeah, perhaps he will, let me know then. [COLOR=‘Black’]> 
“Ooh, more alien monsters. And I’ve been wondering what the creepy guy with the briefcase was up to.”
“That’s clever, sounds like it has a lot of promise.”
“Awesome idea. That setting has always had some amazing, atmospheric potental.”
Of course not. You’ve got no source and you’re clearly trying to make it sound as ridiculous as you can to prove your point.
‘‘He will?’’
What? You now talking in third person?
I’m gonna give you advice, doing that is not going to help your reputation of being a retard
just sayin’
bobbin and weavin
You give me too much credit, anyways, I wanted a friendly discussions and open-minded opinions, but it seems some can’t handle it. Sorry for ruining your vision of perfectionism.
It’s my opinion that the plot isn’t good and the gameplay isn’t consistent throughout, you are yet to give proof that it is… videogames become more of a mainstream media, so not only books or movies should make sense.
Reminds me of one folk who got butthurt for I said that the Exorcist isn’t scary and is very overrated and being one of the worst movies I ever seen.
For the quoted part, I guess you are trying to give your posts more validity as you got nothing meaningful to say.
Look up in a dictionary what a retard is.
ha ha ha, I give you too much credit?
Oh and I am a perfectionist when I see the falls in your arguments and how you act like you are much better and smarter than everyone else?
I want you to tell me why Half Life 2 doesn’t make sense. Also, tell me why stuff has to make sense just because it is mainstream
All your arguments are simply ‘‘OMG, Half Life 1 has more weapons, so it is better’’ or ‘‘Characters that didn’t exist in Half Life 1 are introduced outta nowhere, blasphemy!’’
Half Life 2’s story is not good, according to what you posted here, because you want the game to tell you every little detail and not let you think a little, form your own theories
I do agree that the gameplay is not consistent, but Half Life 1’s gameplay also wasn’t, because this is not a twitch shooter, it’s not just about shooting, there’s puzzles and breaks for story and every chapter has it’s main theme for the gameplay, Half Life is not repetitive like many shooters out there and that’s one of the reasons people like it so much, because it’s not just about shooting!
P.S.: I looked the definiton of retard, matches every little thing I’ve ever seen you do in this forums
got pwned anyways, gonna cease posting since you must be on deathbed from that much of sick, and I’d like to see you around in the next year as well. And hopefully you aren’t being serious, cause if you are, then making fun of mentally disabled people isn’t nice.
/but topic, HL1vsHL2vsOtherStoryDrivenShooters vs HL3?