Is it me getting older and jaded or Half-Life 2 is one of the worst shooters?

[Master]

Hmm, I forgot the two The Suffering games, which you can play in third person perspective or first. Both are somewhat decent but nothing exceptional.

The Suffering...

somewhat decent but nothing exceptional

 

[Trotsky]

I haven't played metal gear but for the record i didn't mean it in the sense i consider the writing to be particularly bad. I mean it is but it isn't Bethesda bad for instance. I just hated how condescending it was. That kid nailed it in that review. The game was just taking me for an idiot with all the coddling and the constant references to the original that made no god damn sense.

"Hey it's me, Barney"

Fuck you Valve.

Fair enough. Metal gear is just poorly written.

I played half life 2 immediately after half life 1 and I wasn't big on the references, I didn't know people even paid attention to them.

I don't know what you played but the early Metal Gear games and the first three Metal Gear Solid games were extremely well written and weave together as a single seamless story. It all went downhill after MGS3 when Kojima's co-writer Tomokazu Fukushima abruptly left the series. It was never the same afterward despite the gameplay/graphics.

 

[Ash]

That game lets you play as a sassy gingerbread man. If that's not what you're looking for out of gaming, I don't know what could satisfy your cold, hard heart.

Shooters are simple enough as it is. We don't need Rareware-style shooters where you can't even fucking crouch or jump, for no damn reason. Sure Doom was that way but it was not from 2005, where it was well established as standard. Every single shooter that came immediately after doom and wasn't on the same engine even. That said, it was still a good game, but the aforementioned issue plus a meh campaign keeps it from being truly great. It was mostly all about co-op and the mini-games.

 

[Icewater]

The saddest thing about HL2 was the lack of quality original mods. The only ones I recall being worth much (that weren't updates of HL1 mods) were Neotokyo and Dystopia.

This, fuck. After all the awesome mods and levels that HL1 spawned, my body was so ready for HL2 and yet... the mods mostly never materialized. Over the years a few good and even really good ones popped up but HL2's modding community was never as prolific as that of the first game and I still don't really know why.

 

[Destroid]

The saddest thing about HL2 was the lack of quality original mods. The only ones I recall being worth much (that weren't updates of HL1 mods) were Neotokyo and Dystopia.

This, fuck. After all the awesome mods and levels that HL1 spawned, my body was so ready for HL2 and yet... the mods mostly never materialized. Over the years a few good and even really good ones popped up but HL2's modding community was never as prolific as that of the first game and I still don't really know why.

Many people put it down to the rising graphics fidelity raising the barrier of entry. It was quite a shock at the time because until then it had been nothing but massive growth since Quake.

 

[tormund]

Pursuit of graphic fidelity is generally fatal for FPS maping communities. That is the reason why Quake and Duke 3D mappers nowadays release rare single maps, either as standalone releases or in compilations with other mappers, with impressive visuals, that both take ages to make and present high barrier to entry for new mappers (as community cannot help but judge all new releases by constantly rising presentation-related standards). Same thing was fatal for Unreal's mapping community, and it took huge tool on the productivity of HL2 one.

CyberWhale
Explain why you disagree with FEAR's gunplay being far superior to HL2 one, don't just abuse the rating system by giving negative ratings to everyone who wrote so.

 

[thesoup]

No.

 

[tormund]

Yes.

 

[Accept]

Pursuit of graphic fidelity is generally fatal for FPS maping communities. That is the reason why Quake and Duke 3D mappers nowadays release rare single maps, either as standalone releases or in compilations with other mappers, with impressive visuals, that both take ages to make and present high barrier to entry for new mappers (as community cannot help but judge all new releases by constantly rising presentation-related standards). Same thing was fatal for Unreal's mapping community, and it took huge tool on the productivity of HL2 one.

CyberWhale
Explain why you disagree with FEAR's gunplay being far superior to HL2 one, don't just abuse the rating system by giving negative ratings to everyone who wrote so.

Yeah, I remember seeing some well known mappers releasing a few Quake levels that while being brilliant levels that played well, lacked a bit of polish of some of their previous work and getting slammed for it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It is because nobody gave a shit about making mods for Half Life 2. Boring uninspiring game fails to inspire. Like, fucking duh.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Finally, it treats cats with contempt. ("What cat?")

]

Can someone harass DU into giving us the ability to institute mulitple brofists. There's nothing in the current available options that adequately recognises the wisdom of this statement?

 

[tormund]

So, Valve is Don Bluth of video games?

 

[Azrael the cat]

Bear in mind, that in reviews at the time, HL2 was really being compared to one game only - Doom 3. They were both tech demos in a sense, but they represented a massive, almost 'new console generation' style leap in graphics. All those physics puzzles? There for the same reason, those 2 engines were a tech leap (not in terms of them being the first to have any of the individual components, that's not how PC tech advancement works, but as a whole it was a tech leap) and they wanted to show that shit off.

I've no idea whether the Doom 3 engine was that much worse than Source. A lot of ok-to-good games got made on source, while Doom 3 sort of disappeared as an engine. But maybe that was presentation, Doom 3 didn't exactly show off the strengths of the engine. My reaction upon playing it matched my CGI-artist (works mostly on ads, but also has LoTR tech credits and the like) friend's impression - 'kind of wish this was a Deus Ex game instead of a shooter, as being a shooter seems to undersell the engine's potential''.

 

[Azrael the cat]

So, Valve is Don Bluth of video games?

Oh be fair. Ok, they're not the Michael Bluth. But at the very least, they're Michael Bluth's sister, who used to get naked in 'breast-filled-yet-genuinely-good-and-Elle McPherson-also-gets-her-tits-out-but-gets-seriously-upstaged-by-how-beautiful-young-'Michael Bluths-sister'-aka-Portia De Rossi-is' critical darling 'Sirens'.

 

[Latro]

what

 

[Hoplopfheil]

So, Valve is Don Bluth of video games?

Oh be fair. Ok, they're not the Michael Bluth. But at the very least, they're Michael Bluth's sister, who used to get naked in 'breast-filled-yet-genuinely-good-and-Elle McPherson-also-gets-her-tits-out-but-gets-seriously-upstaged-by-how-beautiful-young-'Michael Bluths-sister'-aka-Portia De Rossi-is' critical darling 'Sirens'.

Reading this comment is like walking through a Salvador Dali painting...

 

[tormund]

For fuck's sake guys. I mentioned Don Bluth because of that cat thing. His animations suffered from particularly vicious example of the Problematic Feline Portrayal.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I've no idea whether the Doom 3 engine was that much worse than Source.

I think it was? I remember Doom 3 had very few on-screen enemies, and people here on the Codex said that the Doom 3 engine just lies down and dies if you fill with enemies, classic Doom-style. Its why monsters desintegrate when you kill them.

 

[Mr. Pink]

ravenholm and nova prospekt were by far the best levels. everything else was boring.

 

[sser]

Doom 3's claim to fame were its shadows, a rather unique development that was so good the programmer patented it.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Yah Ravenholm is fucking sweet, fighting headcrab zombies at night in the dark ruins of a eastern european city, with no company but a old man of somewhat dubious sanity, zombies and headcrabs from all directions, shotgun 'a blazin' and gravity gun pushing whatever can be dumped into zombies

 

[Lyric Suite]

A System Shock with that engine would have been great. But for a Doom game it was the absolute worst.

 

[Hoplopfheil]

A System Shock with that engine would have been great. But for a Doom game it was the absolute worst.

Doom 3 was a System Shock game, just not a very good one.

 

[Lyric Suite]

There's also tr00 Thief 4:



Doesn't seem bad, but this video makes it look like the engine is pretty limited. No directional sound? Cheap AI? Mmmmh. Fault of the modder, or the engine? Hard to say.

 

[Icewater]

It is because nobody gave a shit about making mods for Half Life 2. Boring uninspiring game fails to inspire. Like, fucking duh.

This is triple-B (blatant brofist bait) — explanation is retadred because 1. most people thought it was awesome (whether or not they're right is irrelevant to my counterpoint) and 2. pretty much any aspect of the game you could possibly take issue with could be changed through modding. Plus we actually did get quite a few good mods after a while (Minerva, Nightmare House 2, Underhell, Research and Development, and those are all just single player and off the top of my head), we just never got quite as many as HL1.

Destroid's explanation always seemed the most likely to me. That and I guess Source's editor was harder to use than GoldSrc? lol I dunno mang.