HL2 - Missed the Bar...

[CookieCuttah]

A couple of points....

Comparing Doom 3 to Half-Life 2 for linearity doesn't really work - Doom 3 is for the most part set in closed, limited interiors. In the game's 'reality', there wouldn't be much choice about what route to take. Half-Life 2 is set in big, wide open areas, and the game would have been better, if you had had the choice to take a different route through these areas.

Responding to criticism of HL2 by saying "what FPS is better" is misguided. It's a Half-Life game. It's not about whether its marginally better than other games. Its about how it compares to 'itself', so to speak. What I mean is, and what my problem is, is that it might be 50% (to pick a random measure) better than every other FPS out there. The problem is, Half-Life 1 was a HUGE leap over it's contemporaries. I don't feel that the same margin of distinction was achieved this time.

People use the most trivial qualities to big up HL2 - facial animation and lip-syncing, for example. Well, scuse me while I soil myself in excitement, aren't we missing the point? This is just normal development of graphics that some other game would have featured a couple of months down the line if Valve hadn't developed Steam. Did anyone say HL1 was great because of the skeletal animation? No, they raved about the AI, because it was something that actually made a difference to how fun the game was.

And....scripting is getting pretty inexcusable these days. If this really was the milestone development it's supposed to be, we would have the AI resulting in the same events that game about through that scripting would have done, but with variation depending on what actions the player takes, instead of the exact same events and timing, no matter what.

Sure, HL2 is great, but I for one just felt there were too many missed opportunities in the game.

Oh, and there is no argument against the fact that it was TOO EASY. Even on hard. I'm not that great at games, and completed HL2 in about four (working) days. For measure, Call of Duty took me about a week of pretty solid playing over the Christmas holiday .

Call of Duty took me 1 day and like 2 hours on the next day... Half life 2 took me 2 days solid and 1 school day.

 

[Pesmerga]

I thought Call of Duty took me longer than HL2. Both are equally amazing single-player games, actually, although it'd been nice if CoD had some more explosions. Everyone likes explosions.

 

[Shadow][]

*Beavis Voice* hehe huh uh explosions Explosions EXPLOSIONS!! YES YES! HEHE HEHE HUH HEHE

 

[pomegranate]

Even if there was nothing to pass up but a different puzzle, players would still worry that they missed something, and might be driven to replay the entire game just to see if that particular path unveiled any new weaponry, enemies, or peice of story.

Well, I'd say that would be a very good thing...replay value, you know? I've always been very pleased by games when I find something I hadn't noticed before.

Call of Duty took me 1 day and like 2 hours on the next day... Half life 2 took me 2 days solid and 1 school day.

Good. Good for you. Bingo top marks super excellent pilot 9999!!



Damnit, I meant Source, not Steam, two posts up.