Half-Life too easy, or is It

[Boots]

I've been reading through these forums for a few weeks, and something that repeatedly comes up is that Half-Life 2 is too easy. I felt this way after completing the game as well, but after thinking about it, and watching my friends play it with much difficulty I feel different now.

When Half-Life came out, it was my first experience with a fps game, and I sucked bad at it, dying over and over again.

Since then, I have played many fps games, as well as tons of online half-life mods, and have devoloped some serious skill at fps games, and this I attibute to the relative ease with which I was able to beat HL2. I can breaze through HL now barely dying through the whole game.

After playing years of Frontline Force (a very fast HL mod), I have realized that my aim is incredible in slower paced mods, or any single player game. My movement is so natural, and weapon switching automatic, that I can just play and not have to think anymore.

Basically, I think Valve knows about this vast variance in skill levels of its players, but had to find a happy medium that would satisfy us vets, but not scare off new players to its franchise. I think they did an admirable job.

Would HL2 have been easy for you 4 or 5 years ago is what I am asking you to consider.

 

[corkscru74]

I know what you mean - I found HL1 so much more difficult but this is without a doubt because of my huge amount of time spent playing CS. Playing against real people has really sharpened up my reflexes and Mouse control.

My brother (23) has been playing computer games ever since I have. He's the one that introduced me to Doom. But he hasn't had the FPS experience I have had recently and he struggled from the very beginning - even dying before getting the Crowbar.

I can't remember the first time I died in the game but it wasn't till Ravenholm that I started to struggle and then died quite a bit on the Bridge level.

Has anyone played Doom recently with the jDoom mod? Mouse look makes the game about 300x easier - I think I completed it without dying!

 

[Solver]

Well, HL2 is bought by millions of people. Obviously, most of them do not have the great FPS experience that many people here do. The majority of purchasers will find the game challenging on Hard or even Normal. I have some FPS experience, played the game on hard, and also didn't think there were any bits before Ravenholm that were tough, but then again, the second half of the game (Nova Prospekt and later) had enough good battles.

 

[Tantalus]

Yes, I do believe half life 2 would be easy for me 4/5 years ago. That's when I started playing FPS (or any PC/Console games for that matter) and I went through Half Life with little difficulty. I played it first on medium, though, so when I played it on hard maybe it was easy because I already played through the game.

 

[twad]

on hard this is hard! and there is no "real" boss in HL2..maybe the striders but we can kill them without too much problem if you know where to hide...we dont fight tanks while on foot and the gunships/copter only use machineguns against us (except for mines in canal) we get overwhelmed often in HL2. There is no unlimited ammo gun (but there is unlimited ammo crates)

in HL1 we had the tentacles, gargantua, Nihilanth, gornach.. and the marines used a lot more thier grenades and mp5 nades.. and there was tanks and copters that shoot rockets at us. The ennemies were rarely in a overwhelming number. there is the bee-gun that have unlimited ammo.

so personally... i think in overall that HL2 is a little bit easier... it would be equal in my book if the combines could use theirs two types of grenades (mp7 and hand grenades) more often and they stop to charge at us that much. But sometimes i think hl2 is harder.. it depends on your point of view..

 

[dogboy73]

I didn't think that HL2 offered that much of a challenge for the most part which is a shame. There were some great battles but most of them were quite easy even on the HARD setting. The exceptions were the turret battle in Nova Prospekt & the part in Anticitizen 1 where you defend Alyx whilst she tries to open the Combine barrier.

It's difficult to know how Valve could have made the game really challenging whilst keeping it exciting, interesting & above all not frustrating. The first game was so good at the time that you didn't really care how much you died. You was happy to 're-live' most parts over & over until you got them right. This is not quite so with HL2 & I guess that's an indication of how much, in general, FPS's have moved on. Like the first game I felt a strong urge to push on & see what was next. That's indicative of the HL story driven gameplay but in the case of HL2 I felt I was able to amble through most situations without much trouble & it was the way I was playing that was making the battles engaging & not the way the gameplay panned out.

 

[bigpapa400lb]

Hell Yeah Its' Hard :flame:

 

[jmjneary]

you can type stuff in console to make it incredibly hard search the forums or something

 

[Sid Burn]

Hmm... its easy... except wen you play it in Hard mode... you'll go nuts killing a group of manhacks.

 

[Kashban]

For a skilled FPS-player, yes, it's too easy most of the time. I'd rather reload because I want to improve something (conserve ammo, keep my squad alive and such) than because of dying.

I played FPS from Doom on, my reflexes aren't as good as somebody playing UT 2004 to the bone, but good enough to give anybody a good fight in SW Battlefront or Mechwarrior Mercenaries in the fastest Mech possible. Didn't try HL2 DM yet.

As an experienced FPS-Player you already encountered many situations in modern FPS-shooters, regardless how good the scripting or AI works. So you act/react without thinking, giving you the edge, the fraction of a second to shoot first or dodge.

I had problems with some of the gunships, died while driving the buggy through the ant lions, failed the strider fight for some time because I didn't know where to go and find more bazooka ammo, and jumped off some trails by accident. Other than that, HL2 wasn't a problem for me.

I'm also playing HL1 again and it's not as hard as it were on it's first release... because I'm more experienced.

Cheers,
Kashban

 

[winnipegartist]

Isn't that what difficulty levels are for though? I mean they could have easily made and EASY level for noobs and an insano level for veteren FPSers. But the hardest setting on HL2 is far too easy. Doom3 on easy is more of a challenge than HL2 on Hard! Plus HL2 was WAY too short.

 

[Jenga]

yeah, HL2 was a bit too easy, even on hard mode. The only part that gave me some trouble was the turret defense sequence in Nova Prospekt (the 2nd one, in the jail cells).

Part of the reason it isn't that hard (for me) is that there are lots of healing items and ammo scattered around. Just when you get low on SOMETHING, you see an item that helps you last a little longer (even at Ravenholm). I had a harder time trying to pick up all the items (i'm a bit of a packrat) than the entirety of Ravenholm.

 

[rpgprog]

I dont know, the helicopter that chased you when you were on the boat, is damn annoying, I remember losing most of my health and then having to fight a room full of combines, honestly, I couldn't get past that part without cheating. Maybe I should try again, but too lazy.