P
PrivateerLunatic
Guest
Really, I found the final few chapters very satisfying. I don't know what everyone is complaining about. Granted, the final battle was kind of easy, but I think narratively it worked up to it quite well. While it wasn't a climax in difficulty, it was still a climax in pace. It was a masterstroke, I think. After several hours of just brutal battle in the streets with the striders, and seeing so many rebel soldiers get mowed down, I was kind of shell-shocked. I had kind of gone into this "zombie" mode where I was a nasty fighting machine but it had all blended into this constant stream of overwhelming chaos and I didn't even feel like I had higher brain function anymore.
Half-Life 2 was without a doubt one of the most relentless first person shooters I've ever played. I'm not sure why it was that way, but it was.
So it was a brilliant movement to go from that shell-shocked feeling to a drastic change in pace and aesthetic, with the long, silent tour of the alien tower (it reminded me a lot of some of the great sci fi movies, like Star Trek: The Motion Picture or 2001: A Space Odyssey, with long, revelatory but action and dialogue-less sequences towards the end). It was kind of a gradual release rather than a big bang climax. I think it's very cool that they did that, seeing as how I can't remember anyone using that narrative structure in a game before, even though it's often used in books and movies to great effect.
Then the modified gravity gun at the end. My GOD, that was so frickin' cool! After running for my life for the last 3 chapters, fighting desperate battles against striders and snipers and whatnot, it was so satisfying to have that gun for the final sequence. People would no doubt be amused by my insane cackles of glee as I threw Combine soldiers around, dragged them into energy streams and disintegrated them, pulled them and used them as bullet shields, and so on. It reminded me of Sauron in the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring movie, when he was blasting huge numbers of elves and humans into the air with a wave of his mace.
As for the story, it was very predictable, really. That's the sad part. But it was still beyond anything games have done. It takes an art form a while to develop and find its voice, and games are just getting started. Half-Life 2 is a great step forward though, I think, despite its predictability.
The ending was very cool, with the time freeze thing. Frankly, even though everyone is kind of upset that it didn't have a "quick fix" ending, we know all we needed to know -- Earth, for the time being, is free from Combine control. Breen is almost certainly dead.
As for Alyx, well, she's probably dead, which is unfortunate, but she's a martyr for the cause of humanity, and that's a noble thing. I think they set it up for a really, really powerful third game and who knows what they'll come up with when and if they make one. Even if they don't though, I think it kind of worked as an ending anyway. Like I said, we know what we need to know. We had the climactic release. We don't really need to know what happens to Gordon -- nobody complained when virtually the same kind of "huh?" moment happened at the end of the first game. I would have liked to have known exactly what happened to Alyx, but other than that I have no complaints.
All in all, I think the game was brilliantly put together. The only flaw I could find was at the beginning, not the end. Water Hazard was long and grueling and seemed out of place in the greater narrative framework. If it had been significantly shorter I think it would have worked. Other than that, I think the game accomplished a very good emotional arc, even if not much detail was put into the story. The emotional arc is harder to pull off than details, though, and I think Valve should be commended.
Half-Life 2 was without a doubt one of the most relentless first person shooters I've ever played. I'm not sure why it was that way, but it was.
So it was a brilliant movement to go from that shell-shocked feeling to a drastic change in pace and aesthetic, with the long, silent tour of the alien tower (it reminded me a lot of some of the great sci fi movies, like Star Trek: The Motion Picture or 2001: A Space Odyssey, with long, revelatory but action and dialogue-less sequences towards the end). It was kind of a gradual release rather than a big bang climax. I think it's very cool that they did that, seeing as how I can't remember anyone using that narrative structure in a game before, even though it's often used in books and movies to great effect.
Then the modified gravity gun at the end. My GOD, that was so frickin' cool! After running for my life for the last 3 chapters, fighting desperate battles against striders and snipers and whatnot, it was so satisfying to have that gun for the final sequence. People would no doubt be amused by my insane cackles of glee as I threw Combine soldiers around, dragged them into energy streams and disintegrated them, pulled them and used them as bullet shields, and so on. It reminded me of Sauron in the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring movie, when he was blasting huge numbers of elves and humans into the air with a wave of his mace.
As for the story, it was very predictable, really. That's the sad part. But it was still beyond anything games have done. It takes an art form a while to develop and find its voice, and games are just getting started. Half-Life 2 is a great step forward though, I think, despite its predictability.
The ending was very cool, with the time freeze thing. Frankly, even though everyone is kind of upset that it didn't have a "quick fix" ending, we know all we needed to know -- Earth, for the time being, is free from Combine control. Breen is almost certainly dead.
As for Alyx, well, she's probably dead, which is unfortunate, but she's a martyr for the cause of humanity, and that's a noble thing. I think they set it up for a really, really powerful third game and who knows what they'll come up with when and if they make one. Even if they don't though, I think it kind of worked as an ending anyway. Like I said, we know what we need to know. We had the climactic release. We don't really need to know what happens to Gordon -- nobody complained when virtually the same kind of "huh?" moment happened at the end of the first game. I would have liked to have known exactly what happened to Alyx, but other than that I have no complaints.
All in all, I think the game was brilliantly put together. The only flaw I could find was at the beginning, not the end. Water Hazard was long and grueling and seemed out of place in the greater narrative framework. If it had been significantly shorter I think it would have worked. Other than that, I think the game accomplished a very good emotional arc, even if not much detail was put into the story. The emotional arc is harder to pull off than details, though, and I think Valve should be commended.
