GameTavern - View Single Post - Half-Life 2 reviews?

KillerGremlin · 10-23-2004, 03:52 PM

I've been playing Half-Life since 5th grade. I was in 5th grade back in 98', when it came out, meaning that I've been playing the game for roughly 7 years.

I'll call myself one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Half-Life fan here, because, I've played through most of the mods and I've seen about all that there is to be offered by Half-Life. :P

Half-Life was groundbreaking back in 1998, mainly because of the way the single player game was set up. It wasn't all that ground breaking in itself......it took a doom-type scenario, and it tied it together with a nice story, and added some awesome scripted events. If you dissect Half-Life, you can pull out several fairly simple First Person Shooters, but it was the unique way the game tied all the elements together that made it revolutionary (Another game that isn't as revolutionary as it's credited to be is No One Lives Forever; NOLF is just tied together by the BEST STORY IN ANY SINGLE PLAYER FPS,[considering its time] and has enough scripted dialogue and events to make it enticing).

What kept Half-Life interesting was really the variety...you where constantly being thrown into new situations, and you constantly had to think what you where going to do: you'd go from crawling through air-vents, to getting attacked by marines on the surface, to swimming through underwater tunnels with water-aliens in them. That was pretty damn intense, especially for 1998.

But I'm not going to lie...and there are plenty of cases like me out there...I didn't get Half-Life for its single player. I got it to play online. I had so much fun playing Quake, when I heard there was a new game coming out using a super-charged Quake engine with graphics that would blow Quake out of the water I was captivated. And that's where I started. I was playing Deathmatch and TFC before I was playing Half-Life's single player game. TFC was and still is one of the most fun mods for Half-Life. In fact, I'll go as far to say that TFC is the best Capture The Flag game that has ever been made [considering its age].

I did get around the beating Half-Life though, and I had A LOT of fun doing it, and I've played through the game several times since, because it's so damn fun. Half-Life is hard to play though, because it's beginning to show its age. I'd much rather play through No One Lives Forever.....but Half-Life's single player still holds a place in my heart.

I still play the many Half-Life mods online to this day. I play a lot of Counter-Strike, and I still play a consistent match of Team Fortress Classic. And every once in a while I dust off Day Of Defeat, Battlegrounds, and Natural Selection.

No other game has gotten multiplayer right the way Half-Life has. I'm not sure why that is, but it is.

I hate STEAM though, and I really have lost lots of faith in Valve since 1.6. I understood the reason to make the push to 1.6, for the downloadable content and whatnot, but I do not think it was necessary to phase out the 1.5 servers.

For starters, Half-Life remains the cream of the LAN, and connecting to STEAM to play a LAN game of Natural Selection is Grade A Bull****. Second, it's retarded that I need to fire up STEAM to play a single player game of Half-Life, but that's just my opinion. And third, STEAM has an ass-load of problems, like:
1. The hacker problem has not been solved
2. It is considerably slower (more laggy) then 1.5 servers
3. The Downloadable content is Bull****
4. STEAM likes your RAM
5. Valve focused on STEAM and updating a 4-year-old mod opposed to focusing on HL2, ultimately delaying it for a while
6. It's harder to run 3rd party mods on STEAM: AKA Desert Crisis. I'll give free BJs to the person that can tell me what Desert Crisis is, because I have a feeling I'm the only one who has played it

---------------------------------------------------

Regarding Half-Life 2, I think it will be good. I'm not sure that it is going to be worthy of a 9.8/10.....because that would have to be a pretty damn revolutionary game, but who knows.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are a ton of Half-Life 2 fanboys reviewing the game right now. You need to wait a few weeks so you get some less biased reviews.

I'm excited though, about Multiplayer. My PC can't handle Source or HL2 right now, but I'm building a new one next year, so I have no problem.

CS: Source looks amazing. I can't wait to get that running on my PC.

10-23-2004, 03:52 PM	#10
KillerGremlin No Pants KillerGremlin is offline Location: Friggin In The Riggin Now Playing: my ding-a-ling Posts: 4,566	Re: Half-Life 2 reviews? I've been playing Half-Life since 5th grade. I was in 5th grade back in 98', when it came out, meaning that I've been playing the game for roughly 7 years. I'll call myself one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Half-Life fan here, because, I've played through most of the mods and I've seen about all that there is to be offered by Half-Life. :P Half-Life was groundbreaking back in 1998, mainly because of the way the single player game was set up. It wasn't all that ground breaking in itself......it took a doom-type scenario, and it tied it together with a nice story, and added some awesome scripted events. If you dissect Half-Life, you can pull out several fairly simple First Person Shooters, but it was the unique way the game tied all the elements together that made it revolutionary (Another game that isn't as revolutionary as it's credited to be is No One Lives Forever; NOLF is just tied together by the BEST STORY IN ANY SINGLE PLAYER FPS,[considering its time] and has enough scripted dialogue and events to make it enticing). What kept Half-Life interesting was really the variety...you where constantly being thrown into new situations, and you constantly had to think what you where going to do: you'd go from crawling through air-vents, to getting attacked by marines on the surface, to swimming through underwater tunnels with water-aliens in them. That was pretty damn intense, especially for 1998. But I'm not going to lie...and there are plenty of cases like me out there...I didn't get Half-Life for its single player. I got it to play online. I had so much fun playing Quake, when I heard there was a new game coming out using a super-charged Quake engine with graphics that would blow Quake out of the water I was captivated. And that's where I started. I was playing Deathmatch and TFC before I was playing Half-Life's single player game. TFC was and still is one of the most fun mods for Half-Life. In fact, I'll go as far to say that TFC is the best Capture The Flag game that has ever been made [considering its age]. I did get around the beating Half-Life though, and I had A LOT of fun doing it, and I've played through the game several times since, because it's so damn fun. Half-Life is hard to play though, because it's beginning to show its age. I'd much rather play through No One Lives Forever.....but Half-Life's single player still holds a place in my heart. I still play the many Half-Life mods online to this day. I play a lot of Counter-Strike, and I still play a consistent match of Team Fortress Classic. And every once in a while I dust off Day Of Defeat, Battlegrounds, and Natural Selection. No other game has gotten multiplayer right the way Half-Life has. I'm not sure why that is, but it is. I hate STEAM though, and I really have lost lots of faith in Valve since 1.6. I understood the reason to make the push to 1.6, for the downloadable content and whatnot, but I do not think it was necessary to phase out the 1.5 servers. For starters, Half-Life remains the cream of the LAN, and connecting to STEAM to play a LAN game of Natural Selection is Grade A Bull**. Second, it's retarded that I need to fire up STEAM to play a single player game of Half-Life, but that's just my opinion. And third, STEAM has an ass-load of problems, like: 1. The hacker problem has not been solved 2. It is considerably slower (more laggy) then 1.5 servers 3. The Downloadable content is Bull** 4. STEAM likes your RAM 5. Valve focused on STEAM and updating a 4-year-old mod opposed to focusing on HL2, ultimately delaying it for a while 6. It's harder to run 3rd party mods on STEAM: AKA Desert Crisis. I'll give free BJs to the person that can tell me what Desert Crisis is, because I have a feeling I'm the only one who has played it --------------------------------------------------- Regarding Half-Life 2, I think it will be good. I'm not sure that it is going to be worthy of a 9.8/10.....because that would have to be a pretty damn revolutionary game, but who knows. One thing to keep in mind is that there are a ton of Half-Life 2 fanboys reviewing the game right now. You need to wait a few weeks so you get some less biased reviews. I'm excited though, about Multiplayer. My PC can't handle Source or HL2 right now, but I'm building a new one next year, so I have no problem. CS: Source looks amazing. I can't wait to get that running on my PC.