you only liked half life 2 because you were supposed to

So much time has passed since Half-life 2, that when I see comments along the lines of "HL3 pls", I see responses along the lines of "half-life 2 looks shit" "what was so good about half-life" "who cares about this old game".

I and many others here were around before Half-life 2, and it was a really big deal to us. Some people came along just after and picked it up during the Episodes, TF2 & Portal. They still got the same shot in the arm as the rest of us did. But for the gamers who got sucked in from the birth of the modern military shooter, they couldn't give a toss about Half-life 2.

I don't really blame them, they've been brought up on a high replayability, high adrenalin, social, plot-less flavour of shooters. And it hits the spot they really like. They don't yearn for the things we loved about Half-life 2 and it's not their fault. Valve did relaunch CS into that sphere to get a cut of that action (wouldn't be surprised if those gamers thought CS:GO was the first CS game!), but Valve also recognised the A-RTS (MOBA if you like) is somewhere they should be.

But as for the story focused, low replayability, unsocial shooter, I don't think Valve thinks they should be in that space right now until the winds change or they worked out how to change it. I think they've looked for the answer for the last few years and come up with ideas and ultimately dead ends.

As of right now, I think Half-life 3 would make a better movie than a game, given the gaming climate. That's how much I think things have changed.
 
I disagree. There arent only military shooters out there. Metro Last Light and Bioshock Infinite were both phenomenal and both sold really well (of course not 10 millions like CoD). And the name Half-Life isnt forgotten. Even people who dont know Half-Life will see HL jokes everywhere and when HL3 will be announced and looks as good as we expect, those people will be excited too, they will react like "oh thats what everyone was waiting for, looks awesome". Also games like Dark Souls show us that there a tons of people who still play "hard" games.
 
Ugh....suggesting it should be a movie...No. Please, no.
 
One thing which I noticed is that games which many people liked and also the critics kinda get an anti-hype thing going on after some time. I dont mean the people who dislike a game only because everyone likes it. What I mean is that people love and hype a game so much, after some time they think back and think "well its wasnt THAT good". Same happened to Bioshock Infinite and now (after a decade) it apparently happens to Half-Life 2. But I dont blame you, its been a long time and I guess after finishing the game for the 20th time someone gets bored of it or something like that.
But do you really remember the first time you played it? I mean REALLY. The first time I played Half-Life 2, it was mind blowing, which doesnt even sound appropriate because everyone uses that word so much.
I mean why did you even start this thread? Do you need a place to share your sadness that HL3 isnt out yet and no one knows if it ever will see the light of day? (I dont blame you if thats true)
 
Hectic Glenn said:
As of right now, I think Half-life 3 would make a better movie than a game, given the gaming climate. That's how much I think things have changed.
Click to expand...


I still don't understand how people entertain the idea of a Half Life movie. Half Life 2's story, if I may be blunt, is rather paper thin and hardly enough to form the basis of a film. Half Life 2's (and I suppose by extension the original) true and lasting success lies in its world building and atmosphere, and the way in which the story was told. By which the player inferred for themselves what had happened to the world, a method that does not translate well or effectively to the medium of film, especially when Half Life 2's revelations in themselves are not particularly rich or poignant in the realms outside 2004 video gaming. In hindsight, though for the time it was certainly an advancement, its character building and 'plot', so to speak, amount to a few breadcrumbs feverishly tossed between starving fans. Ten years on, most of these aspects have been superseded by the likes of other shooters.

In related news, I just finished Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Episodes One/Two. If I wasn't running on two hours sleep I'd love to ramble about how I feel that was the swansong in the 'Linear Story Driven Corridor Shooter' genre as we know it (and what that means for Half Life 3).
 
kl0wn said:
Ugh....suggesting it should be a movie...No. Please, no.
Click to expand...
I don't actually want a movie. What I said was I think Half-life 3 would make a better movie than a game given the way the linear story driven corridor shooter has gone. If Valve rolled out Half-life 3 on Source 2 (glitzy visuals n all), continuing the story where they left off, with all the same practices which made Half-life 2 tick, I don't think it would work in 2014.


Aizawa said:
But do you really remember the first time you played it? I mean REALLY. The first time I played Half-Life 2, it was mind blowing, which doesnt even sound appropriate because everyone uses that word so much.
Click to expand...

That's my point really, right there. For us, at the time, given the climate, given the competition, given the technology, given the norms of the genre, Half-life 2 was incredible. And I do remember walking through the train station for the first time and being terrified a CP would chase me with a stun stick. I made sure that can was definitely in the bin. But, put it in front of someone now, or tell someone else to reflect upon it without the affinity many of us hold and you get this 'meh Half-life' response I see nowadays. It's been a long time heh, things have really changed.
 
I'm kinda irked right now.

Don't tell me that I don't want something, Gabe. Or that the community doesn't want it. You won't sell it to me.

There's a pretty damn stark difference between those two points.
 
You've just actualized this? The decade of time that has passed with Valve making games exclusively for the A.D.D. generation hasn't indicated anything to you?
 
*Thread Title*

But I played Half-Life 2 in 2007 with little to no prior knowledge of the game or the series.

So yeah.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
So much time has passed since Half-life 2, that when I see comments along the lines of "HL3 pls", I see responses along the lines of "half-life 2 looks shit" "what was so good about half-life" "who cares about this old game".

I and many others here were around before Half-life 2, and it was a really big deal to us. Some people came along just after and picked it up during the Episodes, TF2 & Portal. They still got the same shot in the arm as the rest of us did. But for the gamers who got sucked in from the birth of the modern military shooter, they couldn't give a toss about Half-life 2.

I don't really blame them, they've been brought up on a high replayability, high adrenalin, social, plot-less flavour of shooters. And it hits the spot they really like. They don't yearn for the things we loved about Half-life 2 and it's not their fault. Valve did relaunch CS into that sphere to get a cut of that action (wouldn't be surprised if those gamers thought CS:GO was the first CS game!), but Valve also recognised the A-RTS (MOBA if you like) is somewhere they should be.

But as for the story focused, low replayability, unsocial shooter, I don't think Valve thinks they should be in that space right now until the winds change or they worked out how to change it. I think they've looked for the answer for the last few years and come up with ideas and ultimately dead ends.

As of right now, I think Half-life 3 would make a better movie than a game, given the gaming climate. That's how much I think things have changed.
Click to expand...


This rings out loudly with a depressing truth.
 
BabyHeadCrab said:
You've just actualized this? The decade of time that has passed with Valve making games exclusively for the A.D.D. generation hasn't indicated anything to you?
Click to expand...

Who are you responding to. Cause I was responding to HG.
 
I don't even know who I am anymore, much less who I'm "responding to."

~
 
Omnomnick said:
That's funny, I'm sure I saw Glenn post earlier in this thread...
Click to expand...

I didn't explicitly say that earlier, but yes I do think HL1 was better. You can disagree with me Nick, but you weren't there man. You don't know what it was like.

I don't wear glasses by the way, but I may be wearing rose tinted contact lenses.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
I didn't explicitly say that earlier, but yes I do think HL1 was better. You can disagree with me Nick, but you weren't there man. You don't know what it was like.
Click to expand...
Excuse me, I think you'll find I was there.

Anyway, I do disagree with you, but that's because I have always viewed "Best game" and "Favourite game" as two separate things. They can crossover, but just because a title is a company's highest work doesn't mean it is also the personal favourite. Personally, I understand that Half-Life 2 is Valve's highest quality game to date, but it isn't my favourite, Portal 2 is. The same obviously applies for you, just with Half-Life instead of Portal 2.
 
Agree with HG and others, Half-Life 2 was good but Half-Life 1 was a better game. For one the gunplay isn't as good as HL1 (more varied weapons and tougher AI) and the HL2's (and episodes) level design was dumbed down because autistic play testers like this and this

I think a member on facepunch brought up an interesting thing: in HL2 all the important smart people make the decisions for you, while in HL1 the player feels responsible for what's happening over the course of the game.
 
for me Half-Life 1 is the same as Half-Life 2. I agree that Half-Life 1 had better weapons, but Half-Life 2 had the gravity gun, which is like nothing special anymore for us, but the first time playing Half-Life 2 it was so much fun. Also the gunplay of HL2 is way better imo (and it should be cause new technology and stuff), HL1 only had crazier guns. I also prefer HL2´s enemy design, even if it has less enemy variety. Half-Life 2 was more like a playground, and even more in episode 2.
One thing I loved about Half-Life 1 was the first time you came to Xen. Yes. It was just a complete change of the setting and like showing me that shit got real, I dont know, I loved it. Half-Life 2 didnt have a moment like that.
But as I said I love Half-Life as much as I love Half-Life 2. Maybe Half-Life 2 more JUST a little.


OH, btw: for people thinking the time for oldschool corridor shooters ended: Wolfenstein the New Order, I hope its good.
 
Games are flavored by the circumstances surrounding their release. The earlier a game was released in the history of first-person shooters, the more relative charm it could have because it was relatively easier to do something groundbreaking/unique. Half Life 1 and 2, in my opinion, stand alone as fun games now, but at the time they were released, they were insane. I was lucky enough not to know anything about Half Life 1 when I played it for the first time, and it is to this day one of my fondest memories of playing a video game. When someone plays these games now without that context (and after so much time has passed that some of the things that were unique to those games became commonplace), players do not have the same experience that we did.

I liked Half Life 2 because at the time, there was nothing else like it (and I was still coming down off the high from the first Half Life games). I haven't played it for a long time; I was kind of saving another replay of that entire series for the release of HL3, but maybe I'll never play it again?

It's a tough call for me about which is better (HL1 or 2). HL1 has more replayability, but HL2 was a more visceral experience on the first playthrough. If I could only choose one to play from now on, I'd pick HL1. If I was going to have my memory wiped and could only remember the experiences from one game, I'd pick HL2.
 
Half-Life 1, up until the Lambda Complex, is my favorite story-telling from Valve up unto the present date.

Edit: Guys, we had this conversation like three years ago, we gonna do this whole thing again?
 
People still make Half Life 2 maps. If you go over to Planet Philip, there's a truckload of awesome singleplayer stuff. (Check out the Hall of Fame basically.) There's lots of HL1 maps there too. I don't know what that says about how 'great' the game is, but lots of people still enjoy the gameplay it had enough to keep making new stuff for it.

For myself, HL2 was my first real video game. I'd played stuff like flash games online, but HL2 sucked me in and spat me out a diehard FPS fan. Say what you will about HL2's arsenal, but every gun was fun. HL2's dated in some ways, especially with the sometimes uninspired AI, but there are very few games where I've honestly felt like more of an ass-kicking badass than I do jumping back into Gordon Freeman's boots with the shotgun, gravity gun and all the explosives to just clean house.
 
Half-Life 1 has better setting imo. But Half-Life 2 is better, but only because of the episodes which improved it.
 
I don't understand why one has to be better than the other. It's just like when Portal 2 came out, and everybody jumped on the bandwagon of "Portal 2 is the better game, but Portal 1 had the bigger impact, therefore it is somehow still the superior experience."

I honestly do get where these arguments are coming from, but I don't see the point of them. Opinions will be opinions, and I think we can all agree (to some degree, given that we're all here, as a part of this community) that Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are both pretty damn great video games. Or, if that doesn't float your boat, suffice it to say that they are both pretty damn enjoyable video games.


P.S. What the gaming world really needs is a sequel to Super Mario Sunshine.
 
What I don't understand, is how people think that Half-Life 2 is a mediocore game. The game may not have had top notch gunplay, but gunplay is not the whole combat experience.

Movement, gunplay, environment, obstacles and other diverse entities.

All of these, influence the final combat experience. Valve just chose to priotize environment over gunplay, so that they could implement physics into the combat.

A lot of games have combined different things equally, for an example, one of Valves other games, TF2, have priotized gunplay and movement over everything else. The different movement speed and weapons, all worked together to create an interesting and fresh combat experience. Half-Life 2 was just different from the first game, and nobody wanted innovation.

In short, Half-Life 2 isn't a bad, mediocore game. It was a great game, but just different from the first Half-Life and a lot of other FPS'ers.
 
I feel by mentioning HL1 a couple times later on in this thread we have derailed the discussion from looking at HL2 exclusively from today's perspective compared to how we felt when we first played it. Most of us here adored it (why else would we be here otherwise) but we're an ever increasing minority it feels like, given the shift in focus for the modern FPS.

I'd find it more interesting to hear what people thought about that as opposed to the HL1 vs HL2 debate (again....)
 
Hectic Glenn said:
I'd find it more interesting to hear what people thought about that as opposed to the HL1 vs HL2 debate (again....)
Click to expand...

Well Valve has to win back the new geneartion I suppose.

I personally have trust in Valve, because I think they have a good idea what innovation Half-Life 3 really needs to be groundbreaking. Maybe they'll actually make a fantastic single player game, that everyone buys. Either that, or they will surrender to the big COD-erizer, and have unlockable red dot sights for the gravity gun.

But I don't think we're that small of a minority. Bioshock: Infinite is a singleplayer linear FPS, and the sales clearly shows that the market actually want's to play games like that. Even though Irrational Games shut down.

I just think it requires the right tools, and a fantastic groundbreaking game.
 
Video games also could use a NOLF 3 with all these 2deep4u crap today, another Kate Archer game would be fun.

To be honest I've kind of lost interest in a HL3, still want that Prospero!
 
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