The game - Half-Life 2

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The moment has finally arrived. A year (since the stolen source code) of anticipation with countless rumors. Half-life 2 is here.

My level of anticipation was highier, in term of gameplay. So i must say, i am a bit disappointed, just a bit. Well, its still the same trigger happy first person shooting game, with some puzzle here and there. One time, when i throw a barrel up hill, it will roll up a bit, lose all the momentum and roll back down hill. And here is the sad thing, the physic of Source is so realistic, i don't get the kick out of it.

Puzzles were designed to exhibit the physics of Source more than, well, puzzle. More often, you will encounter balance like puzzle.
- The wall is too high to climb, and conveniently you found a seesaw setting nearby, you gathered all the bricks nearby, pile them onto one end, lifted the other end and you can then run and jump over.
- You need to haul your hoovercraft over a wall, the lever is not working, so you climb up high push a washer down of which the weight takes the elevator down and lifted the platform with your hoovercraft on it at the other end.
Yeah, pretty generic stuff. But then no other games can do that.

No need to mention, the graphic is great, the sound is great. Water is actually water; muddy water is actually muddy water.

Half-life 2 vs FarCry
Face it, this year game of the year will be chosen among HL2, FarCry and Doom3 (Halo 2 is for noob who cannot aim). HL2 and FarCry for me are, so far, the best. HL2 is real, really realistic. But i have yet to feel "The Moment" of this game. And when i ask myself about the ground break, name staying, fame spreading element about HL2, i can't find any. On the other hand, the physics of FarCry is not as well done. But this game can load really huge outdoor map in once. At one time in FarCry, without adequate weapon, i was being chased by enemies behind, i ran along a stream and arrived at a waterfall. High up at the waterfall, i can see distance few kilometers away, and by the end of the level, i was able to reach there. Pretty amazing stuff they had there. So fay, FarCry 1, HL2 0.

If only they make Tomb Raider using Source... this game alone can make a few suicide bombers stay home and forget everything.

 

Well, that "huge level" thingie was already in Delta Force 2. Nothing funnier than playing online, running one kilometre away and sitting on a hill with a .50 BMG Barret and shoot the enemies from so far that they can't see the muzzle flash.

Now, back to the topic, Doom 3 won't win the GotY award, it's too repetive and boresome. Farcry seems good enough, don't know too much about it though. If HF2 is half as good than the first, it will win the GotY award, but I think the first sucked, and as said, if this is half as good, it will suck twice as much.

My award of the GotY goes to Team Factor. Great game.

 

It was several km of forrest, with pretty detailed trees and leaves covering each other, not snow peak nor desert.

 

I haven't got FC yet. (Hurry up Boban!!) but I LOVE doom3. It actually scares me. It's the first time a game has really freaked me out. Alpha Labs Section2 at the start... the body in the ceiling.. I was soooooo scared. Maybe it's how I play in the dark at 11:00 PM with the blinds closed and the lights off and the doors shut and my face 15 cm from the screen... but still, WOW.

I'll update this in, oh, 2 weks when I get HL2.

 

Half Life 2 is fantastic. Best game I own. Even if you just play it as a shoot-fest then it's really good, but using the physics as a weapon leads to moments of true greatness.

For example, even before getting the Gravity Gun, throwing barrels at incoming Cutter robots so that they start spinning and veering off course. Shooting an explosive barrel near a soldier so that he runs away slightly, then gets hit by another, regular, barrel thrown into the air by the explosion, landing on his head and killing him. Demolishing flimsy wooden bridges that enemies are foolish enough to run over, then demolishing them so they fall and get mangled in the wreckage at the bottom.

The boat sequence was frantic. The deserted village was tense, especially with the "swing" on the child's play area that in fact turned out to be a pair of severed legs when seen up close. Playing catch with the robot using the gravity gun. The pet headcrab. And I'm still right near the beginning of the game!

My anticipation regarding this game was extremely high. And it was matched in almost every way, and surpassed in many. If this doesn't get game of the year, at least this year and the year following, I'll eat my hat. I promise.

 

Hopefully, I will be getting HL2 this week...

I wasn't too keen on Farcry, the levels were sort of blandish, and it just got boring and repetitive very soon. I hated the savegame system too. And anyways, the best large outdoor maps are in Joint Ops, where there's 30 square Kilometers to wander around in.

 

HL2 was the best game i have played in the last year. From begining to end it was extremly fun, the puzzles were annoying though. And the gunships and striders almost made me soil myself. Killing them was extremly satisfiying. The soldiers turned out to be reather dumb and simply bum rushed my gun.

aside from that playing with the physics engine was extremly fun and it ran very well on my maschine.

And now i am twitching from to little sleep and to much action.

 

Aside from the aforementioned soldiers, how's the AI? With aliens and bosses, etc... Is it as good as the Marines' AI seemed in Half-Life 1?

 

Notice the word "seemed." Nothing like getting a rifle-nade to your face time and time again from that 1 mm crack between the boxes.

Hopefully they have actually developed it further instead of using copy/paste from Serious Sam...? If not, PATCH.

 

So i finished the game.

Who is Gordon Freeman?
Anyone actually knows this person? For a protagonist, Grodon is really "characterless". What kind of person he is like? Restless? Stubborn? Lighhearted? There is no way we can know, because he never speaks! Going through the in game conversations i am convinced that Gordon Freeman is mute, which is quite remarkable for an MIT doctorate. Besides, his MIT doctorate character is very weak too, the most scientific things he did are pushing a cart in HL1 and pushing a button in HL2. While taking the class of epics, i cannot stop to relates these two dull characters together, Gordon vs Aeneas, in the contest of ultimate dull-dom.

Sections of game
The game is divided into several sections that require different style of play. Ravenholm needs you to use the game physic as weapon. And there are the hovercraft and buggy sequence. The antlions part (my favorite) requires you to command the endless antlions. And you do city crawling with teammates, or as i dubbed it, WW2 axis vs alies in a generic european city. And the ending part where your gravatiy gun became your most powerful and only weapon to collapse the Combine.

The weapons
The weapons choice is wide but the ammo is just enough. Crowbar, Gravity gun, pistol, magnum (my favorite), smg, rifile, shotgun, crossbow, grenade, rocket launcher and the antlion balls, that's all of them. Essential weapons (magnum, rifile, crossbow and rocket launcher) has especially low ammo. If you are in the buggy sequence, at the back of the buggy is unlimited supply of smg ammo.

The final cut
Some creatures didn't make it to the final product. Some you only see them and cannot kill them. The Hydra which was heavily exposed in all kinds of sneak preview didn't make it because, according to the developers, it kills you faster than you can say "live from new york it's saturday night". Another mini sequence featured in the sneak preview, the one with Freeman ran into a room and stacked stuff against the door to prevent on coming soldier, didn't make it. The green hound/dog alien creatures that attacks with circle electrical shocks/rings back in HL1 are not in HL2 too. In the final sequence which being transported through the complex, you can see several kinds of enemies, monsters, slaves that you cannot touch them anyhow.

The creatures/monsters/enemies/friendlies and the AI
Combine soldiers (marines in HL2) are smart. They will take cover given the chance. They run around amd pick easier target. These should be obvious in the "fight while Alyx hacks the shield scence". Poison headcrab drops hp to 1 and they give out distinct sound. Any player who are in the heat of a fight will look aimlessly, hopelessly when they heard the posion headcrab sound, an old but still good device often used by game developers. In an opening, antlions will not will line up nicely coming straight at you. Instead, if you are so stupic and stay in one spot, they will surround you. As for the humble city folks who fought beside Freeman later in the game, they were given the freedom to switch guns. If they came across a dead soilder with better gun, they will drop their smg for rifle.

FarCry vs HL2 for game of the year
Other games don't stand a chance, they might be contender but not the game of the year. FarCry's protagonist has a character, at least he talks and replies to request. The story is not confussing. And there is this always the headaching dilemma of picking and dropping weapon. Near the end of FarCry, the player will reach on top of a waterfall, looking far away at the destination that eventually will go to which easily can be "the moment" of pc gaming. HL2 comes with incredible and realistic physic which forces the players to use it as weapon. Combine the amazing graphics and good level design, city crawling late in the game is really atmospheric and nicely done. No game ever has made such remarkable physic vs no game ever has made such excellent large tropical jungle. i had fun with HL2 but i had more with FarCry. But then game of the year is not about how much fun i had. From the gaming industry point of view, Half-Life 2 should be the game of the year, even before it was released. The hype and anticipation that it built, the almost bugless final product that it has, the unsequenced chain reaction that it produces...

Final words
i pity those who only knows Halo 2.

[ November 22, 2004, 15:50: Message edited by: teekc ]

 

Ive got the game and so far I'm impressed, the graphics are stunning, even on my pathetic Gforce 2. The physics are realistic, and the anti-gravity gun rocks1 Teekc is right though character is about as dull as they get cuz hes mute the whole game

 

Seems to be running quite smoothly and thus far I have avoided all that "activation" hassle -at least I haven't seen any requests of it. No problems with the performance either and the game mechanics still work just great (unlike in the Unreal series, where everything feels so sluggish). It's been rather easy though, there being so many meds along the road...

 

I'm having a blast so far. Man was I afraid after reading people having the biggest problems with their ATI 9800.....Ha, my Gforce 5200 is standing it's ground.....smoothly.

Really impressed with the graphics so far. Good gameplay. I know I'm no expert but people say it's easy, well I've died a few times already, especially during the air boat level (great fun though)

Can't wait for the anti grav gun. Oh and freeman talks a lot in my game I don't know what you are complaining about

 

What do you mean: "talks?" In my game he hasn't said a single word. Mention one scene and what he says.

(By the way, after you get the grav gun the game takes a rather "interesting", if a bit cliche, turn. )

 

I meant with his gun....hehe

Anyway, who cares if Freeman doesn't have a voice or character. It's not an RPG. In my opinion it makes the char more mysterious and a cult figure.

 

Ah, but the G man talks a lot and i am sure he is more mysterious than Gordan. My main complain was not he never talks but he doesn't have a character. For a celebrated game like Half-Life 2, i think such is a fair demand.

 

Can you really have 128 players in multiplayer? Does anyone know this? I've been trying to figure out about multiplayer forever...

 

@Kovalis

That's nothing, Joint Ops has up to 150 players in multiplayer and it plays great as far as concept goes. However, as CS source is basically a port of CS, I don't see it having above 20 players in a given match.

 

The point where you have to use turrets to cover your arse against army of soldiers really was a PITA. For one, those turrets are sheit and near useless. Second, Gordon Freeman = One Man Army. Lastly; I would had much rather shot that traitor but I couldn't. It's just lovely when the game ignores damage to everyone else but me -just out fun shot my own brains out next to Alex, who was having a nice, little chat with that other fella. With a bazooka. It was so sad that made me laugh.

As a rating: 10 - 1 (poor story) -1 (getting player singled out) = 8+ (where + just of the fun factor). Let's round it up to 9 for overalls sake.

 

depends on where you place the turrets. In the 3 turrents sequences, i hardly killed anyone.