I agree with your opinion on the extra "functionality" added by the physics, it doesn't hinder the experience at all (like scripted evvents, imo, totally take away the action and spontaneity of the game). Using it for certain set purposes or goals is great, but I think things shouldn't be made all too scripted or obligatory. HL2 does really well in this regard and that's why everybody likes it so much of course.

To explain a bit more: I really really disliked Call of Duty, because the whole game was scripted to a literal death. And that game was GOTY 2003? I don't believe it! Even a game like doom3, despised by so many on these boards offered 500% more gameplay and applicable intuition to the gamer than the whole "oh yeah, and then the player comes in and points his gun somewhere, shoots, and the scripting continues"-approach of that bogus movie-like pile of crap. I thought the days of CDi were over.

Yes you're right, but I had no clue at the beginning what HL2 was. Althought I cherished HL1, i had avoided reviews / pictures / samples etc of HL2 to allow myself to be fresh (sorta)... /me sniffs armpit...

like avoiding movie trailers... and you're right, you're sorta just chucked into a place given some guns and told to kick ass for the 'cause'.

But i liked the way the story (albeit a little obvious) was released to me. You're right,,, gordon was kinda a tool, and some coversation options or choices to do A instead of B with consequences would have been fun.

I guess what HL2 needed more was some drama to keep you interested, like losing a small battle with your squad and as a result having to defend an area while they escape. I also felt that the combine levels were sorta about 10% of what they should have been. Perhaps Valve had more in mind here but ran out of time.

BTW: puzzles and quests in FPS games are fun. I know some ppl dislike the myst style in an FPS, but using the gravity gun to build a teeter-totter and catapult my arse onto a ledge was awesome! i think that level of player independence and mental challenge was very fun. Perhaps using puzzles for more than (find the batteries to open the door!) could be used to provide drama. (like saving people in a boat with the grav gun, to become popular with the rebels)... i dunno... some sort of rpg-style quest like stuff to move the story forward...

I know we had goals the whole time to move the game forward, but having a larger story with twists etc... would have made this totally badass game even better. I guess I'm asking for a game that's more tailored older people...

but not so far as CSI: GMan vs. Freeman

On a side note, I heared that HL3 is due out early 2005

Really? I heard crack cocaine use was on the rise...



http://tds.nin.com/

Well, it is now "later than tomorrow", and all Valve have done since the release date is make sure they have blocked out the pirates.

How about spending some time supporting the people who bought your product?

On a side note, I heared that HL3 is due out early 2005 (they must have thought Matrix 2 & 3 was a good idea - nuff said)...

Fishy, I knew that this was the background to hl2, but it still didn't make a difference. You know it at the start, you can see it in the end, and nothing really changes in between. You meet some people, but it's like you meet a person and immediately go on to kill some bad guys just because they want you to...the fact is that gordon is confused and has the position to not simply start doing what everybody says...a more dramatic introduction to the story is what I must be missing, I think.

Furthermore, this combine has massive power but all you do is travel the whole freaking country whistling, without being held back. It's like the game leads you to the end using a golden cord, and anything you touch bows down like you're the president himself. This is realistic nor fun.

Looks like the stuttering sound bug is not the only thing Valve has been busy fixing ....

http://steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=184810&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

You cannot make anything fool-proof. The fools are too inventive

there was no motivation to kill the Combine, and, worse, no real explanation as to who they were in the world. There were allusions to other cities right at the beginning, but City 17 seemed to be isolated from the rest of the world for no apparent reason. Was the Combine the equivalent of Duke's EDF? Were they the oppressive police in future cities such as that depicted in The Running Man (anyone else keep thinking of this?)

I'm sorry you weren't paying attention, because you missed a very cool and critical part of the story...

I may have some details incorrect so bear with me everybody, but from my gleanin': (it's a spoiler to it's secret text).

Black Mesa cracked open the parallel dimension Xen, which allowed a huge mess of Xen aliens to get through the portal and they engaged earth in a war which lasted a mere few hours. (remember the newspaper clippings in the lab?)

The Xen aliens kicked the crap outta everyone and now have control of earth. They're converting humans into their worker slaves slowly by preventing people from reproducing and trying to get rid of independent thought (making people more "rational"). This allows them full control over their slaves. There are several cities that used to be full of people and are now nothing but combine (harvesting the humans for slaves and slowly exterminating the human race).

The combine soldiers are (according to an image I found behind a propane tank near the train bridge level) some sort of monkey or cybernetic human that has been manipulated into serving a purpose (hence they are cannon fodder for Gordon later on). Who cares about monkeys? (they make for fun grav gun toys).

In the midst of the chaos the old black mesa administrator has managed to become the 'mayor' or human liason to the aliens for city 17. (hence the comments about our 'benefactors'...) As a result he's familiar with Gordon and Eli / Alyx etc.. Which is why Alyx was 'reminding' me about how much i hated that guy at black mesa.

He's trying to maintain control of the city but he probably doesn't understand (or is too power hungry to care) that the human race is being exterminated underneath his feet. In sort of a 'bridge over river kwai' way, he loses track of who the enemy is because he's so happy with his power.

As a result Gordon, who's completely confused and has been placed into this 'test' by the gman turns out to be leading a resistance force for humans against their combine overlords to kick some alien butt and try and save humanity.

I think the character development was comparable to most movies i've seen, although it would have been more believable if Gordon had opened his mouth for more than just a sandwhich. (think chit-chat).


Of course i could be completely wrong...

This comment was edited on Nov 23, 13:10.

My point in saying "Halo what..." was that because of HL2, Halo2 can now be seen for the steaming POS that it is.

What was also bad (and unforently is becoming a trend) is showing stuff in the E3 demo and totally removing it from the final product.

If you read that "Final Hours of HL2" from GameSpot / Spy / Wherever (can't be arsed to find a link) you'll find that explained. The E3 HL2 demo was made as a "proof of concept" once the Source Engine was stable(ish) and was designed as a document by the designers to show Gabe et al what they wanted to do with the game. So they made a series of short sections (The Strider, the following Antlions in Nova-Prospekt etc) to show how they intended to use the engine. But inevitably with designing a complex project, bits get edited, changed and chopped out. Ask anyone that does serious mapping (or read Dave Johnston's story behind the creation of de_dust) and you'll see how organic mapping and designing content for games is.

______________________
We don't go to Ravenholm.

What was also bad (and unforently is becoming a trend) is showing stuff in the E3 demo and totally removing it from the final product. Example is the blue tentacle that was removed and only found that out in the prima book that came with the DVD 'collectors edition' (only thing it'll collect is shelf space as the box was pretty much ass bare), and the level where you fight off combine soldiers via the gravity gun and block the door and see the blinds on the window shot up. Mind you that level is in the game, but completely barren of the experience I was wanting for it. And again also with all the physics where you let loose the I beam to swing back and forth and drop a cargo container on combine below aftershooting out the blocks on 1 side.

And Halo 2 was this way as well, with the New Mabassa level shown at E3 was turned into a drab lifeless brief city run with a few tunnel levels thrown in.

Either way I don't care who got my money for Half Life 2, after what I was expecting and what I got I am disappointed.

Well put Dr Fripp. I agree (and from here on I'm assuming most people know the story, so I won't bother with SST) that there was no motivation to kill the Combine, and, worse, no real explanation as to who they were in the world. There were allusions to other cities right at the beginning, but City 17 seemed to be isolated from the rest of the world for no apparent reason. Was the Combine the equivalent of Duke's EDF? Were they the oppressive police in future cities such as that depicted in The Running Man (anyone else keep thinking of this?)

Further, there were allusions to why the administrator from Black Mesa now wants to somehow (genetically or otherwise) advance humans. HL was in the semi-believable cold-war bunker, science meets sci-fi world. City 17 is, in itself, a plausible scenario as presented. But the link between the two was never explained nor explored. As for who the G-Man was referring to when offering Gordon's services around, well that further isolates City 17 from (presumably) other challenges left for HL3 etc.

NOW... (for those still reading ;P) I can't sum it up much better than you did: "the story of half life 2 doesn't bring anything new to that universe and therefore it was the only letdown (still a big one) of an otherwise classic game". HL2 was great. I loved it, and will play it many times over and recommend it to everyone. But to champion its story is to miss the point. The excitement, the environments, the proper use of physics, so on, that was what I enjoyed, and I would say that is what made it (for me) a great game.


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We don't go to Ravenholm.

This comment was edited on Nov 23, 08:16.

I don't know what you mean by "a story that doesn't give you much to chew on but has it where it counts". In my view, you knew from the start that you were going to work for some guy named the g-man, who could apparently transport you to various (parallel?) dimensions. All that happened in the second game was that this fact got acknowledged. There wasn't a single bit more to it than that, and all the stuff about city 17 (which everybody knew except you) remained left to guess (like why does everyone expect gordon to know the situation in city 17, if he has been away for such a long time?).

Such important info - it is essential for gordon's motive to kill - doesn't get presented or hinted at, but instead you get some cheap melodramatic "social interaction" which is only an excuse to show off a facial animation technology. Alex was REALLY out of place in this environment (and useless IMO), and not for a single moment I felt compelled to go out and move to their (Alex/Eli's) place or save their ass.

All this means that in the beginning I was totally disconnected to the reason why I should ever kill anyone or get into so much trouble in the first place (although I had the feeling nobody really wanted to block my path anyway, another letdown).

Personally, I think the story of half life 2 doesn't bring anything new to that universe and therefore it was the only letdown (still a big one) of an otherwise classic game. I rather even have a somewhat simpler and tackier story like doom3's presented well (in the form of the stones, for one), than one with so much promise that just doesn't evolve during an entire game like in HL2. They don't have to hand it to me on a silver platter, but this way I really felt like the story and people in city 17 didn't matter.

Just my opinion, so feel free to flame.
This comment was edited on Nov 23, 08:04.

It's 4:30AM and I just finished the game. Loved it. Only had very minor stuttering. Never had a single problem with Steam (which I used to purchase the game.) Graphics were silky smooth at 1280x1024 on a Radeon 9800 Pro. The ending was cool. Ya, they kept you in the dark about a lot of the storyline, but overall it makes sense. Admittedly there's a fine line between a stupid fluffy little story and a story that doesn't give you much to chew on but has it where it counts. I think HL2 made it into the latter.

I'm enjoying HL2 so far, depite how much of a pain in the tits Steam was/is to use; albiet it is a bit short on actual variety of enemies and weapons (there's only about 2/3 distinct enemies I can remember.... zombies, soldiers, ants, and far too few guns).

Good to see they've fixed this, though. Stuttering seems to get really bad in the 3rd chapter(I think) of the game.

that's all i'm sayin. i'm super happy that there were no silly 'jump on this box -- don't fall into the void' levels like the last few in hl. man, those were annoying.

i just wish that they did a better job of explaining the world, story, and overall enviornment better. that ending (overall) was pretty abrubt, and i didn't really ever understand what the combine was, why the building was eating c17, nor what was up with the aliens. weird.

Apparently the biggest new time sink is the amount of time spent in 3dsmax/Generic, these new environments with their detailed rendered objects/meshes take a huge amount of time to create and populate. For example consider the number of prefabs that came with the sdk (0).

I'd be quite interested in paying $15 for HL: Source. It didn't come on any DVD version of the game in the UK, and I didn't want to go the Steam route. Or if you could upgrade your bought DVD for $89 less the £35 I paid for it. That'd be cool.
If mods are just gonna be available to those that pay at purchase that would suck.

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We don't go to Ravenholm.

yeah I got bronze through steam mainly because of the CD/DVD authentication. that was just plain silly to have the disc in the drive....

err...raVen? quazz may have bought a video card that had HL2 as a "freebie". My roommate didn't "pay for" his copy of HL2, either. He bought a 9600 XT or whatever.

I bought my copy thru steam, after hearing that the boxed version doesn't even bother to come with a manual. Vivendi went cheapASS on the box version, I'd rather give my money to Valve and hope they use it to self-fund yet another awesome product...even if I have to wait another 5 years for it.

quazz (the faggot) said:
Good thing I didn't pay for my version. And they didn't even bother to include real multiplayer.

Yeah, when you go buy the game, and then play it I might give a shit.