"The Freeman Returns" with The Official Orange Box Thread
- Thread starter The M.O.B
- Start date
Tieno
Member
Just watched GooseGoose's 2 hour commentary on Half-Life 2 as well as read some HL2 wiki pages and developer commentary (1 hour into ep 1 dev commentary). I'm in awe of Valve's dedication and though they put into a Half-Life universe.
All of this put together makes you say stuff like "The world feels so real, I feel so immersed" or the sense of an underground resistance. I could only explain it with these vague feelings, but seeing the layering of detail into the world makes you feel humble.
It's quite astonishing and impressive how big their paintbrush and toolset is with which they manipulate and lead the player. They're incredibly talented.
The universe is touching so many of my sweet spots, like a game hasn't done in a long time.
All of this put together makes you say stuff like "The world feels so real, I feel so immersed" or the sense of an underground resistance. I could only explain it with these vague feelings, but seeing the layering of detail into the world makes you feel humble.
It's quite astonishing and impressive how big their paintbrush and toolset is with which they manipulate and lead the player. They're incredibly talented.
The universe is touching so many of my sweet spots, like a game hasn't done in a long time.
Captain Glanton
Banned
dralla said:
There are about three or four points I can think of, total, where they are effective. But even at those, it''s usually just a matter of getting a Pyro over there to set him on fire.
Paranoid_Robot
Member
It's a little early as I still haven't played Uncharted and Mass Effect, but Orange Box is the best game I've played this year, Half Life Episode 2 alone is. It reminded me how good HL2 really was.
I'm one of the few that will say the length is perfect. Some games are just way too long now and I don't like investing so much time into one game unless it's really worth it.
I don't want to get into details but just the overall art, the way the story is told, the typical half life physics puzzles (although not many of them in this episode) are incredible.
I'm one of the few that will say the length is perfect. Some games are just way too long now and I don't like investing so much time into one game unless it's really worth it.
I don't want to get into details but just the overall art, the way the story is told, the typical half life physics puzzles (although not many of them in this episode) are incredible.
I'm about an hour and a half into Half-Life 2, thought I'd post some initial thoughts. Bear in mind, that despite my well-established fondness of the Halo series, I'm not actually a shooter fan. The FPS games I've played are:
-Wolfenstien 3d, and its sequels
-Blake Stone
-DOOM (just the first one)
-Halo 1/2/3
-Bioshock
That's it. I've checked out many demos and such, but never put much time into other titles in the genre. As such, my primary points of reference for modern FPS are the Halo titles and Bioshock. One of the last games I played on PC was DOOM, on a 386 with 4 megs of RAM and no sound card; since then, I've been a console gamer. To get caught up on the story, since I never played the original, I read the Wikipedia entry.
With that established, and since I haven't played very far, a few bullets summarizing my reaction to playing Half-Life 2 for the first time.
Good stuff
--Writing and voice acting are excellent, for the most part
--Very detailed environments, good sense of immersion due to lots of small touches
Not so good stuff
--Loading system is unfortunate. I'm used to hitches of about one second during missions, and a longer load between levels, so it breaks the sense of immersion. They also seem oddly placed: Being told to run for my life and then rounding a corner into a loading screen destroyed the tension of the moment. As did seeing the indicator telling me how to sprint for the first time...and then sprinting into a loading zone immediately. Another had funky techno music thumping when I ran into it, which caused it to stop. It didn't start up again when the load was done - jarring.
--Weapon feedback has been very poor so far. It feels like the pistol and turret I used are barely existent, with minimal animation and effects. Not fun to use, and the guys I'm shooting seem to just soak up damage with a few blood splashes and then drop. Damage sponges, in other words, which combined with predictable AI has made them uninteresting to fight; they feel like zombies. The aiming feels sloppy. I miss a very high proportion of my shots.
--Movement feels off. I keep snagging on small objects and protrusions, getting caught in doorways and generally bumping into stuff. There seems to be a brief hesitation when movement is initiated that throws me off as well. I miss being able to see my legs for a point of reference when trying to drop down holes and such. Going from moving at a normal pace to flying up a ladder at warp speed is also kind of strange.
--Encounter design has been weak so far. It's felt like a shooting gallery, where most of the time I have a hard time finding where guys are shooting from. I seem to be doing a lot more wandering than fighting, but I'm assuming that's because it's early yet. Four or five times now I've gotten to places where I'm under enemy fire and I have not been able to find where I was supposed to go - in water with barrels falling on me, in a courtyard, a helicopter firing on me. It's often unclear where I'm supposed to go, and since there's poor situational indication of where fire is coming from, I often find myself just running around looking for an exit while taking shots. Moments like forcing me to slide down a ramp with those creatures that hang from ceiling just pissed me off; games that screw with player movement in order to create traps like this are one of my pet peeves.
So, yeah. I'm sure my head will be lopped off, but if this were a demo, I'd have un-installed it. Had I rented it, it would be returned. But I have the full game, and Half-Life 2 is held in very high regard, so I'm going to plow on through. It's given me an appreciation for the stuff Halo does right (weapon feedback, encounter structure, path clarity, loading, sound design, AI). I hope I get used to the movement and aiming, the encounters get better and subsequent weapons are more fun and impactful. That would go a long ways towards reversing my negative initial reaction. I'll post some thoughts when I'm much further in to see if things change.
-Wolfenstien 3d, and its sequels
-Blake Stone
-DOOM (just the first one)
-Halo 1/2/3
-Bioshock
That's it. I've checked out many demos and such, but never put much time into other titles in the genre. As such, my primary points of reference for modern FPS are the Halo titles and Bioshock. One of the last games I played on PC was DOOM, on a 386 with 4 megs of RAM and no sound card; since then, I've been a console gamer. To get caught up on the story, since I never played the original, I read the Wikipedia entry.
With that established, and since I haven't played very far, a few bullets summarizing my reaction to playing Half-Life 2 for the first time.
Good stuff
--Writing and voice acting are excellent, for the most part
--Very detailed environments, good sense of immersion due to lots of small touches
Not so good stuff
--Loading system is unfortunate. I'm used to hitches of about one second during missions, and a longer load between levels, so it breaks the sense of immersion. They also seem oddly placed: Being told to run for my life and then rounding a corner into a loading screen destroyed the tension of the moment. As did seeing the indicator telling me how to sprint for the first time...and then sprinting into a loading zone immediately. Another had funky techno music thumping when I ran into it, which caused it to stop. It didn't start up again when the load was done - jarring.
--Weapon feedback has been very poor so far. It feels like the pistol and turret I used are barely existent, with minimal animation and effects. Not fun to use, and the guys I'm shooting seem to just soak up damage with a few blood splashes and then drop. Damage sponges, in other words, which combined with predictable AI has made them uninteresting to fight; they feel like zombies. The aiming feels sloppy. I miss a very high proportion of my shots.
--Movement feels off. I keep snagging on small objects and protrusions, getting caught in doorways and generally bumping into stuff. There seems to be a brief hesitation when movement is initiated that throws me off as well. I miss being able to see my legs for a point of reference when trying to drop down holes and such. Going from moving at a normal pace to flying up a ladder at warp speed is also kind of strange.
--Encounter design has been weak so far. It's felt like a shooting gallery, where most of the time I have a hard time finding where guys are shooting from. I seem to be doing a lot more wandering than fighting, but I'm assuming that's because it's early yet. Four or five times now I've gotten to places where I'm under enemy fire and I have not been able to find where I was supposed to go - in water with barrels falling on me, in a courtyard, a helicopter firing on me. It's often unclear where I'm supposed to go, and since there's poor situational indication of where fire is coming from, I often find myself just running around looking for an exit while taking shots. Moments like forcing me to slide down a ramp with those creatures that hang from ceiling just pissed me off; games that screw with player movement in order to create traps like this are one of my pet peeves.
So, yeah. I'm sure my head will be lopped off, but if this were a demo, I'd have un-installed it. Had I rented it, it would be returned. But I have the full game, and Half-Life 2 is held in very high regard, so I'm going to plow on through. It's given me an appreciation for the stuff Halo does right (weapon feedback, encounter structure, path clarity, loading, sound design, AI). I hope I get used to the movement and aiming, the encounters get better and subsequent weapons are more fun and impactful. That would go a long ways towards reversing my negative initial reaction. I'll post some thoughts when I'm much further in to see if things change.
Tieno
Member
HL2 doesn't really hold your hand when it comes to telling you where to go, but there usually are organic clues in the environment and often it's more of a 'puzzle' than just walking to the next place. There will be some places in the game where you'll spend a while figuring out how you need to get to the next place.GhaleonEB said:
You could kill those guys at that ramp though, there were explosive barrels laying around and all sort of stuff that you could roll down that would clear the path.
I found the aiming very slow and cranked up the sensitivity to max and still found it a bit slow since I'm used to 8-9 on Halo.
Also switch the B and Right Bumper (this way reloading is like Halo and it's much better that way).
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
i would sell my grandma for a t-shirt with the little icons on the big board at the start of each portal level. you know, the "guy getting smacked with cube" "don't drink the water", "cake" icons. anyone seen them around at all?
Stuggernaut
Grandma's Chippy
lol :lolusea said:
It's the first time I've ever played the game. It may have been debated over and over, but it's all new to me, and probably lots of folks new to the game via Orange Box. You might as well not read the rest of my posts in the thread, though, since you have a good idea what they will say already.fallout said:
Up to about halfway through "Entanglement", a little over six hours in. The first half of that playtime was pretty poor, but it's gotten better in parts. Whoever it was on 1up Yours who said the game has pacing problems was correct.
dralla said:
Eh, it wasn't that bad. My friends say it's, not so shockingly, easier on the PC. Now that "Neighborhood Watch" achievement, yikes, what a bitch. I think that's the only HL-related one I have left...
HL2 is a breath of fresh-air compared to Halo.
While I love Halo and whatnot, HL2 is nothing short of amazing. I didn't play HL2 when it first came out, but when the Orange Box came out I couldn't find an excuse not to play it. This is probably the first time I felt my 60 dollars have been well spent (HL2, ep1&2, Portal & TF2!!!!).
Every gamer on the 360 should buy a copy of the Orange Box.
While I love Halo and whatnot, HL2 is nothing short of amazing. I didn't play HL2 when it first came out, but when the Orange Box came out I couldn't find an excuse not to play it. This is probably the first time I felt my 60 dollars have been well spent (HL2, ep1&2, Portal & TF2!!!!).
Every gamer on the 360 should buy a copy of the Orange Box.
I completed Half-Life 2 last night. I plan to move on to Episode 1 tonight, but thought I'd toss some thoughts in here before I do.
HL2 became more enjoyable in the second half, partly because of the way the game design evolved and partly because I had a better understanding of what to expect from it at that point. I never played the first game, but over the years I'd read about it a lot, and HL2 to a lesser degree. For some reason I went into the game expecting excellent combat and a compelling story. I don't think Half-Life 2 has either of those things, at least not consistently, but it did enough interesting things that I'm glad I went through it.
The game has a wonderful introduction at the train station, where it takes the right amount of time to establish the mood and setting of the world. I found myself pulled into the universe pretty quickly, good incidental and triggered dialog, great art design.
It wore on a bit too long, though. The entire sequence up until Barney hands out the crowbar drug on for a while, with too many sequences of me standing around waiting for something to happen. Valve's decision to stick exclusively to Gordon's perspective is an interesting one, but it can be alternately compelling and very limiting. I felt like they didn't really know what to do with it at times; far too often as the game progressed I was left standing around other NPC's waiting for something to occur. It hurt the pacing of the game.
By the time I got the crowbar I was thinking, the next time I play this game I'd just start from that save point and skip all of the introductory stuff and get to the combat. By the time I got the pistol, I'd decided to skip everything up until that point next time around, since running around rooftops and doing awkward stacking and physics puzzles wasn't fun. But when the combat started, it surely would be.
At that point, I assumed there would be some interesting combat, but instead it felt like I was running through a gauntlet, with enemies usually separated from me across streets or beyond fences, taking pot shots as I went. The health system just added to this feeling, as my health was ground down before I could get to the next health pack. Then I got the machine gun and assumed things would get better, but then...
This went on for several hours, resulting in my less then enthusiastic earlier posts. The sequence that really turned me sour on this game was the canals boating run. Holy shit that drug on for waaaay too long. I appreciate what Valve was trying to do in making it feel like a real journey, but they missed a few fundamental things. Like, making the boat fun to drive or providing a sense of progress. As it was, by the time I got to the third (or so) shut gate I was ready to turn the game off and turn it in for store credit.
The canals sequence used puzzles and combat sequences to break up the boating, with mixed success. I realize this was part of the first game, but it's a fine line between adding variety to the gameplay and creating unnecessary speed bumps to the pacing, and I think Valve did the latter for most of the length of Half-Life 2. The game established a rhythm, where I knew that after a certain number of encounters, there was going to be a (probably physics-based) puzzle next. Cinder blocks on a see-saw, blue barrels under a bridge, a washing machine on a pulley - all these and more stood out as, "okay, that was fun now it's PUZZLE TIME" rather than feel like an organic part of the gameplay. (I agree with Sickboy on this point.) Later portions like using the Gravity Gun to remove plugs and lock bars from doors felt more organic and were successfully at mixing things up without bringing the game to a grinding halt.
The first memorable fight in the game occurs when I'm driving down the highway and arrive at a group of rebels who are about to be attacked by drop ships. The combat takes place over a wide open area, with cover around the perimeter and a light house on the back end. This techno music kicks in, and a series of drop ships causes the fight to gradually move towards the light house and then up it, where I take down an air ship with rockets. It was the first fight to make the AI useful, and one of the first to allow multiple approaches to the combat because of the open battle field and ample cover.
Until then, most of the fighting had taken place in very narrow passages. That's not in and of itself a bad thing - one of the best fights in Halo 3 takes place in a two-level hallway. The problem is because the AI is so basic and the combat so straight-forward (shoot, shoot, shoot) there is little room to create my own play style or try different approaches. The drop ship battle did have that - but it was a long time before I felt like there was another standout moment.
Other sequences do stand out - setting up turrets to use as perimeter defense, having Ant Lions on my side after cursing them for hours on end, swinging the cargo magnet around, using the Gravity Gun to hurl saw blades at zombies, cutting them in half. Good stuff, but these moments came in between a lot of sequences that drug on too long and were filled with combat that I didn't really enjoy.
For the rest of the game, the cool moments were offset by things that didn't work.
--I liked having platforming sequences break up the action.
--BUT without full-body awareness, I often struggled with lining up jumps and making my way through narrow passages. This really hurt the Ant Lion beach sequences, because one slip led to another in a possibly infinite wave of enemies.
--Fighting alongside squads was fun, and made me feel like part of a resistance
--BUT this often happened in very narrow passageways and interiors, leading to frustration. I wanted to mow the guys down and just get going so many times, but of course, that's not an option. Very poor AI didn't help things in there.
--Creative use of the environment made me feel like I was really hacking my way through the levels. Breaking through barriers, building makeshift paths across rooftops, crawling through holes and ducts; it all added to the feeling of desperation in the game.
--BUT I've never had a game where I have struggled with navigating my character through the environment to this degree. Up until the very end of the game I was getting snagged in doorways and on small protrusions with great frequency. It made the narrow sequences and platforming feel clumsy.
--The headcrabs and zombies added some variety to the combat
--BUT fighting them got old fast. They moved too slow to be a serious threat, and despite the faster ones mixed in they were never fun to fight at length. Also, I never understood their relationship with the Combine. The Combine drops them off into areas ("shellings" they're called), but I also saw them fighting each other.
My list of pros and cons goes on for a while. For every good idea, there's problems in the execution. Taking down the first four Striders was a grueling but satisfying sequence. The next one felt perfunctory, the next two redundant and by then I just wanted to get it over with. And so on.
And then there's the story - or lack thereof. It feels like I spent 90% of the game trying to get somewhere, but seldom with any idea of why. I needed to get to Eli, but I'm not clear why. Then I need to rescue him, but I don't understand what's at stake. I'm absolutely fascinated by the game universe, (and spent a couple hours on Wikipedia reading up on it last night) but until the last hour of the game it felt like nothing of consequence happed. All the story took place before, and presumably after, the game does. It felt like some of it was due to the limitation of sticking with Gordon's perspective, but also that Valve (like Bungie, to a lesser degree) just like very opaque story telling.
In the meantime, the big picture remains quite deliberately murky, and when the ending rolled and the Gman came back on, I felt like I was watching some inside joke - from the outside.
Despite it all, I'm looking forward to spending more time in the game universe, which is one of the most original and immerse I've run into in a while.
I've heard the Episodes are superior to the main game, so I'm hopeful they are more tightly designed and feature more dynamic combat. If they are more of the same, I'll be disappointed. (I've deliberately read almost nothing about them.)
HL2 became more enjoyable in the second half, partly because of the way the game design evolved and partly because I had a better understanding of what to expect from it at that point. I never played the first game, but over the years I'd read about it a lot, and HL2 to a lesser degree. For some reason I went into the game expecting excellent combat and a compelling story. I don't think Half-Life 2 has either of those things, at least not consistently, but it did enough interesting things that I'm glad I went through it.
The game has a wonderful introduction at the train station, where it takes the right amount of time to establish the mood and setting of the world. I found myself pulled into the universe pretty quickly, good incidental and triggered dialog, great art design.
It wore on a bit too long, though. The entire sequence up until Barney hands out the crowbar drug on for a while, with too many sequences of me standing around waiting for something to happen. Valve's decision to stick exclusively to Gordon's perspective is an interesting one, but it can be alternately compelling and very limiting. I felt like they didn't really know what to do with it at times; far too often as the game progressed I was left standing around other NPC's waiting for something to occur. It hurt the pacing of the game.
By the time I got the crowbar I was thinking, the next time I play this game I'd just start from that save point and skip all of the introductory stuff and get to the combat. By the time I got the pistol, I'd decided to skip everything up until that point next time around, since running around rooftops and doing awkward stacking and physics puzzles wasn't fun. But when the combat started, it surely would be.
At that point, I assumed there would be some interesting combat, but instead it felt like I was running through a gauntlet, with enemies usually separated from me across streets or beyond fences, taking pot shots as I went. The health system just added to this feeling, as my health was ground down before I could get to the next health pack. Then I got the machine gun and assumed things would get better, but then...
This went on for several hours, resulting in my less then enthusiastic earlier posts. The sequence that really turned me sour on this game was the canals boating run. Holy shit that drug on for waaaay too long. I appreciate what Valve was trying to do in making it feel like a real journey, but they missed a few fundamental things. Like, making the boat fun to drive or providing a sense of progress. As it was, by the time I got to the third (or so) shut gate I was ready to turn the game off and turn it in for store credit.
The canals sequence used puzzles and combat sequences to break up the boating, with mixed success. I realize this was part of the first game, but it's a fine line between adding variety to the gameplay and creating unnecessary speed bumps to the pacing, and I think Valve did the latter for most of the length of Half-Life 2. The game established a rhythm, where I knew that after a certain number of encounters, there was going to be a (probably physics-based) puzzle next. Cinder blocks on a see-saw, blue barrels under a bridge, a washing machine on a pulley - all these and more stood out as, "okay, that was fun now it's PUZZLE TIME" rather than feel like an organic part of the gameplay. (I agree with Sickboy on this point.) Later portions like using the Gravity Gun to remove plugs and lock bars from doors felt more organic and were successfully at mixing things up without bringing the game to a grinding halt.
The first memorable fight in the game occurs when I'm driving down the highway and arrive at a group of rebels who are about to be attacked by drop ships. The combat takes place over a wide open area, with cover around the perimeter and a light house on the back end. This techno music kicks in, and a series of drop ships causes the fight to gradually move towards the light house and then up it, where I take down an air ship with rockets. It was the first fight to make the AI useful, and one of the first to allow multiple approaches to the combat because of the open battle field and ample cover.
Until then, most of the fighting had taken place in very narrow passages. That's not in and of itself a bad thing - one of the best fights in Halo 3 takes place in a two-level hallway. The problem is because the AI is so basic and the combat so straight-forward (shoot, shoot, shoot) there is little room to create my own play style or try different approaches. The drop ship battle did have that - but it was a long time before I felt like there was another standout moment.
Other sequences do stand out - setting up turrets to use as perimeter defense, having Ant Lions on my side after cursing them for hours on end, swinging the cargo magnet around, using the Gravity Gun to hurl saw blades at zombies, cutting them in half. Good stuff, but these moments came in between a lot of sequences that drug on too long and were filled with combat that I didn't really enjoy.
For the rest of the game, the cool moments were offset by things that didn't work.
--I liked having platforming sequences break up the action.
--BUT without full-body awareness, I often struggled with lining up jumps and making my way through narrow passages. This really hurt the Ant Lion beach sequences, because one slip led to another in a possibly infinite wave of enemies.
--Fighting alongside squads was fun, and made me feel like part of a resistance
--BUT this often happened in very narrow passageways and interiors, leading to frustration. I wanted to mow the guys down and just get going so many times, but of course, that's not an option. Very poor AI didn't help things in there.
--Creative use of the environment made me feel like I was really hacking my way through the levels. Breaking through barriers, building makeshift paths across rooftops, crawling through holes and ducts; it all added to the feeling of desperation in the game.
--BUT I've never had a game where I have struggled with navigating my character through the environment to this degree. Up until the very end of the game I was getting snagged in doorways and on small protrusions with great frequency. It made the narrow sequences and platforming feel clumsy.
--The headcrabs and zombies added some variety to the combat
--BUT fighting them got old fast. They moved too slow to be a serious threat, and despite the faster ones mixed in they were never fun to fight at length. Also, I never understood their relationship with the Combine. The Combine drops them off into areas ("shellings" they're called), but I also saw them fighting each other.
My list of pros and cons goes on for a while. For every good idea, there's problems in the execution. Taking down the first four Striders was a grueling but satisfying sequence. The next one felt perfunctory, the next two redundant and by then I just wanted to get it over with. And so on.
And then there's the story - or lack thereof. It feels like I spent 90% of the game trying to get somewhere, but seldom with any idea of why. I needed to get to Eli, but I'm not clear why. Then I need to rescue him, but I don't understand what's at stake. I'm absolutely fascinated by the game universe, (and spent a couple hours on Wikipedia reading up on it last night) but until the last hour of the game it felt like nothing of consequence happed. All the story took place before, and presumably after, the game does. It felt like some of it was due to the limitation of sticking with Gordon's perspective, but also that Valve (like Bungie, to a lesser degree) just like very opaque story telling.
In the meantime, the big picture remains quite deliberately murky, and when the ending rolled and the Gman came back on, I felt like I was watching some inside joke - from the outside.
Despite it all, I'm looking forward to spending more time in the game universe, which is one of the most original and immerse I've run into in a while.
I've heard the Episodes are superior to the main game, so I'm hopeful they are more tightly designed and feature more dynamic combat. If they are more of the same, I'll be disappointed. (I've deliberately read almost nothing about them.)
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Don't worry, the episodes are incredibly well crafted and on a completely different level in terms of storytelling. None of the them are revolutionary, but they are so polished you won't believe it.
Also, as soon as you finish Episode 2, get it on with Portal.
Also, as soon as you finish Episode 2, get it on with Portal.
MedievalManIII
Member
Funky Papa said:
I would recommend Portal before Episode 2 because Episode 2 makes a reference to Portal.
GhaleonEB said:
That's interesting that you have that perspective. I'm completely the opposite. I thought HL2 had very good weapon feedback and it actually felt like you were firing and hitting things. Halo by comparison felt like you were shooting fisher price water guns and nerf ball launchers (it doesn't help that the guns actually look like that anyway). In fact I'd have to say, noting my limited FPS on console experience (I was a PC FPS gamer for many years and new to it on console), HL2 has the best weapon feedback of any FPS I've played on 360. Crackdown is the ultimate, but then that's not FPS.
Captain Glanton
Banned
Mar_ said:
I completely agree that Halo feels like it has toy guns, but I too felt disconnected [actually, abstracted might be the best term] from HL2 with regard to the shooting. To me, a game like CoD4 provides a much better sense of visceral feedback. You could probably put BioShock at the top of that list too.
TerryLee81
Member
Does anyone already have the PS3 version? Post some impressions, please.
I will have my copy tomorrow.
I will have my copy tomorrow.
notjackbauer
Member
I thought we were getting the ign review tonight? What gives?
KittenMaster
Member
I played on the NeoGAF sniper server recently. I should come back to it. A Steam friend went there and I told him about NeoGAF through it. </viral advertising>
I think Snipers have a use, but it can be so hard to notice sometimes, because enemy snipers tend to steal attention anyway. They sound useful on 2Fort, but I think they're better on Capture Point maps where it's more difficult for other snipers to engage them.
I noticed, even though the reviews say that you'll want more maps, you'll end up getting custom maps anyway, so I hope no points were taken off for that. I've even seen a remake of TFC's 2Fort, which was awesome.
I think Snipers have a use, but it can be so hard to notice sometimes, because enemy snipers tend to steal attention anyway. They sound useful on 2Fort, but I think they're better on Capture Point maps where it's more difficult for other snipers to engage them.
I noticed, even though the reviews say that you'll want more maps, you'll end up getting custom maps anyway, so I hope no points were taken off for that. I've even seen a remake of TFC's 2Fort, which was awesome.
Edag Plata
Banned
notjackbauer said:
They said it would be up at midnight on Podcast Beyond...that's probably pacific time btw because they're in CA.
off to bed...UnholySpectacle
Member
Bought the Orange Box on release (cause I was late to the HL2 train of awesome).
Played it once up until the end of
, my comp crashed and it took me some time to drag myself back to the game. Now I'm at the beginning of Water Hazard and all I can say is that that "man on the run" feel the game has at the beginning is really weel conveyed...Now let's hope the rig does not bail on me.
BTW I loved Water Hazard and I'm happy to do it again, am I the only one?
Played it once up until the end of
Ravenholm
BTW I loved Water Hazard and I'm happy to do it again, am I the only one?
GhaleonEB said:
I'd like to thank you for your detailed impressions. I am at the Water Canal part and am really asking myself if it is worth going on with this game. The 2 main reasons I am holding on to the Orange box is all the praise it gets, and I feel like I have to keep giving it a chance (need to get the gravity gun) to experience the praise others give it. And I am eagerly waiting to see if Valve can patch TF2 and the lag issues it has (it probably is my most favorite multi-player shooter ever).
Other then that, Half-Life 2 is pretty much doing nothing for me at this point.... but as a dedicated gamer, I'll keep trudging along.
Mistouze said:
It wasn't the best part of the game, but there were some parts that were really enjoyable. I mainly loved looking at the scenery every time you reached an open area. I don't understand the widespread hate for this part. It lasted a bit too long, but when you get the machine gun they really started building towards something: your fight with the chopper. It keeps chasing you and you can't hurt it, until you finally get to that open area where there's no escape. The setup towards that fight makes it worth it.
Yeah, I think the positioning of it in the game is sort of a problem. It's hard to keep players engaged in a game if you throw something like that right at the beginning. It made sense to all the Half-Life fans, but certainly not to newcomers. I think they definitely fixed all of those issues with the pacing in Ep. 1 and Ep. 2. And as Mistouze implied, that "man on the run" feel is integral to the enjoyment of that section. If you're not really feeling that, I can definitely see why you wouldn't care for the section.Darunia said:
Anyway, I enjoyed it too, but I guess that was because I had played Half-Life and kind of knew what was coming up ahead. The only part of the game that ever really annoyed the shit out of me was Nova Prospekt, and that was mostly due to the turrets.
epmode said:
I'm not trolling the game by any means... And I was the thread creater of the most recent 'Not Feeling Half-Life2' thread. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on something that they spend 60 bucks on. And I still do think my purchase of 60 bucks was worth it to experience Portal and TF2. And i'm still willing to give the game a chance and continue playing it despite it not appealing to me as much as other games have...
So what is your point in this?
BravoSuperStar
Member
lol that airboat sequence is probably responsible for more people quitting on the game than anything else. Its so much better after you do it once, and know when the end is coming. I don't mind it at all now that I know when you actually get through the game its nothing but a distant memory. My advice is to keep going, the best is certainly yet to come.
The game does get better after that, so anyone playing through it should keep going. And you hit on one of the problems - there's no indication of progress, so I kept thinking I had arrived at the destination only to have to hop right back in and drive for, oh, the afternoon. I can't think of a sequence in any game that wore out its welcome and then kept going for so long. Like many of the puzzles, it's not well integrated into the game; feels kind of tacked-on. The driving sequence is grueling as well, but it's broken up more frequently (at least, it felt like it was).SuperEnemyCrab said: