Half-Life 2 Beta

>>386473641
well this look worse than what we ended up with so here's that

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>>386473909
Only if you're a fag

>>386475484
This looks like shit too. HOWEVER, it looks like a fun enemy to fight. HOWEVER, Strider Hunters don't look like crap and add a tough enemy archetype to the game. HOWEVER, they're only in Episode 2, sadly.

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As someone who sought out a lot of the beta content and was even on a team of people restoring some of it to playability, it wasn't really all that great. They had some really neat ideas but they also had a lot of shitty levels and things did look way better post-beta. I think mostly it's just a grass is always greener thing, and inevitably games have to cut and change ideas as they go along, often for the better.

The one thing I will miss though is they seemed to have much more variety in enemies. Weapons were a mixed bad, they had a lot of redundant weapons, but enemies were filled with great ideas and the biggest flaw of HL2 is just the blandness of fighting the combine over and over again.

>Combine Guard acting as a massive juggernaut with individually destroyable pieces of armor
>A lot more returning Xen monsters in the wilderness like the houndeye and bullsquid
>More combine war machines like the Synth and the Mortar
>Combine Assassin who would flip around and kick the shit out of you if you got too close
>Stalkers that were a horrifying sight to see moving around
>Cremators that carried and interesting weapon and would be seen wandering the streets doing their job during the big battle

I get they cut a lot of this because it would've made the game more campy, but half-life should be campy. The aliens in the original were not exactly hard sci fi. The biggest loss is the combine guard who was eventually remade into the Hunter which was probably more fun to fight than the Guard but sadly only in episode 2.

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>>386475598
It looks cool as fuck, what are you talking about. You want shitty orwellian cop pallete swaps instead?

>>386475985
Yeah, aesthetically HL2 was on point. It's just gameplay that lacked.

I don't mind this piece of concept art too much, though. Strider hunters look better, but it sucks they didn't finish them until Ep.2.

>Have all your progress leaked to the internet
>Scrap and rework most of it as a result

Valve has always been proud and stubborn fucks

>>386476131
>gameplay that lacked.
Only if you think retroactively. At the time there was nothing else like it and it's gameplay was extremely good. It's still a fun game to play even know, but the driving segments and enemy variety bogs it down now in my opinion

>>386473641
The finished product looks better in the sense that they upped the scale of the city quite a bit and you really do feel rather small in a big sprawling city.

I just wish HL2 had weapons that were satisfying to use, every fucking gun excluding the revolver felt like a peashooter.

>>386476572
>Only if you think retroactively.
It lacked compared to the original game...

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>>386476131
No it wasn't, it looks almost minimal compared to how refined 1 looks. The rebels look like fucking hipsters, it's terrible

>>386476720
This is a really shitty meme. Every gun in half life 2 is awesome except the SMG which is just alright

>>386476784
How? The gameplay is literally the same except with the addition of the gravity gun and physics

>>386476820
Well, I disagree.

>>386476889
And with the removal of energy weapons and most high-threat alien enemies...

>>386476954
The removal of *an* energy weapon and the introduction of other high threat aliens

>>386476572
I genuinely liked the driving sequences. Airboat had segments where they relied too much on it's weird physics and fighting IN the airboat was annoying at the end but generally it was a fun way to get between major set pieces and they had you get out both for optional side buildings and for big moments. Some of my favorite moments were along highway 17.

Jalopy was a great fix to the physics and kept that fun way to get around, but Episode 2 is such a sad thing to replay knowing valve is dead.

>>386476131
It wasn't lacking in 2004. Playing the game when it was released was insane. Playing fetch with Dog, taking down striders with the rocket launcher, assaulting Nova Prospekt with the antlions and blasting combines with the overcharged gravity gun was so new and groundbreaking gameplay elements at the time. Incredible.

>>386477126
>The removal of *an* energy weapon
I know the unlimited ammo peashooter you have on your car is supposed to be tau cannon lite but it doesn't feel anything like it.
>introduction of other high threat aliens
Striders are dreadfully boring and gunships are a minigame (a kinda cool minigame). And that's it.

>>386477224
Half-Life 2 is a great example of how what was once innovative ends up aging poorly as a result

>>386477224
I played it in 2005. I didn't like it much. I played it later again and I liked it more. Striders are awful enemies and when you learn how they work they're even more awful and stupid.

>>386477261
Wait are you comparing it to the first Half Life?

>>386477261
Now THAT is one of the biggest flaws in the game for me. The fact that these big enemy moments boiled down to "Hit it with rockets!"

The game needed more mid sized enemies, shit like the Hunter where it takes a lot but can casually appear without some big setup.

>>386477350
>aging poorly as a result
what do you mean?

>>386477350
It didn't age poorly, you're just a fucking idiot.

>>386477595
All source games have aged like milk

>>386477674
What a shitty opinion. You literally can't compare other games to Valve games because they're literally THAT good. Every single one has brought something new and fresh, and just because they don't have Crysis graphics you're slagging it off? Go and play Mass Effect you absolute cretin. You hate fun and videogames, you just love to argue. WHy don't you just fuck off?

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>>386476954
You can disagree but it doesn't make it true. A more rugged dark sci-f dystopia aesthetic meshed better with the acid techno soundtrack, among other things. What we got screams pretentious considering how plagiarized it is

>>386477350
It's funny because the only reason why it aged poorly is because every other game started doing what Half Life 2 did.

Real time in game cutsceens? Half-Life 2.
Place physics engine and ragdolls? Half-Life 2
Expressive characters faces? Half-Life 2.
Environmental story telling? Half-Life 2
Real time lighting and HDR? Half-Life 2

I'm not saving Half-Life 2 did these all first, but I am saying Half-life 2 made them common place.

>>386477437
Yeah, obviously.

>>386477889
Your pic is just lower detailed.
>screams pretentious
what
>plagiarized
what

>>386477904
HL2 didn't even have HDR until Lost Coast

Half-Life 2, and the Source engine in general was the last big jump in gaming technology and graphics we have ever, and will ever see.

Source engine is still on par with about everything else out there today.

>>386473641
Because hackers took the beta from them

>>386478107
Max Payne 2 came out a year before HL2 and looked much better.

Half life 2 was just a tech demo to sell the Source engine.

>>386477904
>Environmental story telling? Half-Life 2
plenty of games did that, for years before HL2, one of them being HL1

it's just that very few games did it as well, as often, or as deeply as HL1 and 2

>>386478240
And doom 3 came in same year and looks like shit.

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>>386478107
>Valve will never make Half-Life 3 because they don't have any bar setting tech

>>386478240
Max Payne 2 didn't have near the scale, or technology the Source engine brings to the table.

>>386478336
>tfw Doom 3 received intense praise for it's graphics
>tfw even at the time I couldn't stand the waxy look of everything in that game.

>>386477880
pcbros are just sad

>>386478336
I loved Doom 3, and thought it looked pretty okay.

Not at all putting it up there with Source, of course.

>>386478107
>Source engine is still on par with about everything else out there today.

lol

jerk off HL2 all you want but if we're going to judge it purely on graphics it isn't all that great

Wasn't it scrapped because of Russian hackers?

>>386478336
Doom 3 looks better than HL2 indoors. More details and better lighting.

>>386478447
Still looked better.

>>386478065
Look at the civilians in beta, everyone is completely homogenized to a higher extent than retail due to the air exchange which fits the style better and they all have an unnerving look them. They dropped this for diversifying and the hipster look as some "fight against authority" progessive shit, no attitude at all
>plagiarism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlD5uvOt_Sw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2gxLqR7HM

>>386473641
The first designs make the hl2 too radically (and detrimentally) different to the overall presentation, level layout and palette of half life 1

Im glad they took the decisions they did with the beta and started over, everything looks much more clean, appropiate and realistic to be in. It still reeks of orwellian, still reeks of industrialization, but now its just less muddy looking.

I agree, they took many things out that could have added more depth to the worldbuilding (manhack arcade (i really wanted this one), child labor and children) but they gracefully made up to it with other plots (reproduction stopped, the resistance, slavery, dynamic looking world, making everyone seem like they had or want to have actual lives).

Regarding the lack of enemy variety, i would normally be mad at this, but i guess they knew what they were doing with the lack of variety and made every enemy encounter a new experience with different conditions and ways to succeed, specially with the introduction of the gravity gun and also in the episodic games where encounters get increasingly creative.

I wont even discuss the soundtrack, its a given that it was a massive success and (in my opinion, the second best element of the franchise)

>>386477889
>A more rugged dark sci-f dystopia aesthetic meshed better with the acid techno soundtrack, among other things.

Thats exactly the problem, noone wanted that except you, apparently

It would have not fit the world built in half life 1, im absolutely sure that if half life2 beta would have been released people would complain about where did all this new shit come from what happened to my labs and funny looking aliens. They still took huge risks in the final release introducing the combine dominion, just more subtly than that "rugged" cyberpunkish piece of shit you call "better"

Maybe its just a matter of taste and yours is shit so you wanted to make this thread to whine, you deeply closeted homosexual

What's the best way to play the leak nowadays, just download the leak, or play one of those mods that try to work the content into the retail game?

>>386475985
Is that an invid battle life form?

>>386479360
I don't give a shit if it isn't 'realistic', nothing about the concept is realistic nor does realism add to it. Half Life 1 is not remotely plausible but it's cool and refined with lots of good designs and a few cornball ones here and there.

It's not "cyberpunkish", cyberpunk is flashy and tacky, this is dark dystopian, and it is better than the la resistance look it got. In fact it very much the industrial look of HL1. It's very clearly different in spirit. The only ones who went out of their way to say this type of aesthetic "resonates" with them are modern faggot reviewers so what does that say about you, projecting faggot

>>386473641
>>386475484
These are bad.