Finished Half-Life 2 Wednesday, and I really haven’t felt such an intense urge to finish a game in a long time.
What works:
- Variation, pacing and length. Where Half-Life was an internimable collection of corridors and silly platform sequences, HL2 manages to get it just right. When I am bored with driving around in the buggy, the game changes into something else. When I can’t be bothered commanding the ant-lions, they disappear. This is games growing up: you instantly know that the film director is a novice or that the band has no clue when they prolong a shot or repeat the riff long after you’ve lost interest. It’s easy to fall in love with your own creation and forget the user/viewer/listener. Getting the pacing right is sooo important.
- People. There is a lot of genuinely interesting interaction with the NPCs. I still don’t for a second feel that they’re more than mechanical dolls, but a good feeling of shared goals. The revelation of betrayal could be a bit more interesting though.
- Physics. The physics add so much to the game in terms of gameplay and accessibility. Things you expect to work generally do work. When you want to make a ramp for jumping with your buggy, the puzzle is not “ramp goes up when player has placed object x on the far end”, but actual simulated physics where you can use whatever combination of heavy objects you want.
- Box-less distribution. I bought it via Steam when it came out, and it simply worked. I don’t know what cut Valve eventually gets from this, but I prefer paying the developer to paying the truck drivers and retailers who added nothing to the game. If Valve begins using Steam for selling other developer’s games, things could be great. But it’s still a problem that you need a physical box to give a Christmas present.
What doesn’t work:
- I have no body. As the Riddick developers, Starbreeze, have talked about, you are still the classic FPS floating gun with no body. You have no idea about the size of your body, and you can’t see your legs. Riddick really solved this nicely by letting you see your body and providing an external view for climbing ladders and so on.
- Quick-saves. F6 to quick-save, F9 to quick-load. My fingers remembered this even years after playing Half-life. I thought we had moved on to checkpoint saves?
- Lack of people. Every time you meet up with your pals in the resistance, they suddenly seem to disappear again.
- Bad in-organization communication. It’s hard to ensure a good information flow within a big organization, but the enemy soldiers patiently wait behind a thin door while you fight with their colleagues on the outside.
- Medikits in crates. Really. After all these years, the world is still littered with wooden crates containing medikits. Couldn’t we do this in a better way?
But IMO the best game right now, and infinitely better than Doom 3.
The lack of medkits and health power ups is one thing that I think Halo does *very* well. You are never really broken away from the reality of the game as you never need to find any miraculous cures lying around — instead, you just need to find safe cover. And in a tense fire-fight, when your shields are low and you are sitting in that cover while waiting for the shields to regenerate, the tension grows immensely.
I’ve got to say that online activation thing has insured I will NEVER buy this game. When I buy a VCR I take it home and use it as I see fit. Imagine if Worst Buy declared I only bought a license and they’ll take the thing back if I record Futurama.
Bopha: Interesting, I never felt it to be intrusive – I feel that buying online with no box is an opportunity rather than a limitation. I have re-installed my Steam account when I upgraded to new computers, and it always worked without a hitch. Depends on how much you trust Valve, I suppose.
Bopha: your comment might mean something if Valve could subsequently take their product back, but they can’t. Once it’s bought and unlocked (effectively a one-step process now that the game is active) then it’s *yours*. You can back it up to disk, unplug your network and play to your heart’s content. Valve can’t take it away from you.
the much touted physics just makes up for Freeman from ever using his hands – either to hold weapon in static positions. the only time you’ll see Freeman move/flex his hands is when he first slipped inside his HEV suit.
the graphics are prettier but level design seem to have dropped in quality. gameplay is too short. hl2 again mixes a dust speck bit of RPG interactivity – Freeman can command his rebel squard to stay or follow – too much like training puppies – and like puppies the AI-rebels are less than obeydient. usually they just get themselves killed. story-line NPCs are on god-mode obviously as they cannot be killed by Freeman. there are gliches where Freeman gets instantly killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time – like a auto-closing gate in the prison.
some, no, alot of people have been declaring how hl2 is the best, setting standards, the leader of the pack. i’m not sure not some of them works for valve/steam/vu. others have slammed hl2, specifically steam. steam is actually and factually pointless. our world is one of copies – think about it: photocopier, printer, camera, video-camera, tape-recoders, computers, pen-and-paper. there is no technology that can remain unbroken unless it is kept 60feet in a seamless steelvault, surrounded by 1 million cubic-metre of reinforced concrete, guarded by…you get the idea.
hl2 may sell well, but mainly thanks to the large hl MOD community. value should really give back to the community for making and keeping as big as it is today and not treat them as semi-criminals.
hl2 does indeed have a few innovative tricks – they are tricks because hl2 did not make the most of these innovations.
hl original was full of innovations that make it very enjoyable and challenging. hl2 seriously lacks challenge. the famous striders are too easy to take down. crabheads are more frightening. the fast-stripped-flesh zombie looks straight out of alien3 is pretty scary until you double-shotgun it in the head.
d3 developers seem to think that for FPSs the more shooting the better and if it looks pretty, gosh we have a shoein! not.
hl2 developers seem to think that for FPSs a little bit of story inbetween the shooting is fine. not.
hl2 sort of reminded me of tomb-raider later-series. tomb original and tomb2 had superb gameplay. later-tombs i did not know why i was doing (jumping/climbing/up/down/vertical/horizontal mazes) what i was doing. the “goal” of a puzzle was vague and not-in-plain-sight. original Tomb : i can see i must get up there, so how do i do it. forgetable-Tombs: why? whatfor? why am i playing a circus acrobat? level design is extremely important because a level-designer have played a thousand time (or not) and is extremely familar with the playground (or not) while for a new player nothing is obviously unless cleverly pointed out in the form of a graphical question: this is your goal here and how do you get there (hehehe!)? no one enjoys pointless puzzles.
with hl2 your goals are quite vague, the storyline tries to impart a sense of purpuse but common this is not interactive theater. NPCs speak to you as if you are as dumb as you are. so, ok, it breaks immersion if freeman speaks with a scottish ascent, but he should at least interact with NPCs like giving then a gun, a granade, not just stare or give them just too commands: stay and follow.
level-design is poorer than the original hl. a strict path to follow from loading to loading blasting things that come. although the-crabhead-behind-the-box trick was use a few times it was not as monotonously repetitive as d3.
hl2 does really feel rushed even though it took as along as a child to be concieve to going to pre-school. the ending was really quick and splinters off from the spirit of the original hl. to give the story away is no biggie. it is a mixed up story of 1984, starship-troopers, aliens, resident-evil, and much too strong dose of matrix.
to conclude: this one started with wolfenstein 3D and have pretty much travelled along with the development of FPS to this day of hl2. seriously, i hope valve or any aspiring developer do not want to set a trend or standards based on the weakness of hl2. here are some more and less pointers:
1. less linear – adds to gameplay and replayability
2. less scripts – AI needs improvement, not suicidal.
3. less pointless shooting – only with good reason!
4. more gameplay – 20hrs is 60 hrs too short.
5. more interactivity – tossing barrels is not improving interactivity
6. less driving vehicles – maybe the in-thing but more than 10years ago i thought original wolfenstein 3D and Doom were vehicle-simulator without the wheels or the enginesound effects!
D3 have not mature from its origins. HL2 seems to be headed that way. maybe HL3 would be = to D3 shocker.
gameplay. gameplay. gameplay. nothing else matters.
Good points, but it might be better to post when you aren’t drunk.
Is it just me or does it seem like the technology required to make more detailed and believable environments is also shrinking world space, and possibility space with it? Deus Ex had about a bajillion ways to enter a warehouse, while Deus Ex 2 only had the space to cater for a couple of prescribed choices. In HalfLife 2 my only freedom seems to be to move forward, and most everything in the scenery, story and game play urges me to do that, whether it be clever lighting (“What around that corner?”) being chased (“Aiiie! A cave in!”) or item gorfing (interesting note: the content of a supply crate is generated based on what you need at the time – pretty clever, but yeah, a little esoteric to be believable).
Other games do the exact same things, but probably not realizing it as explicitly as HL2 does. HL2 seems to do it quite knowingly, and makes a far better job of hiding its linearity than similar games (“PANZER DEAD AHEAD!” moments in Medal of Honor and Far Cry totally hamming it up, for example) with various pavlovian tricks (notice that you’re attracted to far off lights when you’re wandering around, and audio queues guide your view to some scripted sequence).
But you know what? It’s the same old tunnel-syndrome FPS, just done really, really well (or “acceptably” as Walter might put it).
I love the use of physics in puzzles, but since they’re puzzles, I’m not doing anything creative. I’m rarely building steps up to areas I’m not-supposed-to-be-in because I’ve been trained very much like a pavlovian puppy dog that unless a route is completely bloodly obvious, it probably hasn’t been catered for. So long as I don’t get creative, the game makes me happy. This is true of any other Tunnel Syndrome FPS, but the skillful “emotioneering” (uhg. Forgive me) in HL2 means that I’m never guessing incorrectly what was intended by the level designer in the first place. Because I’m guessing the correct route correctly the first time (almost always, although some of these city sections are confusing me) I’m never nudging up against my limitations of freedom, and breaking the upkeep of the “new stuff to see and doo” contingency.
In many senses, you are forced to role-play as Freeman. The game becomes “What Would Freeman Do?”. The moment you step out of that role, you see that the game is basically as shallow as any other in the genre. I count my blessings that typically, Gordon is given obvious non-choices, so I’m rarely tempted to step off the path anyhow.
I am no fan of linear games. I hate the arrogance of assuming my choices for me. Half Life and Half Life 2, however, rarely put me in a position where I want to go against the prescribed flow. My choices always coincide with the prescribed choice (normally due to a lack of any concievable choice). This is why both games work, and why so many similar games fail.
Ex-cellent comments all around folks. Just a few thoughts that weren’t covered:
– In all the sub-quality implementations you see (Medal of Honor, Halo, Doom3), linearity is more a problem in practice. The developers either couldn’t make it work or just didn’t care enough (Panzer Dead Ahead). With HL2, the linearity works as a design choice, and the problem becomes more one of naturalism. It starts to intrude on the authenticity of my experience when there is always only ever one path through what seems like a big chaotic interesting-to-navigate war-torn city.
– I do think we are reaching a point where games whose possibility space is limited entirely to the domain of the designer are going to be philosophically unacceptable. Dressing up the same old closed, limited systems in modern visuals just gets more and more problematic.
– No body: my only guess as to why Valve kept Gordon’s body invisible is to keep his identity “transparent” to the player (facilitating that elusive sense of total identification / inhabitation that they are clearly after). Thing is in Thief 3 I was able to see Garrett’s body when I looked down and found it more immersing rather than less (as well as a useful source of visual feedback).
– Quick saves: the game actually *does* use invisible save checkpoints (if you have a slow machine you’ll notice when they trigger) at intervals, and if you die without manually saving you’ll be restored to your last point, just like Halo et al. It took me a while to realize this, and I suspect that most PC gamers who’ve been raised on save-crawling gameplay finished the game without knowing the it did this.
– HL2 needed a “lean left/right” command. Defense in modern FPS games is about taking cover from instant-hit attacks (as opposed to Doom1&2, where it was about maneuvering around fireballs), and it’s silly not to let players shoot from behind vertical cover or scout corners when it’s such a central part of the gameplay.
Dammit, I need to finish up my notes on HL2 and post ’em on antifactory.
Half-life 2 is the best game ever made. Or i should say best game i’ve ever played. i have played nearly every well KNOWN fps game and half-life 2 is top-dog!! the grapics is not too bad. There are still the noticible (sorry about spelling) jagged lines but dosnt every game? (excluding final fantasy X movie sequences). the freedom to throw what u want is excellent and the shadowing of objects is so realistic. BAD POINTS: although i hate to admit it, i was annoyed with the length of the game (too short) and the ai could have been a bit better ( like your friends may sometimes go against orders to save their ass!).One more thing before i knock off, the chapter “We don’t go to ravenholm” was an excellent horror sequence (the first time you play).someone on another forum said the level would have been better if alyx was with you. uh uh. that would make the level way less scary because you’ll have someone talking to you all the time. Well that’s my opinion.
I played the entire HL2 game within two days, sadly, this is no way near what I had expected to pay for. Valves constant tricks to get you to play more without any pauses made this problem even more prevailent.
I couldn’t stop playing because of the constant in-game hype telling me how much bigger and better it was, and then I found it was tiny and to be quite frank a trivial speck in my 3Dgaming history. It’s a shame because I was hoping for the same image of an unimaginably long journey that HL1 left you with once you’d finished.
I’m sorry, but DoomIII seems to be working out a little better (maybe Linux has something to do with it… I’ll try HL2 on cedega and see if it’s any better(lol)), Even though most people say DoomIII is repetetive with it’s bad guys, I think HL2 had sublevel reptition that was dragged along from HL which angered me.
DoomIII has not been cleared by me yet, mainly because I’m happy to let it sit for a while because it doesn’t ‘egg-me-on’ to run through the whole thing so it can let me down once you reach the end.
Anybody that say’s HL2 was great must admit that the citadel sequence was way too short. I mean, you Walk Around A Corner, get into the (right) transport system and zip around a bit so you can see the scale without ever playing in it???
You then drop out, lose all your weapons (predictably) which in HL1 was the sign that you were just under halfway through the game, play a little longer with the modded gravity gun and then it’s the end, within minutes!! How cheated did I feel?
Well, very cheated really.
Needing an internet connection to be able to activate the game is a pain. I had to take my system over two miles to my friends to get it running when I could have got some stupid pirated copy to make it work without carrying my heavy PC! :(
If valve and vivendi had threatened to do this copy protection on their bought CD’s, I would have donated up to ?60 of my own money(minus HL2 costs) to them to ensure they didn’t because I can’t afford the dire ISP charges we have here.
The enhanced antipiracy measures on this game did nothing to stop the piracy, it only succeeded in making a minority(luckily 4 valve) of their customers red with anger, and the guys pirating it prouder of their creation seeing as it was slightly harder to do than last time!
The only other thing the copy-protection excelled at was setting a new level software companies can go to to increase their legal power – not decrease the pirated copies.
I feel cheated, heavily cheated. Like I’m a pawn that has been used in a huge legal experiment. Thank you M$valve, I salute you Neo-Microsoft’s.
I am sure that by the end of the year, all the PC magazines will revise their thoughts about half life 2. Simply put, everyone was too quick to pop the balloons and crack open the wine…
Its one of the most overhyped games Ive played and that is a shame. On top of it all STEAM (such an appropriate name dont you think) comes out with this outragous trojan like virus for what reason???
It may have slowed a few hackers for now… but in the end honest customers will suffer!
How can such a linear experience be responsible for so much joy. As I stepped off the train, I was welcomed by a “Total Recall” atmosphere… I was impressed… but 20mins into the game… and there you have it… Im underground jumping from one pipeline to the next… tunnel to tunnel… door to door. Why must there always be pipelines in every game… or air vents.
So how many different sprites do we see in the game… same old guards all the way through, blue overall civilians… A handful of creatures we have seen before, a few new ones.
Christ sake… the best game you have ever played.
To be honest… I found FAR CRY more enjoyable… at least the open lush spaces… allowed for some sense of freedom!
This game has nothing more to offer but a few new tech upgrades. Gameplay is pretty darn boring.
Jees…
Look… I think you’re all going a little too far with this pseudo intellectual analysis of HL2. It was a very good game, ok, not the best game EVER, but a solid gaming experiance. As for steam, though I’m not a fan, it is a neccesary evil brought about by cock head publishers and software pirates. Dont think for a minute i dislike software piracy… 70% of the games I own are pirated, the other 30% are games i downloaded and thought were so good, i’d buy them. Imagine how angry i’d feel if i actually payed cash money for Max Payne!?
Back to half like 2 and all you utter bollox about non linearity. Theres a time and a place, GTA, Morrowind etc. but NOT a game like half life. The linearity is part of making it a cinematic experiance.
Ultimately, i enjoyed it and have played through it twice and you can still often find me online terrorising the “noobs” in 22g’s server.
As for you cheapos who are grumbling about “having to be online” get a job, a paper round, whore yourself out once a month, and fork out the 30 quid for a 1.5 Mbit connection. Stop moaning.
“I?m rarely building steps up to areas I?m not-supposed-to-be-in because I?ve been trained very much like a pavlovian puppy dog that unless a route is completely bloodly obvious, it probably hasn?t been catered for.”
I’m frequently building steps to areas I?m not-supposed-to-be-in because I’m pretty aware of limitations of the game AI and creativity of the authors. Second turret battle: Staying in the main area will result in helluva fight where you’ll have your ass seriously kicked. The arena is supposed to make the turrets underperform, forcing you to sweat in order to survive. But if you manage to get yourself and the turrets up a balcony, you may finish the battle without shoting even once. Sand pit with ant lion guard? Why, run back up a plank you had brought with yourself and snipe the helpless beast from a safe distance. It’s just not only the “pavlovian bonuses” are obvious. The “pavlowian traps” are too, and while getting the carrot requires you to follow the script strictly, avoiding the stick is best achieved by straying from the script as far as possible.
20 years later, still no story. More money on selling games than making them, even more so when Valve has no idea how to write a story, let alone making a good story driven game.
DRM won.