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KagePrototype said:While there are so many reasons I could give as to why Half-Life 2 will be great, these are the three main reasons in my perosnal opinion.
1. Incredibly immersive environment
Watching the tenements and trainstation videos Valve released recently, it's easy to see that Valve intend to create a very realistic and beleivable envrionment for the player to experience. Walking through a tenements building with combine soldiers raiding apartments, propaganda spewing through television sets, and people looking general depressed, is an example of this. Half-Life 2's 1984-inspired storyline looks set to be one of the most in-depth and detailed plots in an FPS. I don't know any other FPS game that attempts to create this sort of detail in a game world.
2. Physics incorporated into gameplay
The star attraction of Half-Life 2, I think, is the manipulator weapon. This weapon lets you pick up and fire (what seems to be) almost any small prop or object in the game world. Imagine fighting combine soldiers, ducking behind a barrel, picking up the barrel with the manipulator, and firing it straight at the combine, who then fall down dead due to the impact. Or using a magnet on a crane to pick up a huge container and drop it onto enemies. Or using your crowbar to bat away a bothersome manhack into a stack of shelves (that promptly break apart from the collision). Again, I don't know any other FPS game that attempts to create this level of interactivity in the game world.
3. Stunningly realistic world and beleivable characters
Acting as the background for all of this depth, Half-Life 2's Source engine creates an incredibly detailed, realistic world for the player to run around in. It is undoubtedly the most realistic looking game I've seen for a long time, and while it does not have the vibrant, overly-detailed sci-fi feeling Doom 3 had, it is still one of the most stunning games I've seen in a few years. Everything from the incredible urban envrionments in City-17 itself, to the lifelike movements of the characters in the game, everything just shines with perfection. While the indoor envrionments seem a bit flat and uninspired, the shader technology Valve are taking advantage of easily distracts your attention, creating puddles of mud and shiny surfaces that look simply amazing in motion.
Well so far it looks good, I remember a game designer said "you can have the great graphics, these cool effects, awsome guns. But if you don't nail that 30 secs of fun, your not gonna have a great game" Well so far this game looks to have about 2 minutes of great gameplay.