Amazing for its time but anyone who is acting like it's just as fun as some of the best games that have came since are lying to themselves and trying to appear like a gaming intellectual
This is true, I replayed it recently and the only guns that are fun are the ones that one-shot like the revolver and crossbow. Even the shotgun is kinda meh, can't really explain why. Gravity gun is of course GOATed.
Otherwise a reasonably fun game, but kinda carried by the atmosphere more than the gameplay. Visuals and worldbuilding are great.
You are correct. The AI is very good, but they tend to look dumb because you are an absolute bullet sponge and you can just rush them at Mach 2
8 months ago
Anonymous
>but they tend to look dumb because you are an absolute bullet sponge and you can just rush them at Mach 2
I replayed HL2 and episodes with MMOD a couple months ago and on Hard difficulty they're much deadlier, shotgunners tend to hang around corners and when you turn a corner on 100/100 health and being blasted in the face by shotgunner, dropping to like 60/20 in one shot is very scary. The generator fight (when Alyx gets kidnapped) in particular was extremely difficult, I had to switch to easy and hang around corners all the time since elites with AR2's were so fricking accurate even at longer ranges, not to mention they used alt fire constantly
8 months ago
Anonymous
I recently played HL2 to get used to my steam deck's controls, and it definitely feels like they tweaked hard mode. I remember I ran out of bullets at the generator and I ended up prop jumping over the gate and trying to rush to the load screen before alyx dies.
>Even the shotgun is kinda meh, can't really explain why.
Because unless you exclusively use the alt fire the enemies can eat a point shell of 00 Buck and look at you like you're moronic. Come to think of it, damage reactions would have probably made the guns feel way better since at best the enemies flinch when they take damage and at worst they have no reaction at all.
Most of those years were spent putting together the engine and tech while the rest of the team were stuck spinning their wheels and brainstorming. Physics and the gravity gun for instance were something that they wanted to be a key part of the game all the way back in 99 but took years to actually implement and make possible. Really the game itself had a 2-3 year development at best, with some generous pre-production.
It has aged like absolute shit. >Oh boy, another simple lever physics """puzzle""" >In game cutscenes make multiple playthroughs a slog to sit through >Guns are complete ASS unless you're using the crossbow, explosives, or grav-gun >Enemies eat way too much damage (a side effect of the guns sucking wiener)
>In game cutscenes make multiple playthroughs a slog to sit through
adding some sort of skip for these would raise the game's pacing on additional plays from a 3/10 to a 6/10 easily. There are a lot of other grating issues, like the aformentioned pointless puzzles, somewhat slow to navigate or confusing map design, but you can get around these with knowledge.
As a physics showcase it was completely outclassed by psiops.
As a first person shooter it was completely outclassed by Halo 2.
As a self-contained story with tight cutscenes it's completely outclassed by riddick efbb.
I genuinely think the praise over the game was solely a coping mechanism from PC gamers terrified of losing their relevance.
In retrospect, very boring. Fricking amazing for its time though. A lot of things that we take for granted in modern games came from half-life 2, so it tends to not age well unless if you've been in a coma for 20 years.
- Physics frickery was fun, especially the gravity gun.
- Many of the actual guns felt like peashooters with low impact and poor enemy reaction to being shot. FEAR came out less than a year later and BTFO'd HL2 in that regard.
- Popularized (came up with?) some of the cancer "cinematic" stuff like interactive cutscenes where you just sit around doing nothing while characters talk, though at the very least you could spaz out during them.
- Neat aesthetics with some Jesus Christ what the frick level stuff.
It is a great game. 8/10ish. Worse than HL1, and anyone coming to it nowadays that doesn't follow the gaming industry would consider it derivative (because all similar games are to some degree derived from it.)
It's not a perfect game, but that's ok. It's very good. Surprisingly so, even. It's rare for a game to be so hyped and then be satisfied when you finally play it.
With every passing year it ages a little worse. Zoomers playing it nowadays will wonder why anyone enjoyed this shit. At the time it was transcendental though. Part of the reason it no longer hits is because every innovation it introduced became standard afterwards, but it wasn't at the time.
It's good, but it's really just a tech demo, it had AI on par with like Fear, but you never get to see it because the environments weren't made with it in mind so the combine just stand in one place like morons shooting you. The physics stuff was impressive, but it's a game based around it and it's kinda silly now. Still better than like 99 percent of modern games.
I still love it and can play it happily. It's a great game. It has slow points which can be criticized and it is very indulgent with the physics engine, but it is such a fun game regardless with a unique atmosphere.
Half life 2 is nothing more than a glorified tech demo for the source engine. The game itself is bland & boring corridor shooter, that ends right as it starts to get good. The environments sucked. The level design is dogshit. The enemies and weapon variety were a huge step back from the original game. Especially the enemy AI. I never once felt like there was a bigger world beyond the gamespace in hl2 as I did in hl1. The only somewhat good level was ravenholm. Because it felt somewhat like a classic hl1 type level would.
But most of all; I hated the dialogue and writing. It was weak and overly congratulatory. Because most of the NPCs and all of their gordon wiener sucking dialogue. Most every NPC seems to know gordon and say that they were such good friends with gordon back in black mesa. And yet in the previous game, none of the NPCs mentioned any relationship with gordon outside of work. Except for maybe barney and the bald scientist(I forget his name and I dont care to google it).
I can understand introducing new characters who claim to have a relationship with established characters. But it doesn't work so well with a silent protagonist who cant confirm the fact. I'm not against silent protags. I quite like them actually, but it's very hard to write around a silent protag and give him a backstory without having him somehow confirm it. It's painfully awkward when you have people, talk about you; in front of you, as if you're not there. The worst characters were definitely the supposed administrator of black mesa and the female scientist. Whose name I also forget. As you have been able to tell. I'm not a huge fan of retcons either. As they too are hard to pull off without feeling cheap and shallow.
I did not enjoy any aspect of half life 2.
I only played the episodes during the covid lockdowns because I had nothing better to do.
Even on release I remember not being impressed. Only played 1 a couple of years later and I was much more impressed. 2 is all over the place from gameplay to story. Calling it a tech demo is obviously hyperbole but the fact is the game does often feel like it doesn't know how to show off the tech without holding the player hostage.
Loved it first time I played it on PC and then again on Orange Box on 360. Last played it 16 years ago so might not like it today but I doubt it. If there was gonna be an Episode 3 I'd replay it but that's never going to happen so why care?
Still one of the best fps campaigns ever released. The pacing, the variety, and the art direction are all top notch. It's essentially an adventure game disguised as an FPS. HL1 has better guns and combat but the sheer variety and scale of the world you traverse in 2 put it on par with 1 overall. HL1 and 2 were and will forever be top notch games.
But anyway, just play the game. Think what you want, but remember, this shit is 2004, and you can mod it up to spice up gunplay, as obviously it’s the meekest part of the whole experiences, imo. Revolver, Shotgun and Crossbow carried hard.
I like this game for what it did, it’s one of the best piece of work that propelled story-driven FPS to a new height, and that’s what it should be commended for. Nothing like Half Life 2 came out back then. Maybe F.E.A.R, but storyline was straight up dumpster.
Ground breaking for the time, still fun to play. People who say it's shit are just contraband morons, you dont have to like it but it's widely regarded for a reason.
One of the best games ever made, unable to age partially because of the insanely good design and partially because of it's insane contribution to the modding world. It's funny, it's just like Ocarina of Time: everyone played it but everybody took the wrong lessons.
it's one of my fav games and it is still wonderful
I love quicksaving often and testing if I can maybe make this almost impossible jump there or just frick around with source movement and physics or do a combat scene in a perfect/cinematic way
then I did a playthrough without quicksaving and it was like a completely different game for me
why is Ganker so mean to mr freeman
It's shit
name some better games
nta, but:
Tetris: The Grand Master 3 - Terror Instinct
Portal 1
The Talos Principle
Assuming we're only allowing puzzle games.
>Assuming we're only allowing puzzle games.
...why
it is shit
forspoken redfall immortals of aveum and hyenas
>hyenas
Anon...
I, too, was looking forward to LawBreakers 2.
Amazing for its time but anyone who is acting like it's just as fun as some of the best games that have came since are lying to themselves and trying to appear like a gaming intellectual
better story than the first
worse gameplay than the first
The game was meh. All guns sucked ass.
Only the gravity gun was fun.
This is true, I replayed it recently and the only guns that are fun are the ones that one-shot like the revolver and crossbow. Even the shotgun is kinda meh, can't really explain why. Gravity gun is of course GOATed.
Otherwise a reasonably fun game, but kinda carried by the atmosphere more than the gameplay. Visuals and worldbuilding are great.
>revolver and crossbow
Not enough ammo because they are the only thing remotely fun.
The AI seemed smart and that was immersive.
The AI actually is very smart, but they're basically just mindless turrets because you play as a 50mph morphine machine
Then it must be how they walk and take cover, kinda, something about it feals real to me.
it's fun to observe this behavior in Gmod, just spawn a bunch of npcs and make them fight each other, or just fight a bunch of NPCs yourself.
Sandbox gmod is the only way to play gmod.
None of this use map settings bullshit
?si=zV6sBIRilJzkaKv1
You are correct. The AI is very good, but they tend to look dumb because you are an absolute bullet sponge and you can just rush them at Mach 2
>but they tend to look dumb because you are an absolute bullet sponge and you can just rush them at Mach 2
I replayed HL2 and episodes with MMOD a couple months ago and on Hard difficulty they're much deadlier, shotgunners tend to hang around corners and when you turn a corner on 100/100 health and being blasted in the face by shotgunner, dropping to like 60/20 in one shot is very scary. The generator fight (when Alyx gets kidnapped) in particular was extremely difficult, I had to switch to easy and hang around corners all the time since elites with AR2's were so fricking accurate even at longer ranges, not to mention they used alt fire constantly
I recently played HL2 to get used to my steam deck's controls, and it definitely feels like they tweaked hard mode. I remember I ran out of bullets at the generator and I ended up prop jumping over the gate and trying to rush to the load screen before alyx dies.
>Even the shotgun is kinda meh, can't really explain why.
Because unless you exclusively use the alt fire the enemies can eat a point shell of 00 Buck and look at you like you're moronic. Come to think of it, damage reactions would have probably made the guns feel way better since at best the enemies flinch when they take damage and at worst they have no reaction at all.
normal troopers and normal zombies die to a one-shell point blank headshot iirc but yeah
The street war levels are some of the best among all FPS games
Now that you mention it I should replay those levels, in light of world events.
They are shit, forgettable, and obviously rushed.
>7 years in development
>rushed
Be specific anon
Most of those years were spent putting together the engine and tech while the rest of the team were stuck spinning their wheels and brainstorming. Physics and the gravity gun for instance were something that they wanted to be a key part of the game all the way back in 99 but took years to actually implement and make possible. Really the game itself had a 2-3 year development at best, with some generous pre-production.
It has aged like absolute shit.
>Oh boy, another simple lever physics """puzzle"""
>In game cutscenes make multiple playthroughs a slog to sit through
>Guns are complete ASS unless you're using the crossbow, explosives, or grav-gun
>Enemies eat way too much damage (a side effect of the guns sucking wiener)
Nah
Even explosions sounded like oversized balloons. Ragdoll physics was the only good thing HL2 did.
>In game cutscenes make multiple playthroughs a slog to sit through
adding some sort of skip for these would raise the game's pacing on additional plays from a 3/10 to a 6/10 easily. There are a lot of other grating issues, like the aformentioned pointless puzzles, somewhat slow to navigate or confusing map design, but you can get around these with knowledge.
It was already like that in 2004.
As a physics showcase it was completely outclassed by psiops.
As a first person shooter it was completely outclassed by Halo 2.
As a self-contained story with tight cutscenes it's completely outclassed by riddick efbb.
I genuinely think the praise over the game was solely a coping mechanism from PC gamers terrified of losing their relevance.
>console shooter
>good
Original Doom emulates modern console games with the shear fact that it limits the player immensely.
when it was new I thought it was amazing. now I think it's decent.
In retrospect, very boring. Fricking amazing for its time though. A lot of things that we take for granted in modern games came from half-life 2, so it tends to not age well unless if you've been in a coma for 20 years.
- Physics frickery was fun, especially the gravity gun.
- Many of the actual guns felt like peashooters with low impact and poor enemy reaction to being shot. FEAR came out less than a year later and BTFO'd HL2 in that regard.
- Popularized (came up with?) some of the cancer "cinematic" stuff like interactive cutscenes where you just sit around doing nothing while characters talk, though at the very least you could spaz out during them.
- Neat aesthetics with some Jesus Christ what the frick level stuff.
cool tech demo but ep1 and 2 are better as games
>ep1
frick episode 1
Gordon, crank dat thang
It is a great game. 8/10ish. Worse than HL1, and anyone coming to it nowadays that doesn't follow the gaming industry would consider it derivative (because all similar games are to some degree derived from it.)
It's not a perfect game, but that's ok. It's very good. Surprisingly so, even. It's rare for a game to be so hyped and then be satisfied when you finally play it.
With every passing year it ages a little worse. Zoomers playing it nowadays will wonder why anyone enjoyed this shit. At the time it was transcendental though. Part of the reason it no longer hits is because every innovation it introduced became standard afterwards, but it wasn't at the time.
Well, zoomers are also finding Morrowind and enjoying it so they are also enjoying HL2.
It's good, but it's really just a tech demo, it had AI on par with like Fear, but you never get to see it because the environments weren't made with it in mind so the combine just stand in one place like morons shooting you. The physics stuff was impressive, but it's a game based around it and it's kinda silly now. Still better than like 99 percent of modern games.
I still love it and can play it happily. It's a great game. It has slow points which can be criticized and it is very indulgent with the physics engine, but it is such a fun game regardless with a unique atmosphere.
Also Source sound effects are pure SOVL
It's not bad, but it's hard to care about a story that ended on a cliffhanger and was then abandoned.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
i originally got into pc gaming because i was so impressed by the water shaders in this game
mostly the game is shit though because it is dedicated to gimmicks
As someone who pre-ordered half life 2.
It's fricking shit.
Half life 2 is nothing more than a glorified tech demo for the source engine. The game itself is bland & boring corridor shooter, that ends right as it starts to get good. The environments sucked. The level design is dogshit. The enemies and weapon variety were a huge step back from the original game. Especially the enemy AI. I never once felt like there was a bigger world beyond the gamespace in hl2 as I did in hl1. The only somewhat good level was ravenholm. Because it felt somewhat like a classic hl1 type level would.
But most of all; I hated the dialogue and writing. It was weak and overly congratulatory. Because most of the NPCs and all of their gordon wiener sucking dialogue. Most every NPC seems to know gordon and say that they were such good friends with gordon back in black mesa. And yet in the previous game, none of the NPCs mentioned any relationship with gordon outside of work. Except for maybe barney and the bald scientist(I forget his name and I dont care to google it).
I can understand introducing new characters who claim to have a relationship with established characters. But it doesn't work so well with a silent protagonist who cant confirm the fact. I'm not against silent protags. I quite like them actually, but it's very hard to write around a silent protag and give him a backstory without having him somehow confirm it. It's painfully awkward when you have people, talk about you; in front of you, as if you're not there. The worst characters were definitely the supposed administrator of black mesa and the female scientist. Whose name I also forget. As you have been able to tell. I'm not a huge fan of retcons either. As they too are hard to pull off without feeling cheap and shallow.
I did not enjoy any aspect of half life 2.
I only played the episodes during the covid lockdowns because I had nothing better to do.
Great game. Better than Half-Life. Contrarians love to hate it though.
not as good as 1 but better than 3
a masterpiece for its time that has not aged well. especially considering the story is still unfinished almost 20 years later
Even on release I remember not being impressed. Only played 1 a couple of years later and I was much more impressed. 2 is all over the place from gameplay to story. Calling it a tech demo is obviously hyperbole but the fact is the game does often feel like it doesn't know how to show off the tech without holding the player hostage.
Loved it first time I played it on PC and then again on Orange Box on 360. Last played it 16 years ago so might not like it today but I doubt it. If there was gonna be an Episode 3 I'd replay it but that's never going to happen so why care?
The guns are shit, which is a pretty big sin for an FPS.
Still one of the best fps campaigns ever released. The pacing, the variety, and the art direction are all top notch. It's essentially an adventure game disguised as an FPS. HL1 has better guns and combat but the sheer variety and scale of the world you traverse in 2 put it on par with 1 overall. HL1 and 2 were and will forever be top notch games.
10/10 game, loved it. When I played The Orange Box first back on ps3 the graphics impressed me as did the length of the story, it was great.
By god the contrarians are awesome to read
But anyway, just play the game. Think what you want, but remember, this shit is 2004, and you can mod it up to spice up gunplay, as obviously it’s the meekest part of the whole experiences, imo. Revolver, Shotgun and Crossbow carried hard.
I like this game for what it did, it’s one of the best piece of work that propelled story-driven FPS to a new height, and that’s what it should be commended for. Nothing like Half Life 2 came out back then. Maybe F.E.A.R, but storyline was straight up dumpster.
Solid 8/10, 10/10 with mods.
Ground breaking for the time, still fun to play. People who say it's shit are just contraband morons, you dont have to like it but it's widely regarded for a reason.
>contraband morons
Does this mean they're actually quality, or a worse version of a regular moron? Or just illegal nitwits?
It's a glorified tech demo. There is nothing revolutionary from a gameplay perspective.
Also all of the physics puzzles are moronic. They're not challenging, they're filler and only serve to stall progression.
Spoken like a true zoomer who wasn't even alive when the game came out.
It was great, now it's just good.
It's a crappy tech demo that people only like because they have nostalgia for it.
not a fan of the unskippable cutscenes
Was good for the time but unskippable NPC roleplay is something that needs to stop, we know better now.
played it dozens of times
jolly good sandbox
even more fun running through it on gmod so you can make whacky ways to traverse the game
One of the best games ever made, unable to age partially because of the insanely good design and partially because of it's insane contribution to the modding world. It's funny, it's just like Ocarina of Time: everyone played it but everybody took the wrong lessons.
it's one of my fav games and it is still wonderful
I love quicksaving often and testing if I can maybe make this almost impossible jump there or just frick around with source movement and physics or do a combat scene in a perfect/cinematic way
then I did a playthrough without quicksaving and it was like a completely different game for me
why is Ganker so mean to mr freeman
Timeless masterpiece.
Fun to replay.
Its a good game
If it had been finished it probably would have been remembered as the greatest video game of all time.