Well my hands were trembling and every moment it took for steam to unlock (and there was a fair few of those!) seemed like a lifetime. The game started and the menu loaded and I nearly fainted, the splendor of City 17 was thrust upon me before I had even clicked 'New Game' . And once I did just that I was even more amazed....to start with.
The first few levels are indeed levels and at the same time movement tutorials as well, getting off that train and realising this wasnt a bink vid took a while to sink in and the scenery, well simply breathtaking. The combine or 'City Watch' are incredibly oppressive and you dont really know if there alien or human, although one of them chucking a can on the floor then making me pick it up and put it in the bin whilst chuckling seemed pretty human to me, he may have actually been my ex-boss. The city is detailed beautifully and before I crack on just to put your fluffy minds at rest, Im playing on a P4 3ghz, 1 gig ram and Ati Radeon 9800xt platinum.
The game is made up of Chapters, which are various parts of the same level or same area, I cant recall how many there were but it seemed to be lacking. Dont get me wrong the game is fairly lengthy, took me 17 hours on hard and I listened to most all conversations and interacted the hell outta every moveable object, shooting straight through I most probably could have done it in less. The Trainstation levels are a nice intro to what to expect but the computer friendlys popped up again and again and again, Valve you could have at least used some more staff faces, hell, even the Vavle office caretakers faces woulda done. Over the course of the game you see these same faces over and over and it detracts from the suspension of disbelief a tad.
For those of you expecting the E3 levels, I think the only one that survived, in (kinda) a similar form is bugbait, all the others were mangled to near unrecognisable which In some cases was acceptable but I was fairly annoyed that the particular E3 level of traptown was not a patch on the version that made it to the game, the one I played was 70% less fun than the one we all saw, the rest of Ravenholm was probably my favorite of all chapters, it was HL with a hint of doom and a gothic horror feel. I felt alot of the great stuff from E3 2003 could have been kept, and nearly all of it wasnt. One of the main things I was entirely dissapointed with was the AntLions, they replaced those wicked looking yellowish starship trooper ones with greeny cartoony disney rejects. Striders were cool but got a tad over-used, and sadly they were over-used in the wrong setting in my opinion, what happened to the on-foot in nice city 17 being chased by a strider hoying cars at ya and blasting shop windows? what happened to people being spiked on the striders legs and a nice comedy moment of the Strider trying to wiggle the poor ragdoll off his foot? if they were in I certainly missed them, some key elements totally left out.
Replayability is good and HL2 has bags of it, the one thing I looked foreward to ALL the way through it was going back to city 17 trainstation giving myself an impulse 101 and opening a can on the combine and most of the civilians. A lot of folk have complained about the ending, are you serious? its fantastic, the ending is both extremely cinematic and fitting to the first HL in EVERY way, not to mention a nice use of special effects for the stop motion and G-man, I hoped to have more contact with the G-man, and despite playing a 'Wheres Wally' with him all through the game (like the first HL) you only actually converse with him twice, one more conversation than the origional. The facial animations on him, and ALL the characters is astouding as well as the lip synching not to mention the nice input of realistic actions to go with movement (ie: people following you dont just plonk down a drop, they climb down etc etc)
Squadmates later on in the game are more trouble than they are worth, and I didnt really feel the need to order them to go anywhere, plus even when I did if I went more than 5 meters away they would break the command and follow you anyway, seemed a bit redundant. I found they were more of a hinderance than a help especially while taking cover from a strider waiting for it to pass by only having your team mates fire submachine guns at it from right next to you was just ANNOYING, I found myself ordering them to go out in the open to be obliterated and didnt do much for my guilt. Alot of people have reported a stuttering sound problem, I suffered from this occasionally, wasnt a gamebreaker, but the sound quality options seem to have no effect, I think this may be more game related more than system related
yes youve realised that most my points are negative, theres nothing I can say about how good the game is, you all know how good it is. Its possibly the game of the decade, but they shoulda thought twice about the steam verification, 3 of my friends in the uk were told by steam that their cd key was invalid. Imagine having HL2 in your hands after 6 years and not being able to play it, bad huh. Steam is a nice/novel idea but should never have took on the responsibility for a HUGE release like HL2, they must be mad.
Final score 8.5/10
this is a review my opinion may not be in anyway shape or form the opinion you hold so please keep mindless flaming to the boundries of your gob.
The first few levels are indeed levels and at the same time movement tutorials as well, getting off that train and realising this wasnt a bink vid took a while to sink in and the scenery, well simply breathtaking. The combine or 'City Watch' are incredibly oppressive and you dont really know if there alien or human, although one of them chucking a can on the floor then making me pick it up and put it in the bin whilst chuckling seemed pretty human to me, he may have actually been my ex-boss. The city is detailed beautifully and before I crack on just to put your fluffy minds at rest, Im playing on a P4 3ghz, 1 gig ram and Ati Radeon 9800xt platinum.
The game is made up of Chapters, which are various parts of the same level or same area, I cant recall how many there were but it seemed to be lacking. Dont get me wrong the game is fairly lengthy, took me 17 hours on hard and I listened to most all conversations and interacted the hell outta every moveable object, shooting straight through I most probably could have done it in less. The Trainstation levels are a nice intro to what to expect but the computer friendlys popped up again and again and again, Valve you could have at least used some more staff faces, hell, even the Vavle office caretakers faces woulda done. Over the course of the game you see these same faces over and over and it detracts from the suspension of disbelief a tad.
For those of you expecting the E3 levels, I think the only one that survived, in (kinda) a similar form is bugbait, all the others were mangled to near unrecognisable which In some cases was acceptable but I was fairly annoyed that the particular E3 level of traptown was not a patch on the version that made it to the game, the one I played was 70% less fun than the one we all saw, the rest of Ravenholm was probably my favorite of all chapters, it was HL with a hint of doom and a gothic horror feel. I felt alot of the great stuff from E3 2003 could have been kept, and nearly all of it wasnt. One of the main things I was entirely dissapointed with was the AntLions, they replaced those wicked looking yellowish starship trooper ones with greeny cartoony disney rejects. Striders were cool but got a tad over-used, and sadly they were over-used in the wrong setting in my opinion, what happened to the on-foot in nice city 17 being chased by a strider hoying cars at ya and blasting shop windows? what happened to people being spiked on the striders legs and a nice comedy moment of the Strider trying to wiggle the poor ragdoll off his foot? if they were in I certainly missed them, some key elements totally left out.
Replayability is good and HL2 has bags of it, the one thing I looked foreward to ALL the way through it was going back to city 17 trainstation giving myself an impulse 101 and opening a can on the combine and most of the civilians. A lot of folk have complained about the ending, are you serious? its fantastic, the ending is both extremely cinematic and fitting to the first HL in EVERY way, not to mention a nice use of special effects for the stop motion and G-man, I hoped to have more contact with the G-man, and despite playing a 'Wheres Wally' with him all through the game (like the first HL) you only actually converse with him twice, one more conversation than the origional. The facial animations on him, and ALL the characters is astouding as well as the lip synching not to mention the nice input of realistic actions to go with movement (ie: people following you dont just plonk down a drop, they climb down etc etc)
Squadmates later on in the game are more trouble than they are worth, and I didnt really feel the need to order them to go anywhere, plus even when I did if I went more than 5 meters away they would break the command and follow you anyway, seemed a bit redundant. I found they were more of a hinderance than a help especially while taking cover from a strider waiting for it to pass by only having your team mates fire submachine guns at it from right next to you was just ANNOYING, I found myself ordering them to go out in the open to be obliterated and didnt do much for my guilt. Alot of people have reported a stuttering sound problem, I suffered from this occasionally, wasnt a gamebreaker, but the sound quality options seem to have no effect, I think this may be more game related more than system related
yes youve realised that most my points are negative, theres nothing I can say about how good the game is, you all know how good it is. Its possibly the game of the decade, but they shoulda thought twice about the steam verification, 3 of my friends in the uk were told by steam that their cd key was invalid. Imagine having HL2 in your hands after 6 years and not being able to play it, bad huh. Steam is a nice/novel idea but should never have took on the responsibility for a HUGE release like HL2, they must be mad.
Final score 8.5/10
this is a review my opinion may not be in anyway shape or form the opinion you hold so please keep mindless flaming to the boundries of your gob.
