HL: overrated or not, aka. HL3 the savior or a failure?

Breen without Robert Culp is like Dotard without trolling

/\also this/\

Hl2 and the episodes are 1 game. look at it that way and it combines their awesomeness

HL1: It’s not hard to see why this is a classic. The gameplay and graphics were fantastic for the time, and Black Mesa is proof that the storyline is just as good, if not better, than any AAA title nowadays. Although, yes. Xen was a little shit.
HL2: A fantastic game, and just as groundbreaking as the first, but for me it was unable to rekindle the magic of the original. Maybe it was the excruciatingly long and boring vehicle sections, or maybe it was the use of actual characters - something absent from the original, and something which I loved about it.
EP1&2: Pretty much just more of HL2. Didn’t bring anything new to the table. They were just there for the story’s sake.

We can make predictions about HL3 until the cows come home, but what I want to see in the future is another ‘Gordon Freeman vs. The World’ scenario, not a cause which we are forced to believe in.

Oh yes, and more black humour. I loved that about the original (something BM managed to recreate exceptionally).

No, tastes like cardboard.

I don’t think you know what pancakes are.

Calm down, pal. No one said that Breen has to be alive or has to be a boss fight. It’s just a daydream some of us have, or at least I have the most. It’s just wishful thinking, not an irrational demand. Though, since you mentioned it, how do you know that Breen doesn’t have an interfering G-Man of his own who nabbed him before the explosion? I don’t think that Gordon’s G-Man is the only spook with time streaming abilities: Breen may also have such similar friends with benefits. It wouldn’t necessarily be dumb: it would fit well in the game’s logic.

But even if he doesn’t survive, the next episode should at least have original Xen bosses. I want some original alien monstrosities to lurk in the Borealis, and a gigantic Combine boss waiting for me at the end.

I still wonder if the rumors of HL3 being an open-world RPG could be true? It could explain the lack of info…but at the same time it’s seems very far-fetched.

Can’t really trust rumors anymore, but I guess time will tell.

I was exaggerating. I happen to make rather good pancakes, actually. I’ll have to revisit the Food and Game thread to demonstrate one of these days…

I think I made a post in a thread about this topic before, but I think it got lost in the last forum wipe. Anyhow, the gist of it is, that this is exactly why Gordon never speaks, and never should speak. Ultimately, your motives as Freeman are entirely your own to invent as long as they’re never voiced by the character. This is the genius of the silent character: No matter what situations you are forced into, you are never forced into a character. Is Gordon a selfless hero out to save his fellow scientists and the oppressed citizens of City 17, or is he a cold, calculating anti-hero who puts a value on lives only as far as they can help him? Or is he just reluctantly playing the part G-Man has thrust him into, and is just trying to get out of everything alive? Does he want to get back at the Combine for destroying Earth, at Breen for ruining his life, or does none of that matter and he only wants to help and be with Alyx? If Gordon speaks, then we are forced to take what we’re given, but if he remains silent, then we get to create our own backstory. So while I’ve heard before that many people want to hear him speak for the first time in the next game, I sincerely hope he doesn’t. Or if he does, just have him say a short, non-specific line at the very end.

There should just be a straight up food recipe thread.

Yeah, that’s fair. I just like taking pictures of food and games together for some reason. I really don’t know why.

Replayed HL2 for the sake of this thread and because I wanted, and I must say, the game is better than I remembered, BUT:
-long vehicle sections, still suck.
-the strider street battle on hard is next to impossible, also the level design in those parts is very confusing, I remember getting lost and that I had to use noclip, invincibility and other cheats my first tries around.
-the ending (our benefactors/dark energy) is quite boring, it’s basically: “enjoy the environments for 20 minutes, and then another 20 pwn everything with super-overpowered gun” not to mention the final “boss battle” is disappointing… once I reached the end, there’s simply wasn’t the desire to beat the game… one can simply quit after “Follow Freeman” and call it a day.
-overusage of the same few textures and props.
-loading screens too often.
-music cutting off during map transmissions and not enough of it, too quiet most of the time.
-too much overwatch to fight and, not enough enemy variety… (combine/synths, headcrabs/zombies, antlions - repeat)
So pretty much the same old Dotard’s opinion. I give it 8.6 after my latest experience.

positives:
-the hidden lambda stashes.
-use of physics in mini-puzzles.
-generally a well made game.
-more things I can’t recall, I have had a blast with it tho, the second half of the game minus the ending = fun.

I still hold my position on HL1 being for some reason more fun to play (especially Black Mesa) than HL2, so are the episodes.
After beating EP1, one wants to play EP2… after beating EP2, one wants to play EP3/HL3 (simply moar) but there’s no desire for anything after HL2.
It’s good, but leaves no satisfaction, without hunger and gives mixed feelings.

Offtopic kinda, at first I thought that HL2 lacks weapon variety, but today I’ve come to a conclusion that it’s the very opposite actually, let me explain:
-Crowbar becomes useless once Gordon gets the Gravity Gun
-The pistol gets replaced with SMG
-SMG isn’t as useful once Gordon has AR2, lots of ammo for it later on
-Shotgun is cool
-Crossbow is cool
-Colt Python…haven’t ever used it, not enough ammo and the shotgun’s double blast pretty much covers the function of this weapon, same as with HL1, didn’t use it there either. Thankfully, BM devs used their brain ( some people dislike this, but haters be bitchin’) and swapped the Shotgun with Colt Python, making both of them useful.
-grenades and rpg do not need an explanation, they have a purpose
Ironically tho, Glock is more powerful in Black Mesa than MP5 ._.

I told you the second half was awesome

I loved the gravity gun at the end, was way more fun picking up people then throwing objects.

So you don’t like the Gluon or Tau cannon, or the BFG either?

the Gravity Gun is the star weapon of HL2, i enjoy everything of it for being so inusual.

It really is an awesome weapon.

I just wish that it had knockback for NPCs, so that you could knock over squads with the primary fire and launch them off of cliffs or crowbar them to death before they can get up.

I think it would’ve been cool if you could knock down npcs with anything that had enough force. Having explosives perhaps send them flying but then having them get up slowly (and wounded), taking a long slab of wood or a metal beam with the gravity gun, and swinging it into groups of soldiers violently to knock them around, etc.

Also, it would have been cool to pick up a soldier with the super grav gun and then carry him around while he’s alive.

To kill him, you could take his body and smash it repeatedly into a wall, drop him off a catwalk where he might yell “shit!”, and stuff like that.

yes

I find it disappointing that Dotard doesn’t use the magnum. It’s basically an improvised sniper rifle that’s hitscan instead of having to account for rebar drop from the Crossbow. A single headshot can drop most standard Overwatch soldiers. Elites I think can survive a headshot but any other shot afterwards should put them down. They just didn’t let the player carry more ammo for it, so the player has to hoard the weapon until the times where it’s useful.

If there was a weapon balancing change I’d make, I’d make the SMG1 more accurate, instead of it being an inaccurate bullet hose with the accuracy of a smoothbore blunderbuss. And model the goddamn grenade launcher.

Just replayed Episode One, there’s not a single negative thing I could say about it. While the length is just about right, it’s has the most fun gameplay from HL2 trilogy. It’s simply a blast and the story/dialogue also are better.
If I could, I’d remove the boring parts from HL2 and paste there EP1 and call it “Half-Life 2” as it is, cause it has exactly what the original game lacked.
I believe that Episode One isn’t given enough credit, it’s the most underrated while as I said (imo) it’s the most fun, and IT brought those few innovations (better AI companion actually doing something, Zombines, good pacing, stuff happening all the time)

Now time to move on to Eli’s death T_T and then return in here bitching where is HL3 :fffuuu:

EDIT: lol yeah, again didn’t use the Magnum, doesn’t help it’s found at the very end either ._,

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.