[skullmonkeys]

I CAN;T BELIEVE THEY ALL DIE!!!! [joking]
I mean ermmmm... What did everybody think?
I personally can't wait another 6 to 10 years until Half Life 3 comes out.
I was expecting a giant boss battle or something too. but.....

Oh well it was an awesome experience.
Discuss.

[Sumaleth]

** spoilers **



Yes, I was surprised to play all the way through and not come across any "bosses" in the traditional sense. I'm not sure that I consider that a bad thing though -- the game worked so well without them.

I did enjoy the unusual G-Man ending, because it was right in theme with the original game's conclusion. I found that final episode surprisingly easy though.

I was probably more surprised by the way the story played out -- surprised by the simplicity of it. Again, I'm not sure that's a bad thing because it _worked_, but I anticipated lots of story arcs that never happened (what the benefactors were about, more about the 1984'esque city, why the benefactors started chomping up the city, more about the rebellion, more about the G-Man, etc). And I was expecting another trip to Xen too.

It was interesting that they chose to put all that in the background, rarely even mentioning it (although you can see it all going on around you), and focus on a simple character-driven, less plot-driven storyline.

I suspect Valve may have even _planned_ to go against expectations. Whatever the thinking, it all worked.
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[not-epad]

** spoilers **

I agree with Sumaleth, it was surprising. The final section of the game was the easiest part, thanks to that ridiculously powerful gravity gun. This is, of course, in direct violation of just about every gaming precedent ever (as far as I know), but this doesn't make it necessarily bad. In fact, I was sort of tripped out by that, because it was like the Combine turned me into fucking God or something. Certainly that modified gravity gun was pretty godlike. As a whole, the game, for me, gave me a sort of Phillip K. Dick vibe, as we're wondering what the fuck just happened at the ending, and of course at the beginning too. Anyway, I thought the whole thing was awesome.

Still, I would have preferred to have known where the Combine came from, and what they look like. We see Dr. Breen talking to a hologram of some humonogous thing, but we never really get a good look at who he's talking to. I'd also like to know why the G-Man is so fucking weird.

[balistic]

Currently making my way up the coast. I'm liking it. It's not struck me as hugely groundbreaking so far, in terms of introducing major new play mechanics, but it definitely is a balanced game, with very immersive lighting and shaders. The sound design is top-notch too. Not crazy about the music. I almost want something more symphonic and less generic.

I didn't like the Ravenholm/mines corridor crawl double-whammy, but the more open bits are great. I'm surprised that I'm able to play it on my ti4200 with everything turned all the way up (except texture filtering).

How much game have I got left at this point (I just got the rocket launcher)?
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[Sumaleth]

balistic: at a guess I think you're probably a bit over half way, athough I'm struggling to remember the order of the episodes now.

What I most enjoyed about the game was the way the gameplay changed every episode. Early on I thought it was just going to be the old HL1 style gameplay all the way through, but that's definitely not the case. Great variety, and I found the later eps a lot more fun than the early ones.

(maybe because the hovercraft made me so sick in the early part of the game)
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[skullmonkeys]

Yes I loved the variety. Not just in the gameplay but in the environments as well. One time you are in a canel on a hovercraft with this helicopter shooting at you and then off to zombietown and then on a buggy with these antlions coming at you.
Something that I didn't find in Doom3, that made the game really boring.

The game built up to a great climax. Where's our conclusion?

The Combine are I think just what the name implies. Combination of other species of the galaxy. The combine move on from one species to another draining the energy of their host planet and fusing themselves with the plante's superior species. In hopes to one day to attain immortal or godlike status.

[Yarik]

Oh crap no. So there is no real conclusion?
This is just gay....
I WANT CLOSURE God Damit.

[skullmonkeys]

LOL don't read this forum if you haven't finished the game.
feel kinda guilty now.

[Ragnarok]

I'm not very satisfied with the end. It's very open, like in hl1, but in hl1 you knew why you where running and you went to Xen to try to put and end to the problem. Here you just blow up things without much of a purpose (other than doing anything alyx says)
I'd liked some more background info about the city, what's the situation on earth, etc. After six years I expected some more story.
However the game is probably the best I've played in these 6 years.
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[Sukhoi]

I think you're on to the combine skullmonkeys.
Dr. Breen want to fuse. I guess he's got a better deal than most.

At the end of HL1 you became hired by G-Man, so to speak.
And in HL2 we're his puppet, lured into doing his bidding. He's quite confident if that is not the case. And, know that we have spoiled whatever plan Bree had, and destroyed the entire city, he puts us back to sleep.

I think it's a bit sad that the player couldn't just go "no I won't fight any one, until I get some ANSWERS goddammit!" We just go right into action.

But I think the game want's us to act according to what we see and experience, as opposed to what we're told by some lame intro. And that's cool I think.

And I love how the game is not letting us know about the whole background setting/story. It becomes a more straightforward EXPERIENCE, and it backs up the idea that we're G-Mans puppet. We don't care, we don't want to know, we just act.

......i dunno

[Bandados]

Did anyone see the Gman talking to Colnel Odessa? (rocket launcher man)
I saw a screenshot from someone who'd found it... Someone also suggested the Gman might benefit from conflict, or perhaps the whole thing is just a test.. Whatever it is, it feels very contrived, and lacking in freewill - a good reflection of the nature of games.

Does anyone have any theories on the benefactors? - such as the big alien bee thing Breen was talking to near the end...

If you're interested at all check out: http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=177559&perpage=15&pagenumber=7

and read the posts by 'Soul_Harvester'. They seem to have some good theories about the whole story... One which sounds pretty convincing is the Vortigaunts being part of a collective concious.

[Sumaleth]

I actually read all 32 pages of that link today.

I think the best conclusion I can draw from it all is that there's no clear conclusion to be drawn. There are any number of stories that can fit the few facts we have. I think _any_ of the theories offered in that thread could be made to work in some fashion (not necessarily well).

The trick for Valve is to find that one great storyline that avoids as much cliche and contradiction as possible.

Or just keep leaving it completely open ended.

I'm someone who thrives on plot and story-conclusion, but I'm wondering at this point if it'll be out of character for them to start creating Half-Life games filled with clarity and conclusion (out of character for the game, not Valve).
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[Awetopsy]

hmm Well I just finished it and I gotta say I loved the entire game from front to end. I thought that ravenholm was a bit weak... almost like it didnt fit.... but it was still one of the best games Ive played in a loooong time.

If I had one complaint it would be that sometimes I felt as though I were being led around and not given too much freedom to move. I can understand that but I feel that Far Cry made me feel less guided than HL2.

Dont get me wrong tho... As soon as Im done writing this post Im firing it back up again to play it all over again. Im gonna grab the cheat codes and spawn me one of those blue greavity guns to start with.

Im glad they didnt give us too much story. They gave us enough to really start making us guess and theorize. Im pretty certain thats exactly what they want.

I really do want to know more about the combine but Im conent to wait and find out more. YOu really have to pay attention to little details. There was a part where I saw a newspaper posted on a wall that read something like "Earth Surrenders!" Implying that there was some sort of conflict or something that led to this whole ordeal.

I dunno.. Im kinda rambling now but all Igotta say is it was great. absolutely great.

[ceenda]

The Nova Prospect section of the game was awesome.

Funny thing about HL2 was that, for the first quarter of the game or so, I really wasn't enjoying it at all. After all the initial "wow, the graphics are amazing!" I got really bored of the canal sections (Too much like that section in HL1 - "On a Rail").

But later into the game it got better and better. That gun at the end is hilariously amusing. One of my early complaints about the gravity gun was "why can I pick up tables, but not soldiers?". Nice to see that resolved.

[Drunken Monkey]

awesome experience indeed... but the ending was a bit of a blah. come on... i just spent 10 hours playing this thing, might as well give me a couple of clues to marinate on. ah well... all in all awesome job valve... there is really just a few games that leave this kind of impression.

p.s.
can we play half life 3 as something other than a mute with phd? if there is one thing that was kind of annoying it was the weirdness of gordon never speaking. no personality there... nothing to relate to.. Chronickles of Riddick did a great job in that regard.

[faustgfx]

phd, well, derek smart has ph.d. too... wait.

give up with the speculations, replace the "hmm, what if this or that had happened, why don't they tell us backgrounds, or what has happened" thinking with "WHILE WE WAIT FOR EXPANSION DISC (retail price) (steam rocks! really! come on!) THAT WILL EXPLAIN _EVERYTHING_ EXCEPT NOT. BUT YOU WILL BUY IT ANYWAY."


while waiting for world of warcraft to hit retail in eurolandia............
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[Sumaleth]

All the HL games so far have generally steered clear of giving answers while piling on the mystery, so I don't expect there'll be too much clarification happening in the mission packs (although Valve might try it, who knows?).

Re Gordon the mute: the idea there, which Valve have mentioned many times, is that Gordon is YOU. The aim was to make it more immersive, rather than continually remind you that Gordon is someone else. You provide your own dialogue for Gordon.

Whether you think it works or not, I think, is a personal thing.
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[Lunatique]

I just finished playing HL2, and WOW. Another timeless classic just like its predecessor.

I guess I'm one of few that actually really enjoyed the Ravenholm chapter. It added to the variation of pacing and enviroment, including the feeling of dread, horror, and panic. I'm a huge zombie fan, so a desolate town with nothing but corpses and zombies (and a loonie priest) had me smiling from ear to ear.

I didn't care for the airboat part. The controls for the boat felt really unresponsive (which is intentional I'm sure, to mimic how it reponds in real life), and some of the path choices felt confusing and frustrating. The buggy ride was a bit better, but I'm really not a fan of vehicle rides in FPS games in general. Other FPS had vehicle rides in the past, and the only times when it really was fun for me was when it gave you the feeling of "YES! Now I can really kick some ass with this ride!" The airboat and the buggy didn't give me that feeling, instead they were necessary evils that were frustrating and didn't add to the experience at all. In fact, they are like stains on an otherwise excellent game. If the rides were never in the game, it wouldn't have changed anything for the worse--only for the better.

The rich and detailed world created in HL2 was completely immersive, but I wished more of the story could've been told, or hinted at, either in the form of NPC dialogues, or items/recorded logs/old media scattered around (newspaper, magazine articles, videos footages..etc). I'm sure Valve kept things unclear as to pave way for HL3, but I think they might have held back a little too much (and we won't know for sure until HL3 is out if they made the right decision).

I was at first really bothered by the fact I can't see my own hands while driving, or grabbing items, as some FPS games have started doing it and I think it makes the visuals even more immersive. However, I realize that in order to depict the player's hands doing these things, they would have to create an insane amount of animation for grabbing objects of various shapes and sizes, not to mention variations of each animation depending on how/where you are grabbing the items. In the end, I agree they made the right choice, considering how advanced the physics engine is in HL2, and the sheer amount of things you can interact with.

I loved the music of HL1, and the music of HL2 is just as good. People don't often mention the music of the first HL or this sequel, but I think it's some of the best electronic music ever created in video games. Not only does the music add so much to the mood and atmosphere of the game, but it's excellent by itself as purely music to listen to and enjoy.

The ride in the Citadel really had me smiling because it's just like the beginning of HL 1, where you are taken deeper and deeper into an awe-inspiring enviroment, and your jaw just drops lower and lower as you travel deeper into it. I was kinda disappointed in the beginning of HL 2 that it didn't have a long ride like in HL 1, but the Citadel ride really made up for it.

I was hoping there were a lot more NPC dialogue when you clicked on the NPCs around you, or NPCs talking to each other. But most times, there were only a few lines and then no more, except for important key scenes. I think more dialogues would've added to the immersive feel. Having NPCs stop talking to you after you click on them a few time, or have them not talk at all can jolt you out of the suspension of disbelief, and reminds you that you are playing a game. Also, all these NPCs standing around, or doing battles together, but they don't say anything to each other except "Here, take a med-pack" just made them less human. It's a shame really.

I'm thinking that maybe for HL3, Valve should evolve the gaming style and start taking the route of hybrid games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines..etc. For a world so rich and detailed as HL, it might benefit from RPG-like dialogue branches, more choices, and heavy emphasis on storytelling. Or, maybe that would kill the feel of the game altogether. I really don't know. I do know that I loved System Shock 2, particularly the recorded logs that helped to unfold the story (Doom 3 copied that, and I can't believe all the reviews I've read of it didn't mention it).

One thing people often complain about is linear gameplay, and I for one think it's silly to complain about such a thing. Being linear is not an indication of poor quality. Excellent story, pacing, character development, and action is all that matters. Plenty of games had non-linear gameplay, with tons of choices and open enviroment--but you know what? Many of them really sucked. I want a fun and fulfilling experience, and it really doesn't matter whether they are from choices I get to make in a game, or a wonderfully crafted ride that the developer provided for me where I only need to sit back and enjoy.

The ending was too abrupt, and I think some form of closure would've been more emotionally satisfying. There has to be a way to keep important sequel potential materials a secret, yet still give the player a sense of satisfaction and closure--especially when you purposely crafted likeable characters that you wanted the player to care about. I like the fact Valve goes against mainstream conventions and march to the beat of their own drums, but certain things should adhere to common conventions because it's a tried and true rule of the storytelling craft, perfected by a deep history of collective human intelligence and literary/cinematic/interactive explorations.

Oops, I'm being long-winded again. I really just wanted to say that I had a blast playing HL2, and can't wait for the sequel.

[Sumaleth]

I agree with a lot of what you said there, Lunatique.

Although I happened to _love_ the variety of gameplay added by the vehicles.

(And Ravenholm is often quoted as people's favorite chapter. )

RAM and harddrive space was clearly a bottleneck in the game. I'd have loved more dialogue and more natural behavior from the NPCs, just to create a more immersive world, but that sort of stuff is pure RAM usage and loading time. It's already a game that uses a lot of RAM and brings up loading screens every 5-10 minutes, so I suspect they've had to curtail their own instincts there.

About the linearity, I have to admit that it did strike me as feeling a lot more linear than any other FPS games I've played, even though they are ALL linear. I'm struggling to put my finger on why, but I played HL:S last week and was surprised that it didn't feel as linear. There's something in the way that HL2 funnels you to the exit that works against it a little.

Although, again, that's a RAM/harddrive thing. It's easy to make large play areas with lots of extraneous rooms and locations, but it all takes resources. HL2 in its current form is already taunting the limits of those resources.

Regarding the story, when I first completed the game I was shocked/surprised at how abruptly and simply it concluded, but I didn't mind being surprised like that. I almost said out loud "hah, you got me there!". But now, having had time for it to soak in and splash around a bit, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity -- I still don't mind the open ending, but I would have preferred more genuine story during the game and less of those abstract "hints". Hints are fun to a point, but that's four Half-Life games now and still nothing much is concrete.

But like I said in a previous post, maybe that's the intended "style" of these HL games.
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[gLitterbug]

Wow, I�m kind of surprised, but you wrote alot of what I think there Lunatique. I just didn�t like Ravenholm really, but that is mostly because I don�t like the so overused "omg a monster spawns RIGHT behind you" parts. But it seems thats the definition of scary nowadays.

You really speak out of my soul when mentioning the linearity! I hate how everybody wants to have those "non-linear" games since GTA became so famous(which isn�t that non-linear at all if you look at it). The more non-linear it gets, the more the story suffers(I got lost in Morrowind and sold it after that). At least I have yet to see a game which is not linear and still delivers a real great experience without getting hung up on AI flaws and stuff. I want my games linear and intense and fun. It is exactly for the moments I experience that I re-play a game, not for trying a different approach; if I would want that I go buy another game instead.

Well and nothing can describe the feeling the ending track from Half-Life 1 conjured up in me, when it came up after finishing Half-Life 2. You HAVE to love the music in that game, it�s not overused as background-tralala but comes up exactly in the right spots to give you a great boost of immersion and feeling.

[balistic]

I should find time to finish this thing already.

Deathmatch is pretty lol.
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[tayete]

Well, it seems the "non-boss" final part is a bit strange, yes. The toughest one for me was the part where you have to place 3 turrets to stop an incoming wave of soldiers. I had to reload several times with that one...

But else, I think it is a quite easy game, with nice graphics and plot, really entertaining (not like Doom3), but not as good as the first part. And well, the end sucked.
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[ceenda]

[Minefield]

the whole background story is explained in the strategy guide for hl2, i think. anyway, i read the short version and it clears things up quite a bit.

after hl1 dimensional cracks started appearing around the world, all sorts of aliens started populating earth, military built barricades to keep monsters outta cities, then combine teleported in with their huge towers, earth military fought and lost in 7 days, dr. breen made a deal with the combine, basically you keep humanity alive and we'll do what you want.
nobody knows exactly what combine wants from earth, as they're basically destroying it with toxins etc...

the combine is sorta like borg, they go thru worlds and either assimilite or destroy whoever is a threat. the gunships for example are creatures fitted with technology, an assimilated species from another world... striders too.

[balistic]

[Minefield]

7 hours. There are news clippings about it on the bulletin board in Dr Kleiner's lab.

right, i meant 7 hours.

[-HoodZ-]

[daZork]

I got the impression of HL2 that everything was only a game that G-man made Freeman play to test him further.

Though he didn't know that. I believe Valve was influenced by the story of matrix or something. Well maybe I'm only seeing matrix because I love that story. But the world you play in isn't as hightech as in original HL. Argh! I want more...
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[balistic]

[daZork]

You believe that G-man is Gods right hand or what?

I don't know about that... It would be cool, but then why didn't he have any authority to give Freeman any info about this wierd stuff. If he was God he could easily make him do things he didn't want. It's more likely that he is satan or something.
Plus.. in the first game he didn't have any superhuman powers.

And the fact that Freeman doesn't speak. Does it have something with the story to do?
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