Most negative Half-Life 2 review

I'm not much of a gamer so I'm not like a super-player who can whiz through an FPS with the greatest of ease. But I must say I love HL2, haven't even beaten it yet.

I won't say anthing agains anybodys' comments about the other games, but I liked HL2 way more than Doom3. Doom3 was real cool, looked great, scared the crap out of me a lot. But I couldn't stand the constant dark halls and crap hour after hour, turning around in circles cause every walkway looks the same. And I've got every brightness setting turned as high as I can go and I can still barely see it.
I stopped player for a few weeks and then fired it up one day, I couldn't get out of this "room of halls". I swear I spent an hour going all along the walls and looking for a way out and couldn't do it. I finally gave up and uninstalled it after it's wow factor was gone.

As for HL2, I really like it. I don't think it's as linear as they say. Are you SURE you only have ONE way to do everything? I think not. Just watch a "speed" video of HL2. Those stacking boxes you hate so much can greatly save you time when you use them to jump over an electric wall instead of playing through to the switch.
Or instead of going through a small level to find a switch, you make a few precise shots from a long distance and break something that crashes through something else and saves you the time of having to go there manually.
The hoverbike and the buggy are freaking sweet, you could make a whole game just driving those and I'd buy it.

The physics are sweet, you only interract with what you need to interact with. What would be the purpose of "unlocking" some of those doors that you don't need anyway? So you can go through a few more halls that lead nowhere and do nothing except waste time? They give you enough world to explore without making it seem like to MUCH, which I don't like. I mean, in every "stage" I still have to figure out what to do and where to go. It's not like you walk in a room and there is your target on the other side, it isn't that simple.
Even Ravenholm seems like you can go anywhere you want, I had a hard time getting through that. But it was fun!

And I don't know what that dude is smoking but the gravity gun is the coolest weapon I've ever seen in a game!
He doesn't like that when you have to fight a strider, there are rocket launchers around?!? Would he rather NOT have rocket launchers around? What's the deal? I'd rather not have to grab some ammo in level 4, to use in level 8. I'd rather have the ammo near where I need it. That's what.

The AI was smart enough for me, who doesn't like walking into a room and blowing the crap out of 15 AI's trying to rip you a new one? Bodies flying everywhere all raggidy anne style. Freaking awesome! That's the fun of it! Would you rather play against a single SUPER AI who can programatically "sense" you, whip out a gun and shoot you square between the eyes and kill you in one hit, before you've even changed weapons? And from across the room? Super smart? Yes. Fun? Not at all. Heck I'd rather have 30 stupid AIs come at me and I toss a grenade into the middle of them and watch em fly like the Matrix burely brawl. Then to be up against a couple super smart AI that I have to strategically chase down for 15 minutes only to die because he layed a mine in front of me.
Tell you what: LONG LIVE THE DUMB AIs, DUMB ANIMALS, AND DUMB ALIENS!!!!!!

And to change subjects slightly, I don't like "realistic" games anyway. They bore me to tears and drive me mad with how LONG it takes to do anything. Why? Because one shot kills you. Because as soon as the enemy spots you, you're dead. Because you have to "crawl" or "walk" so as not to let the AI "hear" you and sound the alarm, dooming you to death again. Making you start back at square one. Because you can only have a few dippy "real world" weapons and no auto-targeting. Cause you get no ammo unless you kill something or whatever. I don't know guys, I just like a game that is crazy, zanny, fun, NOT real world, NOT realistic. That you can play with.

And yes, picking up the enemy with the gravity gun and using him as a projectile to hit another enemy with, is WAY cooler then any "realistic" game. Sorry to say.

And nothing beats the hatred you build up for that prick who spreads his BS over the intercom the whole time you're playing! I can't wait to see him in PAIN! SHUT UP YOU TWISTED PSYCHO!!

It's a sweet game. It's an experience. It's fun, dynamic, cool, and original.

And I might ask, because no one has mentioned it yet, what mode you play in? Obviously hard mode will be more challenging then easy.
To be quite frank, if I can't beat a "level" in two or 3 times, it's no longer fun. I want to plow through levels with full armor and ammo as if I owned the place. If I die I want to spring back up around the corner and try again. HL2 does everything right. Except for Steam, of course.
I haven't had any issues with it. But I would prefer to have a game that I can just install and play without being online, that's all.
Although I must say it is a cool concept. I bought HL2 for $60, which in one fell swoop gave me like 15 games. That ain't to shabby.

Not to offend the original poster, but this dude has his facts wrong. If he can't just sit at a game and play it for what it is, then he needs to stop playing games. I don't get in a car and whine about it because it's not a plane. Neither should someone play a game and then whine that it doesn't do what, literally, games, and ESPECIALLY end users equipment, can't do.
HL2, nor any game, is not a fully interractive, holographic, 3D, immersive environment where the AI could just as well be another human. That technology just isn't here. So stop complaining about it. You want smarter AI? Play a multiplayer game online with other humans.
To me the review was stupid, the guy just seems full of himself.

Sorry, but that is my, super humble, opinion

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and in my opinion Half life was a nice experience but i wanted to know more about the Gordon Freeman, there was a lot of unanswered questions to him and the ending did not do anything to answer any questions to what happens to him. The AI is dumb but that didnt bother me and the graphics are nice but to me i like far cry waaay better. More open environments even though you have to get into a small corridor when in the jungle you can attack guards from any location and this gives you alot of replay. The good thing about half life is that their multiplayer is very very good, counter strike and deathmatch are really fun to play the only thing i dont like is the STEAM system where you have to load onto their server everytime to play any game. I know that its for piracy but it gets annoying. I liked DOOM 3 better becuase it was a real rush and scared me and the multiplayer is loads of fun. IF i had to rate the games it would be
1) Far cry
2) Half life 2
3) Doom 3
but if i take multiplayer into account then
1) Half Life 2
2) Doom 3
3) Far cry (there is hardly anyone playing in the server)

well i have just started playing it (a bit late) and it seems alright and i have enjoyed playing it so far, but this review has really opened my eyes, and i would like to thank you for it. but i would still prefer to play a computer game to watching a movie (unless with my girlfriend, but then we wouldnt even be watching the movie )

Sometimes you need a walkthrough guide to get you through the rough points.

Wrote this a few months ago, and looking back on it it does seem a little 'shrill' and others have expressed these views better, but this quote from 'TS Thomas' sums it all up best, apart of course from the small number of dull weapons that always run out of ammo, the less effective than Half-Life 1 enemies, the lack of hostile vehicles, the inability to drive combine vehicles, and the general emptiness...

"There is something inherently wrong with a game if there is only one solitary path through a large area of ruined city."

Anyway....

Was anybody else out there as dissappointed, no, frustrated as much as me by Half-Life 2?
A game that gave us a linear slightly tedious path through what is supposed to be a city and then the coast?
Its just so disappointing in every way, graphics and sounds just beyond good, physics and realism brilliant, but story and levels, well how do I say it: unimaginative and boring. And there is no excuse for that. Half-life was soo original and well thought out, intelligently made levels with a wide wide variety of INTERESTING enemies and a proper selection of weapons to create ambushes and mayhem.... and then the second game, phhhh, what a let down. Seems like it tries to capitalise on the half life 'feeling', by having all the stuff, like sounds from the suit and the recharge points and stuff, but all within a claustrophobic dull empty environment, with a history of which we are all unaware of!

Gordon freeman is supposed to be in a large city, but we can only see it from behind fences and force fields and over the top of high walls and ledges. All we can do is move through the very obvious set path to the destinations, and when we utilise the gorgeous physics engine and pile together some garbage to make a ramp over these obstacles, some invisible barrier stops us. It all seems like were being coned by lazy level designers who can't be arsed to go into any kind of detail and would prefer we whisked through everything with only a glance around us. Is this the ground breaking kind of thought and layout we were expecting? All this is present in the original Half-Life but that was in an underground base environment with occassional ventures to the surface, where a tightly set path even aided in giving the feeling and atmosphere of being on the road to alien-hell nowhere, but in the middle of a city, and even on the coast? man wheres the roaming freedom that that should all imply??????

And a lack of life and activity around us, no moving cars or herds (or even just a small flock) of people, its just a dead, restricted environment. Fair enough it�s supposed to be a
police state 0f the extreme kind, but we are talking GOD DAMN DESERTED! Even when you walk out of the train station at the start of the game into the square, there are just big gates and police right in front and around the corner, to stop you going anywhere or seeing anything. This is a poor excuse for levels of a game, what is it now MORE THAN FIVE YEARS IN THE WAITING!!!

Just a little bit more space to move around in, little events or sequences to see, or a glimpse of activity in the distance would have made all the difference. ...And quickly, the entire section in the silver tower was a huge lost opportunity. First you f#uck around in the basement, see what could have been some interesting activities of slave/drone people building weapons, gun ships and tripod dudes, fight on a few floors and then get zoomed straight to the penthouse sweet and miss all the stuff in the middle. Complete cop-out, lack of effort rubbish. No running battles, no hordes of civilian militia attacking, no witnessing of people being made into combine cyborgs, or encountering rooms and chambers full of fresh and ready to roll enemies, residing there in temporary storage for the time being. Just poor poor poor easiest possible method of constructing levels. All smoke and mirrors to hide the fact its plain and dull. Just try playing without some of the nice graphic effects to show you what I mean. And then like, you can�t drive any combine vehicles, and when you should see loads, on the highway sections and in anticitizen 1, you don�t see any. That would have been the perfect section to get ambushed or attacked head-on by some mean grey people carrier thing, but no, empty, just trashed cars.

You spent most of the time fighting foot soldiers and those flying disc-saw things, which are very very good, but that�s it. The odd gunship, a couple of easily despatched helicopters and apc's. The first half-life had all kinds of vehicle madness, but there are really hardly any here. Nothing really tough or menacing to come after you. Just a couple of sand-lion mother creatures and a couple of gunships. Not even anything dark or menacing in the sewer sections. Just pants pants pants. And those combine guys in the white suits were just the same as the others but with that disintegrating/fading away weapon thing, with which they more often than not missed. A real missed opportunity there, I mean they could have carried a heavy heavy automatic rifle, or a pulse death cannon or grenade launcher, but no, just the silver grey blob gun!
The story wasn�t explained in any way at all, no details on how long the earth had been under combine control, of how it all went wrong for humanity and why soo much has been devastated, how doctor bream became ruler of earth, what became of black-mesa, or who or what the G-man is. Instead of escaping into raven Holm, freeman could have gone through a section of black mesa to the coast, encountering new up to date takes on the complex, revisiting this once almighty facility and encountering some of its unpleasant inhabitants. But no, none of this, just skipping on ready for the big cr@p ending! The king of let downs, and a very easy way to justify another game, and dragging this whole sorry mess (of a sequel) into yet another incarnation. Moving along a very narrow rigid path, not knowing a scrap of info, while encountering peace meal groups of the same bunch of cannon fodder and wobbly, meat aliens is not my idea of a quality experience, no matter how many objects you hurl at things with the gravity gun, or how many neat faces the characters pull...

Soo restricted when you can see soo much around you, but all is blocked by the old invisible wall, restricted selection of weapons, same old ineffective footsoldier cannonfodder around every corner and cant drive combine vehicles, AND shameless lack of G-Man info and cop-out ending to lead to another half-life cash in: Half-Life 3, "The great Half-Life cash in"
This game was not worth the money or the wait, and I sold it as soon as I got through the disappointing last levels, and saw the gash ending.

sorry chief but doom 3 sucks balls....

I still say HL2 was awesome, and is one of the very few games I cared to finish all the way through. And you have to love the endless maps and cool stuff you can download and play with when you're done.


"Sometimes you need a walkthrough guide to get you through the rough points."

And how come? If your path is strait and narrow, hard to miss?

I got lost lots of times. And maybe I wasn't as observant as you, but I had "enough" visible access to the world of city 17.
However, I do agree that some smartly placed "giant", cool, scary, monsters in the deepest, darkest or most secret places of C17 would have been cool. Like a secret labratory creating some kind of new monster to control people.

Also, did you play on hard? Cause it sounds like you just turned your graphics low and played it easy and breezed through.

Oh well, I got nothing to say. Don't kick a dead horse they say.

ok...first off i have beaten the game many times...and each time i play through it i never get bored and the only reason i get off of the cpu is because my little bro wants on...maybe the AI aint the greatest...hmmm i wonder how hard it would be to make it soo realistic that you wouldn't want to play the game because you would be scared to actually get shot and die...i know for me the Ai is fine...sure there is lots of scripted events in the game...but what would happen if there wasn't, you would just be wandering around for hours looking for what to do next...and ok going away from what i just said, what if you could blow buildings apart, there could have been something important in that building which you just blew up there for screwing your chances, and consider you would want it to be more realistic you would get no notification that you screwed up until you realize that you are completely lost and getting plastered by enemies hiding in buildings with sniper rifles...and also i would rather have some place to take cover then be blasted into pieces by a striders gamma beam going straight through a building and into me (it can do that apparently according to the HL2:ep2 trailer) so there is my speel for tonight.
and since he did such a good job of pointing out only the negative things lets see him give The Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion a negative review.

You do realize this thread is something like 3 and a half years old?

Wow this is an old thread. But I agree in many aspects.

yah i did notice but i just randomly found this thread and i just had to say something but hey to prove a point you guys saw it didn't you.

Well sorry i hit a nerve over HL2 and that you were feeling bitter over it. I said all I have to say in that old post, but really taking those points it made i defy anyone to argue that they are wrong. I just ask this, if you played the first one all the way through and enjoyed it (I loved it), did you feel the second one was better? There is a lower variety of enemies and weapons, far less uber enemies to leg it from in fear, you have vehicles but cant drive combine vehicles (not encountering moving combine land vehicles on the coast section is an inexcusable wasted opportunity) and the king of all complaints: not finding out anymore about the G-man. "wake up and smell the ashes" was a great line by the way, but after 5 years between first and second games i was itching to know who this guy really was and facing him in a showdown, which didnt happen. Some real info at the very least would have been nice.

On the enemies AI, well they are not as effective as in the first game, its not that they were great shots and neither should they have been or ever should be as that makes it too hard, but they would try and flush you out with grenades as soon as you hit cover for any length of time. That just gave the illusion of intelligence and added to the experience enormously in my mind. And finally we should have seen more of Black Mesa. That would have been interesting for those who liked the first one. Its as much of the story, surely, as Gordon, the G-man and yes Barney too

On having extra rooms and areas with nothing in, umm yeah it would seem like a waste of time, but it would add to the feeling of being in a real environment. To know its there is better than to know its not and your stuck running through a narrow path.

The title of the post refers to the combat of Oblivion. Well, maybe not that itself, just the way people move looks pretty unrealistic, like theyre floating almost? After playing Battlefield 2 ive been a bit spoilt perhaps in that respect, the way people run and stuff looks almost real. I havent got anything negative to say for Oblivion really (why would I its got total FREEDOM!!!), its not my kind of game thats all, I dont go in for wizards and dungeons and stuff. I did by it but on a whim to see how it would run on my pc, cos i heard its demanding. Pretty dum I know! ...but my flatmate gets alot of fun out of it

This thread is mega old, and my opinion of HL2 softened a bit in the mean time. I bought episode 1 and even quite liked it! but not enough to play it through more than twice. I'll probably buy Episode 2 as well, cos im still curious as to where the stories going and it will play pretty good to no doubt.

Sorry one more thing, I must own up and say when i bought the game I had a (mighty) Athlon XP 1700+ 512mb ram 34gb HD, soo the loading times were a major problem, teamed with an awesome ATI Radeon 7000 64mb. (no Transform and light so low settings on everything and absolutely no aa and af) Even then i was impressed by how good it looked and how well it all ran on my cacky machine. Better graphics and lower loading times that i would have had with a better pc would have raised my opinion of HL2, but not enough to stop me writing what i did all those years ago. I absolutely did not play it on easy.

Cheers!