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

[Drog Black Tooth]

Been replaying Half-Life 2 recently cause I haven't played it since the release and almost completely forgot what the game was about. So why the fuck not.

And you know, it's such a slog. Sure, it has some cool moments like controlling an antlion army, but for the most part you're following just one single path and fighting a single enemy type. It's like a really basic shooting range repeated 500 times for 15 hours. Open a door, dozens of gas masks spawn in and attack you with hitscan weapons barely giving you any time to take cover. Shoot them dead, collect the medkits, rinse and repeat.

I'm currently at Chapter 10, where you go thru the city with a squad of retard AIs, who constantly fucking block doorways and shout "reload, doctor Freeman!" when I'm at full clip. It's one identical room after another.

How the fuck did this shit get 96 on Metacritic?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

I mean, even fucking Quake 2 had much more diverse enemies and much better gunplay, what the fuck.

 

[pippin]

HL1 was made out of challenges. HL2 is made out of setpieces and tech demos.

 

[Icewater]

HL2 has aged very poorly and yes the gunplay is god-awful. Black Mesa mod actually improves on this significantly, making guns more accurate but also giving them actual recoil that the player has to control if you want to hit anything. So it's definitely possible to make decent gunplay in the Source engine, Valve is just clueless.

 

[A horse of course]

It's nothing to do with aging. The weapons, physics puzzles and driving sections were shite even on release. In a just world Half Life 2 would be the Aliens: Colonial Marines of its era, but alas Gabe's cock was jammed too deeply down journalists' throats.

Black Mesa is garbage. Even some of the weakest of the Half Life user SP campaigns are vastly superior.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

It is a very terrible game in almost every sense. As a shooter it's pathetic but the level design is also so moronic it's laughable.

Bloodlines using source has a lot of the same retarded issues. Every level is a long boring slog which you magically find out at the end all comes back to where you started. IF ONLY I KNEW ABOUT THAT SECRET ENTRANCE ALL THIS TIME.

Basically if you are a teenager and it's 1998 then maybe you can get wowed by this game, otherwise what a joke.

 

[Snorkack]

Im not really a fps shooter guy and played HL2 for the first time almost 10 years after its release. Couldn't believe this is supposedly the 'holy grail' of FPS. Glad to read that I'm not the only one regarding HL2 as horribly overrated.
Many decent mods tho.

 

[MRY]

My recollection was that the gravity gun and super gravity gun were silly and fun, the ant-lion gun was pretty great too, the facial animations were remarkable, and the "cinematic" aspect of how you experienced the city was neat. The things I remember hating the most were the driving sequences, obviously, and the many sequences where you nominally could move, but in practice had to just stand around listening to people talk and talk and talk. There were a couple such sequences in HL1 (most notably the initial tram ride and waiting for the reactor to power up), but they're all over the place in HL2 and were always pretty miserable. In general, the design often seemed to be, "Experience something neat and different. Master that. Continue doing it well after it overstays its welcome." Sometimes the "something neat and different" wasn't neat or different, and then it was particularly bad.

Still, I think the criticism is pretty overblown. I think it's fair to describe the game as an highly interactive tech demo, and on those terms it was really successful. Worked well as a killer app for Steam.

 

[Icewater]

It's nothing to do with aging. The weapons, physics puzzles and driving sections were shite even on release. In a just world Half Life 2 would be the Aliens: Colonial Marines of its era, but alas Gabe's cock was jammed too deeply down journalists' throats.

Black Mesa is garbage. Even some of the weakest of the Half Life user SP campaigns are vastly superior.

Toppest of keks, trying too hard to be edgy, m80. DUMBFUCK !!!

 

[Roguey]

Half-Life 2 is a great cinematic experience playtested to nigh-perfection for the broadest possible audience.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The problem with Half-Life 2 is how badly it's pandering to the player.

The player is put in the role of a protagonist in the prime of his life, with a respectable background and education, who has emerged as a survivor of a gruesome situation (Black Mesa's resonance cascade) and is both an icon and an inspiration to people familiar with the Black Mesa incident all those years ago, so the game makes extra sure to surround the player with people "in the know". To top it off an interdimensional pedophile thinks that the player is the best thing since sliced babies on rye and hires him/her for various odd jobs like toppling totalitarian puppet governments instilled by alien conquerors and picking up that can for bored oppressors of humanity.

Every moment of Half-Life 2 (and its episodes) is about making the player feel awesome about himself/herself. The protagonist's in-game sidekick is a physical match in heaven that even shows affection for him, while every in-game character either loves him or hates him (depending on their affiliations) and is literally willing to die for him. The primary antagonist is visibly afraid of him and the whole storyline revolves around the well-being of the protagonist, even though he never says a fucking word throughout.

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

Utter garbage that managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes back then, but isn't fooling anyone anymore.

EDIT: Cleaned up text. I must have been hella drunk when I wrote the original text.

 

[Mustawd]

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

 

[Dev_Anj]

Ed123 confirmed to be Half Life 2 fanboy/hater. :p

 

[Icewater]

Clearly as a child Half-Life 2 snuck into his room at night and raped his little butthole.

 

[Maggot]

HL2 is only worth playing with SMOD.

 

[cucrophi]

I think HL2 is one of the generation change things, Johnny's first FPS. I dont know any people my age who like HL2. None.

 

[sser]

It's the not best thing since sliced bread and at the time I thought Far Cry was the better 'game' overall, but HL-2's tech progression is undeniable. It also set the basis for Episode 2 which is one of the better singleplayer FPS games.

 

[Gunnar]

I had never played any Half Life games before but wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I picked up Half Life 2 and gave it a try a couple years ago. While the very beginning sequence was promising the actual game is as OP described and I finally gave up during one of the driving maps when I just couldn't take the boredom anymore.

Half Life memes annoy me now.

 

[sullynathan]

How the fuck did this shit get 96 on Metacritic?

same reason witcher 3 and every other game got high ratings

 

[Siveon]

I had never played any Half Life games before but wanted to see what all the fuss was about so I picked up Half Life 2

Half Life 1 is way better, it's worth a shot. I didn't much care for two, the weight felt off and a lot of moments felt tedious (talking stuff, vehicles).

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

HL1 is great, HL2 is pretty good, too. But I'd perhaps consider not playing them and just watching Freeman's Mind instead.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V

It's great.

 

[Latro]

The problem with Half-Life 2 is how badly it's pandering to the player.

The player is put in the role of a protagonist in the prime of his life, with a respectable background and education, who has emerged as a survivor of a gruesome situation (Black Mesa's resonance cascade) and is an icon and inspiration by people familiar with the Black Mesa incident all those years ago, so the game makes extra sure to surround the player with people familar with that incident. To top it off an interdimensional pedophile think that the player is the best thing since sliced babies on rye and hires him/her for various odd jobs like toppling totalitarian puppet governments instilled by alien conquerors and picking up that can for bored oppressors of humanity.

Every moment of Half-Life 2 (and its episodes) is about making the player feel awesome about himself/herself. The protagonist's in-game sidekick is a physical match for that shows affection for him, every in-game character either loves him or hates him (depending on their affiliations) and is literally willing to die for him. The primary antagonist is visibly afraid of him and the whole storyline revolves around the well-being of the protagonist, even though he never says a fucking word throughout.

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

Utter garbage that managed to pull the wool over everyone's eyes back then, but isn't fooling anyone anymore.

If Black Mesa got nuked how the fuck would people even know about Freeman? The scientists who sent Gordon to Zen got ass-raped by aliens afterwards too. Marines all got butt-fucked by Combine shortly after HL1 so there's little chance for the Freeman Legend to spread from there. I'm assuming the freeman crap got spread by the "ex slavery era" vortigaunts, but having them talk like a pack of emancipated slaves was stupid, why not just have them growly/screechy creatures who can share visions and etc like they were in HL1? This way, it's actually believable the G-Man was blindsided by the Zen creatures rather than throwing around his big prize like a retard when everyone and their mother literally knows who he is.

Additionally, Adrian Shepherd would have been a much better candidate for the events of HL2, why send in the messiah who gets busted out by alien negroes? Send in the no-name grunt to tear shit up.

Maybe Valve should just remake the HL2 trilogy to not be shit.

 

[Ash]

Quite possibly the most overrated game of all time. Never thought it was special the first time I played it back in 2005 or whatever, still don't. Even the original Half-Life is a little overrated, but it's understandable it has a sizable, passionate fanbase as it's a solid game. HL2 is just bland.

Set-piece driven gameplay. Average combat. Driving vehicles around in vast empty spaces. Few gameplay innovations over the original. Story you're meant to give a single fuck about, but don't.

Most notable aspect is the engine and the physics-based gameplay elements. Other than that it's just an OK shooter.

I remember I bought three games on that particular outing to the video game retail store: Doom 3, Arx Fatalis and HL2. Doom 3 and HL2 was an early mild taste of the decline to come. Played the fuck out of Arx and loved every second though, even though it wasn't perfect.

 

[Mojobeard]

I was a itty bitty teenager when it came out, and I loved it, even having played the usual suspects of the genre before that. I think a part of my brain knew it was shit by the end though, didn't even finish the first expansion. Then tried it a year ago and it was just trash. All the smoke and mirrors of how it worked just stood out. The gameplay was terrible.

At least we got Team Fortress 2 SFM porn from the engine, if you just want to admire the facial animations.

 

[RapineDel]

I played it years later. A game designed around physics puzzles with nothing else to write home about was always going to age very poorly. I suppose people were impressed at the time but it has nothing on the first game which is a good but overrated game. Found Portal to be dull trash as well.