Half Life thread

>>378040574
Because it's 13 years old and you were probably 4-10 years old when it originally came out.

play this:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/365300/Transmissions_Element_120/

The gameplay still holds up with a fresh layer of paint.

>>378040574
Half life 2 is bad because they didn't care about making a fun little shooter, but instead made a boring slow paced tech demo. Half life 2 (and the source engine) still graphically holds up but the gameplay was a snooze fest since day one. The episodes are marginally better but they are still riddled with problems and are not really all that fun.

>>378040574
>>378040908
>>378041143

I hate all of you so much right now it hurts.

Is Opposing force the best Gearbox game ?

>>378040908
I played them 1 year apart. First one was a cohesive corny ride. Second one had an embarrassing dystopia that took your patience and interest in plot for granted.

I might try that mod, though.

>>378040574
It's actually a pretty solid action/adventure game. But because it has some vehicle segments and "boring" gunplay, you fuckers think that makes it bad.

HL2 is an extremely good game and you niggers are nothing but Ritalin sniffing ADHD jerk-offs who go into shock if you don't headshot something every 10 seconds.

The vehicle sections were there to give you the sense that you had to travel large distances while being pursued by the combine, and it fucking worked.

>>378041410
the gunplay is fucking awful this is a very valid complaint, the weapon variety is atrocious too.

>>378041236
Yes, and directed by Randy Pitchford.

>>378041221
>>378041410
>>378041651
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpCv12q6fFI

>>378041904
That voice will surely convince the shitposters.

>>378041651
Says who? The vehicle sections were abysmal.

>>378041651
>its bad on purpose!
simply ebina my friendo

>>378041651
No, really dude it was never anything but okay
I don't hate it at all, but it's overrated as fuck
It was pretty for its time and the physics gimmicks were neat, but a testament to an actually good game is that you want to replay it from time to time despite it being technically dated
I've played HL1 through several times in the last 15 years since I first played it, HL2 only the one time and I've never felt like revisiting it

HL2 was amazing, especially for the time. It aged relatively well. It's definitely not one of my favorite games, but you can't deny that it's a pretty good FPS, especially if you're into its genre of sci-fi.

>>378041704
>Pistol
>Shotgun
>SMG
>crossbow
>Rocket Launcher
>Gravity gun

What more do you need? You can shoot the freakin props around the map at enemies. The Pulse Rifle shoot a plasma billiard ball evaporating enemies. The weapons were fine.

>>378040574
It was an Okayish game. Never understood all the hype either.

>>378042362
Aside for pulse rifle and revolver they felt like shit.

And there's a game called Half Life 1 that has crazy shit for weapons.

>>378042362
>completely useless beyond the train station
>underpowered
>meh, it's OK
>never used it save for the one achievement
>not enough extra ammo
>fun

You're in the minority of you think the weapons weren't underpowered and needed some serious tweaking

>>378042594
this, I wish HL2 had a bee gun (or any major continuity for most of the HL1 assets)

Its bretty gut but doesn't live up to HL1 i think.

>>378040574

Because the whole game wasn't Ravenholm.

>>378041143
I wouldn't say Episode 1 is better than the base game. It felt more like filler so you could get to Episode 2, which had the real innovations and wasn't 4 fucking hours long.

>>378043419
one of my favorite parts of HL2 is where you're stuck in the pitch dark underground zombie infested tunnels. Great atmosphere. Too bad it lasted only an half hour or so, but it was still great.

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>>378041904
>Autism voice

Stopped in the first 10 seconds, I can't stand listening to this faggot.

>>378041904

Stopped watching when he started to get butthurt over inside references.

Kid is a autistic waterhead.

>>378044962
>>378045489
samefag

If you hate HL2 you ain't a PCbro. You deserve to have your PC burned and to be beaten to death with the remains

>>378042594
>>378042709
HL2 shotgun is amazing and miles ahead of crappy HL1 ones. Well, actually, it's kind of overpowered. Makes Combines a joke.

You're right about the other guns.

>>378043419
I prefer Ep. 1 over HL2 but I understand it's not a popular opinion.

>>378040574
but it was pretty good

>>378042594
HL1 weapons were all shit. None of them can compete with the gravity gun and pulse rifle

>>378040574
best game ever created
only Undertale can say was close to be that great

IMO Half Life 1 had a more interesting setting and plot.

"Science gone wrong in a mysterious underground government research company and you have to make your way across the labyrinthine tunnels and vents of the massive complex to try and set things right while avoiding a government cover up"

it hit all the right sweet spots for that sort of thing. Same reason the portal games are cool. They have a cool setting.

Half Life 2 however, goes straight to "game over" and tells us it was all for nothing and the earth is overrun by aliens and shit and everything is post apocalyptic. The setting isnt as fun, and the only potential fun part, the link to Portal with the Borealis, is cut content.

>>378041651
Haha yeah man, us old guys right? Kids now days can't appreciate those classic slow paced cinematic, scripted sequence heavy shooters like Doom, Blood and Quake. These ADHD kids are all about those fast paced shooters now days!

>>378046085
>unreal wasnt fast
>quake wasnt fast
you fucking underage

>>378046238
*woosh*

>>378041274
>Second one had an embarrassing dystopia that took your patience and interest in plot for granted.
Oh hey, you managed to put my thoughts into words. Half-Life 2 just doesn't hold up to the original, there was way too much "go from point A to B, sit in a locked room while people talk to you, repeat". Not to mention it's really difficult to get lost in Half-Life 2 which kills the feeling of exploration compared to the, at times, labyrinthine areas in the first.

>>378045996
You're not alone in your opinion, I've always prefered HL1 and considered HL2 to be bland as fuck aside from the impressive technology at the time. I've beaten the first one like 20 times but HL2 maybe twice. If I remind myself of those moments where all you do is stand around and listen to the dialog or ride a fucking boat or buggy for 5 hours straight I get turned off instantly.

>>378046394
my autism doesn't allow me to take comments ironically

Half Life 1 is better

>>378040574
(You)

>>378041904
>underage opinions

>>378045938
pulse rifle is random spread hitscan-that-pretends-it-isn't piece of trash

>>378047164
Still better than any HL1 gun

>>378047223
>a generic cod gun is better than the gauss gun, egon, snarks, laser tripmines, etc etc

oooookay.

>>378040574
Nice attempt.
1/10 made me reply

>>378042594
the crossbow was great though.

>>378047223
dumb opinion

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>>378046975
>>378045489
>>378044962
He's right in every single point he brings up though. I watched the whole thing.

>>378047223
>I haven't played HL1
Heh

>>378040574
"Half-life 2 is bad" is the ultimate example of /v/'s obsession with being contrarian. Does it have bad segments? Sure. The Boat ride is way too long, for example. However, the gunplay is far from awful when, for what weapons it lost it made up for with the Gravity Gun. Of all the weapons missing from Half-life 1 only the tau cannon is really that big a deal. Did anyone ever really use the Satchel Charges or the Hivehand?

The game's focus on physics sure seems overused today but on release it was ahead of it's time in the use of physics, hell if many of today's FPS's are an indicator it still is. It's also not like the talking sections which are there to breakup the action sequences have you just sitting around doing nothing either, they provide plenty of entertainment for idle players that would seem dim today because said players have exhausted everything there is to do in those sections.

Half-life 2 is dated now but dated doesn't mean bad. Much of what it introduced since became more commonplace in FPS's which really waters down the WOW factor it had at the time but hey, people still enjoy seinfeld and that's hardly groundbreaking these days.

>>378047332
>Gauss and gluon
Too little ammo to be anything more than novelties

>snarks, laser tripmines
Curiosities at best, extremely limited practical use. Maybe they're better on multiplayer, but on single player they're pretty much useless

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>>378041904
>mfw he doesn't even mention the dope ass LMG, sniper rifle and magnum/deagle for H-L1 weapons

>>378048134
The Hivehand is incredibly useful for Xen. Try it.

>>378040574
Half of it was cut in development and they cared more about showing off the engine than making a good game.
Go read about prerelease stuff, retail HL2 is just like a quarter of what was planned.

>>378048298
>they cared more about showing off the engine than making a good game
It worked for Doom and Quake

>>378040574
It was a decent game. It just doesn't have a good ending.

>>378040574
no crouch jump

>>378048279
>Too little ammo
You get tons of ammo for energy weapons in the second half of the game. Gluon eats it like candy (compensating that with insane damage output), but gauss is a pretty reasonable weapon.

It's also funny that you use ammo rarity as an argument when HL2 is much more stingy with ammo for its "power weapons". You only get to carry 18 revolver bullets and 10 crossbow bolts!

>>378048279
Clearly you never played any difficult mods.
>assassins do a fuckton of damage
>lure them into a tripmine
>room full of grunts who will blow the fuck out of you
>dump snarks on them
>gauss gun is an instant kill headshot and shoots through walls

>>378048134
There's nothing wrong with seeing the flaws in something in hindsight. The game was certainly superficially impressive on release but there are plenty of games that were likewise impressive which have also managed to hold up over the years, Doom, Quake, even Half-Life 1 to name just a few other shooters. My biggest problem with HL2 is how over-produced and streamlined the game is, which only exaggerates the "tech demo" feeling of it. There is only just enough content to show off all the technology but not enough room to have a really fun, unique experience in (Ravenholme comes close but is far too short and feels completely detached from the rest of the game).

>>378048134
>did anyone ever really use the hivehand?

so you've never played half-life

just a note, anyone in this thread who thinks they know a single thing about half-life and has only played black mesa: fuck off

>>378048506
That's because Doom and Quake were fun games at their core.

Because it completely ignored Half-Life 1 in order to make the player feel like Jesus. If it weren't for NPCs constantly calling you Gordon Freeman, you could seriously mistake the game for being a completely unrelated series from Half-Life.

>>378048915
I don't blame anyone for not using the hivehand because there's never really a point where you actually need to use it. I only found out how good it was because of some mod where it was your starting weapon.

>>378040574
Kill yourself my dude

>>378049052
>If it weren't for NPCs constantly calling you Gordon Freeman, you could seriously mistake the game for being a completely unrelated series from Half-Life.

>houndeyes, bullsquids, and icthyosaurs almost completely absent in game, no houndeye enemies

it's like they forgot everything that made hl1 great

hl2 is a great game, but hl1 is a legendary height-of-genre game

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>>378040574
Beacuse it was a cinematic expierience garbage.
>Shoot things for 2 minutes
>Now you have to wait 10 fucking minutes for all characters to talk before you can go further
>Despite such a large focus on the story the protagonist is still silent making already cringy story sound even more cringy, especially when characters say something to Gordon followed by an awkward silence as if he could respond
>Alyx is a shitty character
>Having a sidekick nearly all the time, usually blocks your path when shooting, stops you every 5 minutes so she can talk and unlock a door for you, stopping gameplay
>A game that started story focus in fps
>Shitton of cutscenes
It was the first Cinematic Expierience™ game to be released.
I played all Half Life series in release order for the first time like a year ago, playing first Half Life and its expansion packs was fun as fuck, they were great and then I started HL2 expecting something even better after hearing so many positive opinions about it and it turned out to be shit.

The best part is that in response to any negative opinion expresssed about it HL2fags will instantly respond with "You're just an underage!" which is ironic considering that the much better HL1 is probably older than them.
HL2 was ahead of its time, it was the first FPS game to offer terrible gameplay with most of it replaced by a shitty story treating itself as if it was actually good, just like an averge FPS today.

>>378041904
>Start watching
>Sperging out about sequel referencing previous games
>He keeps sperging out
>Skip to 17 minutes
>He's still sperging out about references
So this is the power of autism

So who does GMan actually work for?

>>378041904
God damn, not sure if I can take the full half hour, but under 10 minutes in and he's fucking tearing this shit apart.

>>378049231
i agree with this poster

>>378049354
Not even Valve knows that.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwcYvK-9wTQ

>Invokes more Max Payne than MP3

>>378049347
He's sperging about how they turned references and jokes from the first game into the story.

>>378049347
Fuck, can't argue with that epic roast

>>378041904
>Spends 5 minutes sperging out about how great HL1 weapons are
>Spergs out about how guns aren't different alien guns in 2, until he gets to the alien guns, then spergs out about how it was stupid.

>>378041904
This video, his Serious Sam video and that other guy's in defense of dark souls 2 video are the rare cases when I want to strangle people over internet because of their hot opinions

>>378049735
There's only two alien guns in HL2 and one is just a better SMG.

Friendly reminder that Route Kanal is the worst chapter and manhacks are pure cancer on hard mode.

>>378041143
>Half life 2 (and the source engine) still graphically holds up
Not really. It looks very outdated and the only reason it doesn't look as outdated as it should is that they kept updating the engine.

>>378041904
That may be the most autistic criticism of any game I've ever heard.

Let me sum it up.

>It had a couple of jokes that referenced the original game
>It had unique characters that were retconned into the first game
>I'm autistic and I don't know what an awkward pause is.

Wow great job sperglord.

>>378048134
>Did anyone ever really use the Satchel Charges or the Hivehand?

I used the Hivehand almost exclusively.
Infinite ammo bruvah.

>>378049831
>manhacks are pure cancer on hard mode
Just time your swings, faggot.

>>378041904
>autistic screeching

>>378048646
I read they put ammo limitations to keep the player switching throughout all the weapons rather then use one or two throughout.

>>378049807
I honestly can't remember the second alien gun, unless you're talking about the pheromones sack thing.

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>Chilling out in Black Mesa
>Hear this http://combineoverwiki.net/images/d/dd/HG_CHECK0.ogg

What do?

>>378048134
>Did anyone ever really use the Satchel Charges
HL also had deathmatch yo
I fucking loved mines and satchels there

>>378050650
I found it incredibly hilarious that announcer AI started talking in low deep voice once military take over. Like some grunt in the middle of alien invasion decided that his biggest priority is that announcer doesn't sound manly enough.

>>378050042
That only goes so far when there's eight of them that require three hits each to kill barreling down your hallway. They're tedious and aren't any fun to fight. Though I think they make a good distracting nuisance enemy once you get the gravity gun.

Why do we hate Black Mesa again? I played half life 1 first way before it and thought it was a nice refresher (my only complaint was some weapons being in different places like the crowbar being found AFTER encountering your first zombie).

>>378048134
Satchel charges were great for those end game blue guys that chase you with the bee launchers. Were also fun to lure enemy soldiers into them. HL2 design philosophy was like "oh two players of ten might not use this item so we just shouldn't include it at all."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIS7m7YYEXI

>>378050948
shitty hl2 sprinting movement instead of glorious hl1 fast
releasing an unfinished mod and then telling people they need to pay for it even though it's still not finished

>>378040574
hl3 comfirmed

>>378050915
>when there's eight of them
the only time that happens is close to the end of the game when you have shotgun (which one-two shots them) and a squad of four rebels

also there's an energy machinegun turret nearby

that scene was in the beta btw, and it used to slow the SHIT out of my ancient PC when I loaded it

>>378050948
I love BMS, it's a good game. Not a replacement for original, but still a cool game.

>>378051027
The free version is still free.

>>378041704
>>378042594
HL2 had better gunplay than 1, not the other way around, thanks to vastly superior sound design. HL2's sound effects were so full of clipping distortion that they sounded like fart noises, whereas the cleaner recording on HL2's weapons gave them a more satisfying impact.

>>378050948
>like the crowbar being found AFTER encountering your first zombie
That is what happens in Half-Life 1 though.

>>378051082
Uh, no.

>>378050948
They can fuck right off with "community" doesn't like this level so we made it ten times smaller. Can't fucking wait to see what they did to xen.

>>378051116
*HL1's sound effects were so full of clipping distortion, I mean

>>378051116
Fucking audiophiles.

>>378051149
Wrong! You find your crowbar really early, run past the laser room, laser corridor, a headcrab in a shattered glass tank, then you need to break a glass door and there's a crowbar nearby.

>>378051116
HL2
>Mow down enemies with bland weapons

HL1
>Dramatic interesting encounters with unique weapons

How is the gunplay better again?

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>>378041904
Holy shit I don't even need to go where the rest of you did

>First ten seconds
>Tries to dramatically zoom on quote on back of game case
>Does he put it down, light it, and make a nice shot?
>Fuck no he shows his hand, it's washed out, goes out of focus
>Bumps the fucking game case then pulls it back

10/fucking10

>>378051116
A few weapons feeling more punchy because of physics doesn't make up for all the ones that weren't even included in the game.

>>378040908
Fpbp. Half-Life 2 was a revolutionary game that blew my mind. But since then newer games stole pretty much every idea it had, so now it's not special at all. And narratively it was always a mess

>>378051149
Nah m8 you find the crowbar right after avoiding the lasers but before the elevator that kills the scientists.
In BM you find it long after that in the hallway after the first headcrab zombies and the headcrab'd scientist sitting by the cart if I recall correctly.

>>378051193
On A Rail blew assholes and its complete removal improves the game.

>>378051427
>But since then newer games stole pretty much every idea it had
halo 1 came out three years earlier and did most of the same shit.

>>378051540
Only retards can't deal with On A Rail. It's like the part in Episode 2 where the commentary track says they had to remove part of the caves because the braindead playtesters kept running around in circles.

>>378051310
>quality sound design isn't an important aspect of developing a quality video game
Thanks for being part of the cancer killing the industry.

>>378040574
wtf are u talking about? we got Alyx ass

>>378051540
Eat shit, I liked it. I don't get why it's treated like sewers in vtmb literally ruins game tier or something like that, it's okay.

>>378051718
nobody cares nerd

go buy a golden sound cable or something

>>378051352
>variety is the same thing as mechanics
Confirmed for fucking moron.

Half-Life 1 is the best PC game ever and the sequel is not as good. But it is still the best PC game ever

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>>378051193
>What they did to Xen

They STILL haven't finished it? They've been charging $20 for how long now, and they STILL haven't? I figured that was the whole point of the steam release. Kek.

>>378040574
is this the new "I hate Half-Life" meme?

>>378051902
Yep, all they did for standalone release was unfuck surface tension (another fan hated level amirite) and added multiplayer that SURPRISE SURPRISE nobody plays.

>>378051816
You're right, what was the point of progressing beyond 19th century shellac?

Idiot.

>>378051726
Assassin titties are better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWhF4s_frhw

>>378051540
No.

>>378045489
>>378046975
>>378049347
>>378049791
>>378049984
>>378050291
>>378051398
but anons
try and refute his points

>>378052106
>what was the point of progressing beyond 19th century shellac
More compact and secure data storage, duh!

>>378045996
>>378046489
I think what bothered me the most about HL2 is the fact that the only Xen wildlife that carried over were headcrabs. It gets worse when you read some of the backstory and lore. They are out there and yet we never see them. Eli had his leg eaten by a Bullsquid in canon yet we never see them.

It makes EP1 and EP2 even more dissapointed cause they cant use the excuse of "The City keeps them out" Anymore. Imagine how cool it would be if you start seeing and fighting Bullsquids or Houndeyes as they start swarming into the city now that the defenses are down. Or in EP2 where you encounter a fucking Gargantuan in the woods and have to play cat and mouse with it.

HL2 is kinda decent on it's own as a game. But compared to HL1 it's a downgrade in everything but graphics.

>>378051825
not him, but the variety he describes presupposes the mechanics. at least, that's what i think was implied through his connection with the weapons and the situations

>>378048134
>for what weapons it lost it made up for with the Gravity Gun.
No it didn't, because the Gravity Gun is nothing more than "pick up + throw." Things you can already do with the use key.

>The game's focus on physics sure seems overused today but on release it was ahead of it's time in the use of physics
Objectively wrong. There were many games that used physics systems before Half-Life 2, and Trespasser was the first game to use one in fucking 1998, the same year that Half-Life came out.

>It's also not like the talking sections which are there to breakup the action sequences have you just sitting around doing nothing either, they provide plenty of entertainment for idle players
They really aren't entertaining since the NPCs never react to anything you do during those talking sections. In HL1, conversations were succinct. They never lasted long enough for the lack of NPC reactions to be noticeable.

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>>378049231
Nice to see ACfag made it to the thread, too.

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>>378052382
>the only Xen wildlife that carried over were headcrabs
What about the barnacles. Or the leeches and ichthyosaurs in the water. What about the ally vortiguants. What about the antlions (not from the original game, but I assume they are from Xen or something similar).

>>378052313
You mean refute his opinions? Kinda futile thing to do.

>>378049231
>>378049459
Oh look, ACfag has resorted to samefagging again.

The game was meh, the mods it spawned were god-tier (Underhell, SMOD, Human Error, Black Mesa, etc etc)

>/v/ hates hl2 now
>hates portal now
>hates l4d now
>hates dota now
>hates cs now
>hates tf2 now
>hates steam now

soon you'll hate hl as well

only a matter of time

>>378052825
he's clearly talking about enemies
barnacles show up but only sparingly and are only prominent in the canal chapter
leeches are only a map hazard to keep you from hitting the edge of the map and not an actual enemy
ichthyosaurs are never fought and you only even see one in a cutscene, if you spawn one with the console their ai is completely broken
ally vortigaunts are pointless and despite no longer being enemies weren't replaced with an equivalent

>>378052794
Wrong. Ultima Underworld had physics in 1992. And the other anon was right, it was amazing in 04 because no game UNTIL HL2 had gotten them to be fun. Having physics isn't the same as having good physics.

>>378052825
>Barcacles
I forgot about them desu
>Leeches and Ichy
Are not really enemies. They are out of bounds mechancis/a cutscene. I cant tell you how disappointment I was when I first played HL2 after seeing Ichy in the teleportation malfunction and him not showing up. I was freaked about entering any body of water only to realize once I got towards the end that he never did.
>mfw Route Canal
>Vorts
Not enemies
>Antlions
Yeah they are from Xen. I was talking about the HL1 Xen wildlife originally.

>>378048664
>using mods as an argument
I really shouldn't have to tell you why that's stupid as fuck.

>>378052825
My headcanon is that antlions fucked up pretty much all the other wildlife, I mean regular ants fuck shit up real good and those are alien fuckhuge ants.

>>378053376
You oughta play SMOD. They have houndeyes, bullsquids, the whole shebang.

>>378040574
Jesus Christ why is this board so bad

>>378054090
Not as bad as your taste.

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>play Half-Life 1 again
>it's breddy good
>keep seeing all these threads redpilling about how Half-Life 2 is shit
>play Half-Life 2 again
>still love the shit out of it
Anyone else do this?

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>>378049231
>A game that started story focus in fps
I don't truly understand this meme, either. HL2 has never been particularly story focused, beyond the fact that there are events and some talking scenes littered throughout the game. There's also Dark Forces (first FPS with cutscenes and cinematic narrative) and Marathon (WRPG tier of in-game text, lore, and backstory), so, again it doesn't make sense. The "cutscenes" in Half-Life 2 honestly get too much hate. HL1 is undoubtedly the superior game, but there is definitely more interesting things to critique brief intermissions during chapters.

>It was the first Cinematic Expierience™ game to be released.
That is a totally untrue statement to any degree. There are plenty of games before 2004 which heavily used story and cinematics as a feature. For story: text adventures, point and clicks, etc. For cinematics: Another World, Dragon's Lair, etc. So what is this meme that HL2 invented story? You have mentioned your adversity to being outed as underage, but let's face it, you probably were born in 1999. Either that, or you have extremely low knowledge on video games, and rarely play anything not suited for arcades.

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it was better than the first game ? is it a bait thread or what ???????

>>378048915
Half Life 1 is still fun. It's really satisfying seeing the old graphics and hearing the sounds in the game.

I'm having trouble with some puzzle around the ending of 'We've got Hostiles'

>>378053432
It's the same AI and weapons and that still applies to the vanilla game on hard.

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>Half Life 2 doesn't hold up graphically
You're not a complete asshole who thinks this are you anon?

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>>378040574
>oh finally! a half life thread!
>its low quality bait
/v/ was a mistake

>>378053175
Fun is subjective.

>>378053609
Yeah I guess that makes sense, I still don't like it.

>>378053917
I've played SMOD in the past but IIRC some update to HL2 broke the mod? Or there are like, a bunch of different SMODs split from the original? I forget.

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> it's bad because it's old
kys senpai
Do it now; make it messy.

>>378054310
I replayed HL2 and was super underwhelmed. Combine are really boring and take up most of the game. Most of the time you're just using the AR2 and shotgun, the only reason to use the SMG is the grenade or you run out of AR2 ammo. Revolver and crossbow are limited use instagibs but the shotgun also serves the same purpose and has way more ammo.

>>378054697
Latest SMOD works with HL2. But you are correct, there are wackier, older versions of SMOD that don't function with HL2 files now. You have to fuck with some shit manually. It's plenty worth if you ask me.

Despite both games cutting some great ideas, Half Life felt more complete.
The lack of Xen creatures in 2, one of Half-Lifes defining aesthetics, are all but gone.
Half Life 2 just did not commit to the Combine aesthetic the same way they did 2 Xen.

As a result Half Life also had more
>WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT
As new monsters were introduced.
For dramatic effect, next section is written from the perspective of a would be new player, not a wiki autist
>You are sneaking around some maintenance tunnels when suddenly this big Blue motherfucker slaps your ass with hot plasma.
>You hear something banging. Army bombing? No, its a fucking green worm thing. 3 of them. That was a bit tedious. You kill it, then turns out it was some sort of a plant squid.
>These water sections arent that bad. BOOM! Heres a fucking space shark
>Your halfway through the game and the electric dudes are nothing to you now. Is it the best the aliens can do? Enter the Beemen
>i'm sick of these goddamn aliens in this goddamn facility, see ya fags!
>Fuck, now I am in space
And so on.
With Half-Life 2, the enemy diversity is lower, and not only that, it has with time become very cliche.
You have
>Facehuggers that make zombies return from the first game, but now they also make actual Aliens like from the movies
>You have antlions. Man, I fucking loved Starship Troopers!
>You have the Dystopian SS after you, they brought helicopters
>Oh no, the SS has called in their Wunderwaffe! They have a Space Shrimp with a helicopterrotor for an ass!
And then we get to the tripod, which is quite funny, because the game came out before the "War of the Worlds" movie, so in a way it was a pretty unique enemy, but because of passage of time, it actually seems like an homage.

Basically, I believe HL2 should have felt more like Zeno Clash/E.Y.E. aesthetically.
>Cold
>Spooky
>Alien

>>378054367
>let's face it, you probably were born in 1999.
It's well established that ACfag is in his mid-30s at the very least.

>>378048134
marry me

>>378054367
The story in Marathon might be good but it sure as fuck isn't the focus
A page or two that you read in 20 seconds per level

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What were they trying to do with this?
Didn't they already have teleported to Xen before?

>>378040574

HL1>Episode 2>Episode 1

Episode 1 was boring as fuck and gunplay in HL2 in general was trash

I don't remember any weapon besides the magnum feelin powerlful except maybe the shotgun and the rocket launcher

The pistol was a joke, the gravity gun was useless unless there were saws around, the smg is just pathethic etc etc

HL2 is not a bad game but trying to say that it is great nowadays is just bullshit, it might have been the first fps of its kind but it doesn't hold up to newer titles

Also the vehicle sections were the most forced trash ever and they always took forever to finish

>>378054867
>I believe HL2 should have felt more like Zeno Clash/E.Y.E. aesthetically.

Agreed. And funnily enough as we all know, that's exactly what Valve was going for until a year before its release.

>>378054869
So, just ignorant, then? There are text games from 40 years ago.

>>378055039
Episode 1 is really fun, especially the Lowlight section and the zombie hospital, which is a fast-paced action sequence with good soundtrack.

>>378055027
The anti-mass spectrometer was for analyzing shit. They were going to analyze the crystal.

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>>378052810
>>378052953
What's "ACfag" supposed to mean?

Also, if you're implying that I think the game becomes shit if it features story then you're wrong, there's nothing wrong with a story in a game but problem starts when that story hurts gameplay, if you have to stop every 5 minutes for a new unskippable cutscene then it's terrible and just kills replayability.
The fact that the story itself is mediocre doesn't help either and the worst part is that the setting was bad compared to HL1, every part of HL2 looks the fucking same, for the most part you're in a part of the city that looks exactly like the other parts of the city that you've been to several times throughout the whole game.
Repeating surroundings combined with shitty artstyle that got ugly as fuck very quick makes it visually terrible looking.
And also you fight the same 3 combine types for 90% of the game, and you fight them using boring weapons that have nothing interesting about them, no interesting design or gameplay mechanic.

In short, there's nothing good about HL2:
>Terrible setting
>Terrible atmosphere
>Terrible story
>Weak gameplay
>No interesting weapons


>>378054367
>1
Obviously HL2 wasn't the first FPS game to have cutscenes and narrative but it was the one that gained the most popularity which caused others to follow Valve's example.

>2
By Cinematic Expierience I meant a game that tries to be some sort of a movie, featuring a terrible story and unskippable cutscenes, more precisely a game where devs try to make their game story focused but don't really know what makes story in video games good.
In games you mentioned story is integral part of the gameplay, both story and gameplay fit each and enahnce each other, in case of FPS it's much harder to do and in case of Half Life 2 the gameplay is just sacrificed and made worse by trying to make as much room for a story as possible.

>>378055157
Ohhh, I always tought they were trying to open a big ass portal to Xen, am dumb as fuck.
Thanks anon

>>378052382
>They are out there and yet we never see them.

maybe they don't easily survive/replicate on earth due to the atmosphere/climate/predators
maybe the combine wiped out most of them, except for headcrabs and antlions

you're right of course, more diverse enemies makes a game more fun.

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>>378054867
Asshole.

You completed neglected the fact that the Combine assimilates conquered life into machines of function and war. The dropships, gunships, the stalkers and the tripods were all once biotic organisms. Before your first encounter with the gunship, an npc refers to the gunship as an "it" and talks about the encounter as if it was an encounter with a wild animal. It what makes the Combine so vile and formidable; using technology to assimilate their conquests into tools of war, industry or tyranny.

It's one of the most haunting and unique aspects in any video game and science fiction. It's like something out of Huxley or Vonnegut.

>>378054856
How less wacky is the newest SMOD? Is the PSP still a weapon?

>>378055365
>using technology to assimilate their conquests into tools of war, industry or tyranny
kind of like humans did with horses and cows, only a bit more extreme?

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>>378055365
>The dropships, gunships, the stalkers and the tripods were all once biotic organisms
other than stalkers all of those are synthetic lifeforms.

>>378040908
>crashed after the first load section

I see the source engine is holding up nicely

>>378055027
>>378055157
>>378055292
They had already been to Xen before the resonance cascade happened.

Evidence for this:
1. The caged aliens/experiments found in Questionable Ethics
2. The specimen used in the resonance cascade was from Xen in the first place. When it is mentioned that the administrator went through trouble to obtain the mineral, we can assume it is possibly referring to the team of dead explorers on Xen.

>le hl2 is a le bad game

I hate neo-/v/ so fucking much.

GOOD THINGS ABOUT HL2
>the music
>the art style
>almost every bit of cut content
>sound design
>road trip segments
>general level design
>doctor breen
>no really the audio is amazing, the fucking CP chatter is magical
BAD THINGS ABOUT HL2
>characters
>ally AI
>excessive periods of not being able to progress until people talk all through the game
>lack of enemy variety
>the fact that the cut content was actually cut
>the fact that the ending chapters could be fantastic if not for the shitty AI fucking your enjoyment
>lack of weapon variety
>little to no connection to HL1 past the model designs
>alyx fucking vance
>severe underuse of the exotic synths, I would say it's okay because they're supposed to be the rare heavies but you see them all over during the intro and there's no shortage of them during the later episodes

I genuinely want to argue about this because I feel deeply about some things that are amazing and some things that make me hate HL2

>>378055884
Not telling me nothing I don't already know. They were still going to analyze the crystal for it had been the "purest sample we've seen yet."

>>378055402
PSP is still a weapon. I'm kind of comparing it to an OOOOOLD SMOD where you could play as Master Chief, Gordon Frohman, a whole assortment of characters. Unfortunately that version is forever gone since nobody saved it and the original download link is dead.

>>378055716
???????
the advisor pod has fins, literal organic fins, and the engine is made of flesh
the dropship and gunship have fins on them too, and the flesh around where the thrusters are is all inflamed and raw because there's metal jammed into it

>>378052313
>child who grew up on 7th-gen games (most of which were inspired in part or in whole by HL and/or HL2)
>every argument only works over 10 years later

how'd i do?

>>378051427

>Half-Life 2 was a revolutionary game

In what way?

>>378056007
Haha, us oldfags huh

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How would you do HL3? Not that it's ever going to happen.

>>378056270
Neither point is correct so not very well

>>378055716
My biggest problem with HL2 is how fucking underutilized everything is. Things like the striders are really uniquely designed but most of the time you are fighting the completely generic combine soldiers. I looked through one of the concept art books and they originally had all these interesting, grotesque variations on the combines but none of them made it into the final game. It was like they were so afraid of making a mistake that they opted for the most banal yet polished path.

>>378056157
the synths are manufactured organisms that serve a single purpose, they're not like stalkers which were clearly just humans they took and augmented.

>>378055365
First of all
>For dramatic effect, next section is written from the perspective of a would be new player, not a wiki autist
Second of all
>Half Life 2 just did not commit to the Combine aesthetic the same way they did with Xen
I didn't say it wasn't there, and I am not saying it was bad, and in fact I think the Syth asthetic was amazing.
But they just did not commit to it.
There were only 2 types of them, the Gunship and the Strider, that you fought, and some in the background, like the dropship and the ones in Citadel.
If I recall, you fight Syths only 3 times in the game. First during the midpoint of the Driving section, then the Strider in the city, and another gunship near the end, or was that Episode 1?
You see more synths as background characters than actual enemies.
World building doesn't amount to shit if it leaves me hanging.
Half Life is a vidya and in vidya if I get shown some big ugly looking motherfucker I expect to at some point in the future put big fat rocket into it.
The only reason they tease the Strider in the opening section is to make you ho
>Oh fuck,I will have to fight one of those, aren't I?
You can tease some big creature in your game and never left me fight it.
>Always a bigger fish/You ain't nuffin' guy, nuffin etc.
Fine. But you better had given me some great bosses before.
And Half Life 2 did not.
We had, if I recall correctly
>The Helicopter
>The Helicopter 2: Space Monster
>Zombie horde mode
>"Thats a big bug"(maybe? I don't recall fighting a guard")
>The Tripod
>COME AND SLAM, AND WELCOME, welcome to the City 17 Citadel Core Reactor
Was there anything else?

This guy is on point too >>378056527

>>378056637
I'm trying to understand your logic
The evidence for the rest being other races they augmented: they're doing it to humans with the combine and stalkers
The evidence for them being synthetic races built specifically by the combine: I don't know
I literally don't know how you came to this conclusion with the info given to you by the game

>>378056389
Race against the combine to find the Borealis and portal technology. Finale is you venturing back to Xen and confronting the combine overlords. Gordon nearly dies but G-Man appears and lets him live. G-Man remains completely unexplained.

>>378056747
The synths are made from the ground up to be a gunship or a dropship or strider or whatever
Stalkers and Combine Soldiers are just augmented humans

>>378056389
Gordon is revealed to be an interdimensional being that gets put out of stasis when shit goes down in Earth.

>>378056065
Sort of agree, except I really don't think every single piece of cut content was amazing or good.

>>378056831
But where is your proofs
I don't understand where you get this idea
>>378056970
Every piece is an exaggeration, but there was a LOT of shit that was cut that was just plain better than what we got in the game

>>378056527
Striders are horribly unfun to fight until Episode 2.

>>378056904
This is the worst thing I've read in 2017

>>378057056
>I don't understand where you get this idea
>synth
>synthetic
>produced artificially

>>378056831
>>378056747
My understanding was, if either of you have seen Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and remember the Dominion lackeys, the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar, were of similar principle as the Combine Synths.
The Founders thousands of years ago found the Vorta/Hem'Hadar ancestors and evolved them to be their servants.
I took away from Combine that they conquered the home world of proto-strider and proto-gunship and evolved them into their weapon platforms.
Combine soldiers are also seemingly getting slowly evolved into something more.

>>378057201
I understand that but all we have to go on is the fact that they're actively mutating and augmenting humans to make combine soldiers
>>378057206
That's what I'm saying but I'm saying that they're adding onto whatever race they subjugate, not making them from the ground up

>>378057091
Anon i don't even know
The lust for HL3 makes me write shit like that

>>378043419
I feel like Ep 1 was ruined by the stupid achievement which required you to complete the game with only 1 bullet. There were so many obvious things sacrificed to make that possible, just made the game as a whole so dull. Not to mention the supercharged gravity gun section was shit.

Thank god episode 2 was pretty good. Gnome achievement was a much better idea.

Did anyone else get the sense that the combine machinery, general aesthetic was ripped off from Blame? Not that it's a bad thing.

Metroid Prime (2002)
>first-person perspective
>player character wears a visor
>environmental effects such as fog, steam, and raindrops appear on visor

Half-Life 2
>first-person perspective
>player character wears glasses
>complete lack of visible environmental effects on the glasses

>>378055348
>you're right of course, more diverse enemies makes a game more fun.
Yeah I think Valve wanted to keep the gameplay simple but new. I think this came at a cost though, as most of the enemies you fight are pretty one note and the weapons you use are boring baring a few exceptions.
I'm sure this is due to the beta leak that happened. Valve probably scrapped any planned Xen wildlife beyond headcrabs since they're the most iconic.

>>378056097
Rip. Well I think ill go download and play SMOD again. Thanks Anon.

>>378056527
I agree. Despite being occupied by an inter-dimensional alien conglomerate, the Combine didnt feel very alien. As you said, Raising the Bar had a lot of freaking looking designs that would of been awesome to see. Valve should of flexed their creative muscles more instead of scrapping everything after the leak.
> I looked through one of the concept art books and they originally had all these interesting, grotesque variations on the combines but none of them made it into the final game. It was like they were so afraid of making a mistake that they opted for the most banal yet polished path.
Oh man, if HL1 wasn't limited by the tech of the time it would of been such a crazy game. My dream game is basically HL1 with its concepts brought to life.

>>378057346
raising the bar says
>"self-replicating robots that evolve", "created or taken over by the Combine and enslaved during their conquests and wars."
So some of them are real organisms that were augmented and some of them are created from the ground up.

>>378057963
Oh, well that's me shown up
Sorry for being retarded anon
I genuinely didn't know that

>>378056310
The AI at the time was fucking amazing and completely unsurpassed until FEAR, and even today it'll hold its own against a lot of modern games. The set pieces were also pretty well integrated into the combat sections and it it was very well paced. Production values were good. Source Engine helped kickstart the engine wars.

>>378057826
>Oh man, if HL1 wasn't limited by the tech of the time it would of been such a crazy game. My dream game is basically HL1 with its concepts brought to life.
Wasn't one of the original concepts for HL1 an alien that would literally rape the player to death?

>>378058358
>The AI at the time was fucking amazing
it felt dumb and limited compared to Far Cry

Is /v/ worried about the upcoming Half-Life and Portal films? You just know it's going to be a horrendous mistreatment.

>>378058403
Yeah

Okay maybe not THAT one.

>>378058225
I didn't know either and just read that.

>>378058640
They've been "Upcoming" since fucking 2007, cunt
I'm no more worried about them than I'm worried about the safety of my virginity
>>378058696
interdasting
I hope I missed something in the game, I hate when important shit about a games lore is hidden in interviews and art books
I love both of those but if it's something that wasn't cut then have a way to find it out without having to go combing through the rest of the shit

>>378058419
The Far Cry AI seemed pretty good up until you figured out how to abuse it, then the AI was pretty bad.

>>378041236
Without a fucking doubt.

>>378058935
What do you mean? They overreact to sounds but it makes for some fun gameplay since you can throw them off and flank them, which is more tactical than anything you can do in HL2.

They have lots of problems (grenades, overreacting to sounds to the point where they'll turn around if something explodes behind them in the middle of a firefight, getting stuck in cover), but overall they're better than HL2's attempt.

>>378041236
Borderlands 2 is better, OpFor is just a mostly successful expack with a godawful final boss.

>>378058358

>The AI at the time was fucking amazing and completely unsurpassed

Combat Evolved had better AI

>>378059239
This is correct as well.

Opposing Force > Half Life > Half Life 2 Episode 2 >Half Life 2 > Half Life 2 Episode 1 > Blue Shift

>>378056389
open world with timed quests.

>>378040908
I played that, it's a neat little 45 minute venture with a rocket jumping gun. Final area was great from a design standpoint.

Still, Quake's my real favorite though, I feel like HL2 never really took off on the modding scene like Q1 or HL1 did.

>>378059132
I always found that HL2's AI (mostly the combine, Civil Protection are shit but they're early game so it's deliberate) made better use of other combatants and the environment. In Far Cry the AI didn't seem aware of each other to make use of their numbers and support one another.

>>378059310
op4 had more stuff than hl1 but didn't use it as well.

I played HL1 and its expansions pretty much at release and HL2 at release. I recently played HL1 and 2 again and can really say that HL2 is the better game.

Try not to be mad about it.

>>378059450
>In Far Cry the AI didn't seem aware of each other to make use of their numbers
That's not true. The easiest way to debunk it is something that I actually discovered way back on my first playthrough, and it honestly blew my mind. I tagged a group of four mercs on a dense forest area and then accidentally startled them. I wasn't prepared to fight them on the spot, so I sprinted away. On the radar I could see all four dots converging on the location where I'd be if I retreated without sprinting, two dots from the right, two from the left. If I decided to take the fight on the spot, I'd be surrounded and dead.

>>378055884
Or you know, the hundreds of dead humans in Xen

>>378059647
Black Mesa is better than HL2

>>378058935

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0WqAmuSXEQ

A bit of a nitpick, but I really hate how slow Gordon moves without sprinting in HL2.

HL1 had Gordon move a lot faster and featured no sprint mechanic, making the game much better paced for me.

>>378059691

Wrong. It's real good but it's still not better than 2.

>>378059997
If you play an older version of HL2 or a mod to revert it to older mechanics you can bunnyhop everywhere at retarded speeds.

>>378059990
>one unsual bug
cool

>>378058419
>Far Cry
>AI
you mean see me 3000000 miles off another island and point a bullet straight into me AI? no thanks

>>378060532
Only snipers had that kind of vision, and they weren't all that accurate at range. And you had a sniper rifle of your own.

>>378060532
>be on Boat level
>throw grenade into water to kill some fish
>suddenly max alert bar
>get hit by a bullet
>6 seconds later the tracer sprite goes past me
lmao

>>378060672
You could snipe someone to put the others on heightened alert and they have their vision stat set to max and if you throw a grenade even through foliage they always know exactly where you are and you're fucking sprayed with bullets.

>>378060753
The bullets in Far Cry are weird, the actual round is the usual laser hitscan deal and the arcing tracers are just for show. It gets especially strange when you try to gun down helicopters with the mounted minigun, when you put the reticle on the chopper you see the stream of tracers dropping way off course but the actual rounds are still wrecking its shit.

>>378061037
>You could snipe someone to put the others on heightened alert
They aren't very accurate and won't engage at extreme ranges, especially not guys without optics. They'll converge to your last known position, or the position where they last heard a sound. As I said above, that can actually be detrimental to their combat performance - detonate an explosive barrel behind a merc shooting at you, and he'll turn back, allowing you to kill him quickly (they don't have any armour on the back for some reason, I guess it's because you're shooting through backpack and it doesn't count as armour? I think they will sometimes shoot your last known position, but it's sadly pretty rare. There's a place on the third map, near the large stone stairs, where, when you alert mercs, they start spraying your last known position and they'll do that literally forever, until you kill them. It's like there's some script specifically there. I think there are some other places too where it works like that. Just awkward.

>>378061365
Lots of games do that. HL2 does that with the pulse rifle.

>>378060753
>>378061365
I've tried to find a mod that made Far Cry have working ballistics but they don't exist. It'd be fucking perfect for the game. It was one of the first to feature some form of penetration (only through huts and some crates, though) but to have drop and travel time would have been perfect.

>>378061743
>It was one of the first to feature some form of penetration
CS did that, HL1 sort of did that too with the Gauss.

And yeah, it would be neat though you'd have to either let the AI use hitscan or overwrite it completely, which is probably not a realistic task.

There's a mod that allows using ironsights for immersion, but it's fucked if you lean, and lack of leaning makes the game non-trivially harder.

>>378061450
>Lots of games do that. HL2 does that with the pulse rifle.
Yeah, but in most games the tracer is still actually going to follow the bullet's path. Far Cry doesn't bother with that.

>>378062383
I don't think I experienced tracers going really out of sync with my copy. They just go slower than hitscan, so if you're shooting a moving target they'll miss. In close combat you won't even notice that. Well, actually I didn't notice in long-range gameplay either at first, but I'm not very attentive.

>>378041904
For a review as aggressive as this I'm happy he at least acknowledged there are positives about this game instead of just raving for for 34 minutes about how horrible it is. And his points are pretty solid.

Biggest complaint about it is how fast he talks, wish he'd slow down a bit. Hard to absorb information when it's fed to your at 20 words a second.

>hurr Half Life 2 is bad

Nu-/v/ needs to leave. I'm tired of newfags who simply hate on games just for the sake of hating on them. Half Life 2 is obviously an amazing game, a 9 or 10 out of 10. The only reason people shit on it is because it doesn't follow the same fucking formula that Half Life 1 did. It's almost like we want something NEW in a sequel!

>>378063094
>I'm tired of newfags who simply hate on games just for the sake of hating on them.
There is an entire fucking thread right here filled with reasoned arguments as to why HL2 is not a great game. You are the newfag.

>>378063094
My biggest complaint about it was just me finding the pacing of the game boring and it's game play to be stale and not hold up very well in terms of combat mechanics and such. That's just my opinion though.

>>378059132
>Borderlands 2 is better
t. Anthony Burch

>>378052810
What if it's pure gameplay and the characters say things to indicate what they're doing?

>>378053148
hating on things is the hip thing to do these days
you should try it, anon

>>378056389
>Game starts off with you trying to find the borealis with Alyx, racing against the combine and also saving Mossman or some shit
>New combine units and alien creatures show up
>Cool Source 2 tech demo shit I guess
>Halfway through the game Shepard and Chell show up to retrieve the lost borealis technology for GLaDOS
>2v2 boss fight
>Bossfight accidentally activates the aperture technology
>Finale has you going to the combine homeworld using the aperture device
>Revived Breen miniboss
>All 4 of you team up to fight the combine leader for the final boss while revived Breen begs you to stop
>You beat him and G-man shows up
>"You four have done well. Now it is time, for your NEXT mission"
>L4D 4 Logo

>>378057767
Speaking of comparing a Gamecube game to HL2 I thought Super Mario Sunshine had better looking water (IE: it's not flat)