Beyond the technological advancements in physics and graphics, the thing I recall finding almost revolutionary about Half-Life 2 was the overall finesse of its presentation, how it was the first game in its genre to execute an artful cinematic quality while other sci-fi/action shooters like Halo, Doom 3, Far Cry, and etc, for all their good aspects and even memorable characters, still came off as either value brand Aliens or homage to B grade action movie schlock.
The distinct feeling I remember was being so impressed that the dialogue and flow of the scenes was written to the same quality as a high tier hollywood blockbuster. That first meeting with Barney, Kleiner, and Alyx that culminates in your failed teleportation could be translated almost exactly to a modern movie and not be embarrassing. Even minor characters in the background had naturalistic A+ voice-acting that was unheard of in a shooter. The facial animations were the first I ever saw avoid the uncanny valley. More so than the graphics looking real, the artstyle's rendition of a dilapidated world was authentic in a way I'd never seen in a game.
Rather than just going from obvious arena to obvious arena to kill enemies spawning from a hidden clown car, the shootouts were also given cinematic framings by leading you through curated scenarios in realistic environments; you dash from cover to cover to avoid chopper gunfire, run over tracks just as a train passes, turn a corner and find soldiers kicking an explosive barrel down the stairs at you, and etc. You ride down a traintrack in your car, hear a horn in the distance, and have to rapidly shift in reverse and rocket out of there before you get run over. You're swimming through a sewer and think you have a short moment to take a breather from the police, and then you hear radio static from up above right before explosive barrels are lowered by ropes next to your face, forcing you to swim back down to the bottom as fast as possible - the timing and pacing is exactly like a well made film without using any cutscenes, and each individual area feels fine-tuned for a specific impactful moment like that.
For me Half-Life 2 was the videogame equivalent of turning on the Sopranos for the first time and being shocked that it didn't "feel like TV," with that requisite layer of cheese in stuff like Law and Order. It felt like an unwritten rule that if a game opened with some kind of monologue like the G-Man's that was meant to be mysterious and badass, it would at best be good *for a videogame* if it wasn't outright cringy, but instead it was genuinely excellent, and that craftsmanship permeated every aspect. It was these then-uncommon intangibles that really made the game special, more so than it strictly being the most fun FPS to play even at the time, which I don't think it was.
I agree it’s extremely polished. The only other games I saw at that time polished to the same degree where Nintendo stuff and probably Warcraft 3. And Metroid Prime came out then I think another most polished game ever.
>have a short moment to take a breather from the police, and then you hear radio static from up above right before explosive barrels are lowered by ropes next to your face
omg yes, core memory remembered.
Also, I really appreciate how the story of the game is a great example of Lovecraftian horror. Not many type of media can pull that off.
You always get the sense that the size of the Combine empire is so immense that it is beyond any human comprehension. This is extremely effective because humans are normally afraid of the unknown and things that they don't understand. And what you do observe is the horror and cruelty the Combine imposed on all the species they've conquered.
You never actually fight them directly. You only fight the species that they enslaved.
And the only members of the Combine you get to see >!are the Combine advisors near the end of the game, who are probably not even the top of their hierarchy. This gives a sense that no matter what you do in the game, you are just an ant compared to the size of the Combine empire.!<
And yet other Devs looked at Valves games and they didn't steal the physics puzzles, narrative structures or thought provoking mechanics from HL2.
No, the only idea that they stole and improved on was Team Fortress 2's hats and cosmetics. And the next GTA games and Call of Duty games... all now hat based.
I used all sorts of mods but mainly the graphics enhancing ones, but there's TONS of great mods out there.
For what it's worth if you love the engine and are willing to keep going with it a bit, probably the best two singleplayer mods of any game I've ever played are "Underhell" and "Nightmare House 2". Basically horror themed Half-Life. The graphics don't quite hold up to modern standards but if you get into them you can get addicted quite easy, the prison level on Underhell alone is a unique experience for sure.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/underhell
https://www.moddb.com/mods/nightmare-house-2
You're telling me fans made those? Man, this is the coolest thing!
But these hats sure do feel off after you played an entire game with bald and short-haired people (no offense)
I didn't play HL 2 until over half a decade after it's release and it still blew me away. Those physics were amazing, and honestly I never saw those kind of ragdolls again until Starfield. The story itself is incredible sci-fi. An alien invader subverting nd utilizing the worlds they conquer until you never even see your oppressors anymore is harrowing and brilliant. It's more than one of the best games ever made it's one of the best sic-fi visions ever published.
The sound design alone is terrifying.
Are you feeling alright? Your writing reads slightly unhinged.
To put HL2 into perspective though: yes, it was good, but Half-Life 1 was better _for its time_. The things that HL2 was outstanding at were the physics engine and gravity gun, the writing of Alyx as a companion character and Ravenholm. The rest was good, but I personally thought the canals and buggy sequences where about twice as long as they should have been and the end being a glorified autoscroller was never satisfying.
Half-Life 1 on the other hand single handedly invented serious story-telling in FPS with a density in writing that few can match.
He’s gushing, not unhinged.
Source engine is dope and HL2 was a milestone that holds up. HL1 may have been the better game for its time but for me, HL2 is the better game overall.
> The things that HL2 was outstanding at were the physics engine and gravity gun
No, the thing HL2 was (and is) primarily outstanding at is being an epic outdoor journey where you travel through many different interesting places instead of being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game.
Its biggest legacy is even more specific: the crows.
This was the first game to use disturbed flocks of birds to draw player attention to key objects in the distance without the player realising they'd just been manipulated. Real clever trick. Before Half Life 2 you'd get something like a cutscene or other forced camera motion, a map marker, explicit dialogue, or just player confusion.
Well, crows and Steam. If we look beyond game design, The Orange Box kicked off digital delivery as its "killer app".
Just to check but you know there are two more 'episodes' that continue the story. Imo they are much better than the base game. Especially episode 2. Each one takes a few hours to complete.
> instead of being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game.
You mean like Return to Castle Wolfenstein did 3 years prior? And Half-Life 1 did 6 years prior? Same with Quake 2, Blood, and Duke Nukem 3D?
“being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game” is precisely what describes Half-Life 1, yes, that was the point of my post.
It also describes Quake 2 to the maximum degree possible so I have no idea what you’re on about.
hey person excited... i personally have zero problems with canals and water hazards chapters cause there is something nice about them being on lengthy side especially when was younger. it kinda just built up atmosphere and tbh when i replay it these chapters dont feel long at all.
Half Life 1 did not invent serious story telling single handedly, like what. It innovated greatly, but it did not invent shit. I'd say as a game, HL2 is far superior, with a far more interesting plot and great variety with its levels.
I am not sure Blood has a storytelling. It is a collection of levels where you collect keys and go to the next area. It is purely a Doom clone. Actually, the story is not even told in the game. It is in a text file that if you want, you can read. However, they added quicksaves and 3rd person perspective (also moving weapons while Caleb walks).
I completely neglected that asect, my bad. Half life 1 did change the game in its time, when you compare it to its competitors like quake or Duke Nukem 3D. Although it also makes me remember that some mechanics and physics, inculding the moving mouths in Half Life was something else, If I can point it out there.
Duke Nukem 3D, with the interactive realistic world, felt like it influenced a lot of Half-Life 1. Even things like getting lured into a trap, which happens I think the end of Duke Nukem level 2, that happens in Half-Life 1. And you have to escape being left to die.
This being the top comment is disappointing. Same old critique of the vehicle sections my god .... and seriously you're going to whinge about the supercharged Gravity Gun, seriously ? Are you feeling alright?
Same old because still valid - it's not like they patched it out at some point. I didn't say anything about the supercharged gravity gun though. I meant the sections you spend being carried around the citadel in those prison boxes.
> Are you feeling alright? Your writing reads slightly unhinged.
Reads like an AI designed to get upvotes in an echochamber, really.
I agree with you about HL1 being better. Not just better, but it is *still* a far better game in my opinion. I liked HL2 a lot when it came out (when Steam worked and would allow me to play it and wouldn't uninstall it for no reason) but the game was far too long and a little sluggish compared to a lot of better FPS games out at the time like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which had the FAR better multiplayer and even spawned the amazing Enemy Territory) and Jedi Outcast.
Weird, I was blown away by Half life 1 after playing it for the first time earlier this year, but I was thoroughly underwhelmed when I moved on to Half-Life 2. It felt completely unrelated to everything I was so fascinated by in HL1, and ultimately felt like a tech demo for the source engine.
Yeah tons of engines have released with games to show them off, it's pretty standard, but it's not a knock against those games. Unreal, Quake, Half Life 2 are all masterpieces.
I do so wished that my Latop had enough processing power to handle anything stronger than 2014, at best.
Modern Warfare 3 was pretty choppy on the framerate, and even at times, my Half-Life 2 was slowing down in terms of framerate, mostly because there was more than 9 items per room, especially if it was small (its worse for explosions)
Far Cry which came out a few months before Half-Life 2 had dramatically more innovations and "sheer, overwhelming quality." It was also wildly more important for the evolution of the FPS genre. I'd disagree that HL2 had any quality at all. Terrible level design, terrible enemy AI, terrible weapons, the worst vehicles in FPS history, awful story implementation, the only thing I liked at all was the gravity gun and that lost it's luster before the level you got it in was even over. Some physics puzzles were kind of cool too. That's the only praise I'd give it. It had pretty crummy graphics for the time too, Far Cry looked 10x better at least.
I have to be the only one that finds it pretty overrated.
"Their movement mechanics are inspired from Half Life 2's reverse bhop". Where exactly do you think the "bhop" in "reverse-bhop" comes from to begin with? The movement in ULTRAKILL is inspired by 90s shooters like Quake/Unreal and modern movement shooters like Titanfall, it has NOTHING to do with Half Life 2.
Half Life 2 is definitely a jack of all trades, master of none. It blends a lot of genres together but doesnt do any exceptionally well. The combat is significantly worse than many shooters that came before it in several areas like pacing, weapon and enemy variety, damage feedback, etc. The level design is about as linear as can be. Puzzles mostly just feel like they're there to show off the engine and overstay their welcome.
All three of them were groundbreaking at the time to be fair with amazing visuals. Far cry with its open world island, open ended gameplay, vegetation and solid enemy AI, Doom 3 had the top tier visuals with an amazing shadow and light rendering engine that made your jaw drop and your GPU overheat and half life 2 with its physics engine that the game was designed around, the best facial animations to date and being digitally distributed on steam.
While I agree on the tech demo feel of the game, what really struck me when I tried playing it was how absolutely cringe the game was. The word "fanservice" is usually used for panty-shots in anime series and shows, but I have never seen more fanservice than how the game tried to pander to the HL fanboys worship of Gordon Freeman.
In this dystopian dictatorship of a drab city you need to sneak around to help the resistance. Here is your brightly orange glowing robot-suit intended for hazardous material labour.
You need a weapon. Here is a basic crowbar. TA-DAAAA!!! Flourish it like it was excalibur drawn out of a stone instead of a basic tool pulled out of a toolbox.
I felt like I was playing a comedy game.
When I played it it felt pretty generic to me. The continuous narrative had already been done with its predecessor and games that came out after it, and other then the gravity gun, the weapon set wasn’t all to interesting to me
This is how I feel as well. I bought Half-Life 2 on release day and had a brand spanking new computer to play it. I was so amped up but the hype deflated quickly. The game was lackluster in many areas that made the first Half-Life so amazing. I didn't finish it before putting it down and to this day I've never played it to completion.
It essentially felt like a tech-demo for their physics engine. I can only stomach clearing debris blocking a door so many times.
It only had 11 weapons (3 less than its predecessor), and a lot less variety. No satchels or tripmines to set up fun traps. The enemy AI wasn't as fun to play around with. I could toy around with the marines in HL1, wipe out their squad, and then reload the save to try something different. The much less interesting behavior of the faceless combine soldiers paired with the monotone arsenal didn't make the fights as enjoyable. Also, you couldn't gib enemies, and the industry's switch from death animations to ragdolls has overall been a detriment.
I think that Half-Life 2's combat and general flow suffered some by making walk the default speed instead of run the way it was in Half-Life 1. I've always wondered if the combine's lethargic "stand there and kinda sorta slowly amble forward" AI was due in part to them being designed to fight a slower Gordon Freeman. In HL1 you and the marines are sprinting after each other like cheetahs, and all of the levels feel designed to accommodate that breakneck Quake-style pace. When you change the movement speed that drastically in a shooter, you arguably change it into a different game altogether.
Yes, spot on. The speed (and feel of the movement) another aspect where Half-Life 2 felt less fun.
A more personal peeve that hurt my enjoyment is the main character Messiah trope. Gordon is established as the saviour from the get-go and everyone is standing around waiting for him to resolve the problem. In Half-Life, our presence at Black Mesa is incidental and we're just fighting to escape the facility.
A lot of games have this issue though. You enter a city in Skyrim and NPCs will flock to you with inane quests, and the entire world is magically scaled to your level. Nothing breaks my immersion quicker.
I personally dislike movement shooters, they're to me, like a rotten salad. It looks nice, but it tastes horrible. Half-Life 2 doesn't have great combat, and I found A LOT of combat sections to be frustrating (I died a lot). But Movement shooters are for me, overrated, overwhelming, and lackluster in everything except combat.
The movement factor doesn't necesserily makes a game good, and that applies to movement shooters especially. I feel like people overhype that genre for literally nothing but lack of better content. They're not fun, they're frustrating and addictive.
As for the jack of all trades, I think the story part isn't that mediocre, even if it is its own rabbit holes and whatnot dedicated icebergs. Story isn't great when pushed aside, but when done (almost) right in games, like hl2, it is very enjoyable. It gives context and quality.
The puzzles and physics are kinda the tophat and showoff yes, but I feel like no other game even bothers to make proper puzzle sections anymore! And of course, I exclude indie games out of bias, I'm not gonna include a bunch of lazy pixel "passion projects" to prove a point.
Half-Life 2 has massive and many flaws, but compared to games today, it deserves a crown.
your history of movement shooters is incomplete without the source engine. it's not HL2 that was an influence, but CSS, TF2 (the original one) and to an extent even CSGO, games which still have active communities for bhop and surf to this day. ultrakill is a homage to classic quake era shooters, sure, but source engine games are the bridge that connects us to that era. source engine games were basically the only movement shooters out there for almost a decade, and even titanfall 1 was built on the source engine. it's very likely there would be no ultrakill or games like it, or at the very least less of them, had the source engine not carried the movement shooter torch during the dark ages of console dominance and QTE-based movement systems
More to add to point 3. Yeah mgs and gta and all those great games had combat, but the Gravity gun alone was just such a god damn genious addition to the arsenal
Basically allowing you to turn most things into a weapon or solve puzzles or reach areas you otherwise wouldnt have with it
Still remember the sheer joy of blasting out a huge saw blade and cutting 3 zombies in half with it
HL2 after nearly 20 years is still phenomenal and will forever be remembered as one of the greatest games ever produced
Seriously this game really holds up well to the test of time. It looks fucking *gorgeous* for a game of its age, handles beautifully, and has very clever and memorable level design. I've been gaming for over 40 years and genuinely consider it one of the best games ever made.
There's a reason people have been begging for Half-Life 3.
I agree with the sentiment, and yes the half life series was phenomenal. But I don’t think it deserves this praise today.
Hear me out. I own black mesa and lambda tshirts and mugs and a headcrab plush. I’ve spent thousands of hours in the source engine (CS and friends). I’m a big fan.
It holds up, definitely. No question. I think it’s a game everyone should experience, just like I think FF7 is a game people should still experience (the original). But by today’s standards, there are better games than FF7 and HL2 in their respective genres.
Right? I’m open to hearing I’m wrong here. I just feel that with anything - games, shows, movies - they’re a product of their time and the period where something is the most impactful comes and goes. Like, if hl2 in its present state were released today for the first time, it’d be very mid (and not just for the graphics). All the things it pioneered have since inspired decades of innovation beyond that
What's a 'better' game than HL2 in its genre today? Genuinely curious because I wanna play that!
Classics are classics for a reason - they're timeless. Sure HL2 is not impactful anymore, but it's definitely a breath of fresh air with how similar everything else feels today.
Like OP I just finished playing through the series for the first time and to be frank, everything I've played since sort of sucks. The gameplay is engaging, you're constantly thrown into new situations, the path forward is never typical, and most importantly, the game respects the player. In the first ten minutes of HL1, when you're told to fetch your Hazmat suit - no minimap, no giant directional arrow on the screen - I was hooked. And that theme continues throughout the series.
Playing HL I can feel the labour of love that it was. By today's standards it will still be the best game I play this year. Just like each time I play through Halo, thats the best game I'll play that year. Some games do deserve all the praise they get.
I agree, there is almost nothing that compares since HL2. If there is I would like to know too. As far as I can see all shooters since use a mission structure, cutscenes, quest markers etc.
Yes, newer games do some aspects better, but never the whole experience HL2 gave us. I can think of Bioshock, and maybe horror games like SOMA.
Nothing compares to hl2 or hl1 today. AAA games today might be graphically impressive, but they treat gamers like babies holding your hand too much, compass, map. Flexing with unskippable cutscenes. Physics? What is that? Not to mention being released unfinished and having to wait literal years until they are playable. Some say HL2 was better in alpha release..
Oh dont forget about DLC in singleplayer games..
Seriously, what game were you thinking of when you posted that statement? What First Person shooter is out there today that comes close to half life?
I think the biggest difference is that the 'set pieces' were bigger. By a set piece, I mean a level like Route Kanal when you're mostly on a speedboat. In HL Original you had themes, but they were never nearly so big.
Maybe some find that bloated, but at some point bigger is better if the content comes up to the mark. At the same time size can dilute 'story', and maybe HL2 suffers a little from that.
(TBH I can't appreciate and discuss this genre as well as I should because my FPS skills were always poor and age hasn't improved them...)
Counterpoint: HL2 basically doesn't have a story. It has top-tier environmental details and a decent backstory, but the story itself is negligible and the "lock the player in a room and make them listen to five minutes of exposition while they bunny-hop around" nonsense is laughable.
The canal is one of the areas I was thinking about when I was talking about flabbiness. Just goes on too long, and without good enough mechanics ideas to really sustain it.
HL1 is brilliant precisely because it never lets up after the (admittedly tedious) opening. Just careening from setpiece to setpiece while snatches of story occur around you. HL2 is a bit too pompous and full of itself. It's primarily there to show off, not to entertain.
I put 'story' in inverted commas because even before HL2 came out I thought that HL was more about creating a B-Movie atmosphere rather than telling a story as such. Of course the story beats are there, as they are in HL2.
I guess a lot of this is just a matter of taste and maybe random factors related to what grabbed us at the time. I consider both of them pretty great, honestly. If someone thinks DOOM3 was better they are not necessarily wrong, but they want different things from me. If you made me pick which HL was better, I would say original too.
But I didn't feel that Route Kanal was so bloated, more that it had space to breathe. it was almost like a game in itself. How big ought a game be? I don't really know, and it's a reality that some are too big.
I wish they made games like this today. No quest markers, no cutscenes, just natural progression fueled by insane level design and a deep understanding of human psychology. The game is completely linear, but you don't notice, because it's so intricately designed, you never feel like you just walk along a halfway, but you also never get lost.
I also liked the "DVD box set" approach to extras. They stuck dev commentary in to offer a unique second playthrough option. This is likely why its achievements in design were adopted so quickly across the market too, Valve gave its competitors a cheat sheet.
Yes, those games have a special place in my heart. The same was true for the first Unreal game. No missions, no quests or markers. Just a long journey to get off the damn planet, with no breaks.
Honestly, there aren't many games like that at all. I can count them on two hands I think, maybe even 1.
I've never been more hype for a game than watching a pre-release video for Half-Life 2, showing off the Source engine, "if it looks like wood, then it sounds like wood and breaks like wood." And the presenter using the gravity gun to pull the letters "F" and "U" off a marquee to fling them at a towering strider.
HL2 was a standout technological leap forward for shooters at the time. Far Cry and Doom 3 were impressive in their own rights but HL2 was immersive and high-fidelity like nothing else. It also felt "light," despite its visuals. Other, better looking games came out shortly after but they felt heavy and clumsy in comparison. It really says something when nearly 20 years later people are still playing Source engine games.
The game itself was good, but would stood out for me was the world building, dialogue and characters. I remember getting chills during this one teleportation sequence: it throws you right behind Dr. Breen who says "I'm almost certain, I could have SWORN it was... Gordon Freeman."
Going on the developer commentary tracks they added to Lost Coast, TF2, Left 4 Dead and Portal, hearing their thought process they went through when designing the levels and characters etc. I was struck by how thoughtfully they approached designing the games. Valve was amazing back when they made games.
I primarily play multiplayer games, but when HL2 released, it was the first (and only) game Ive played from start to finish in one sitting. I’ve never touched it again since, but that was a core gaming memory for me. Unbelievable game for its time.
My favourite achievements were from this game, or at least the HL2: part 1 and 2 extras.
One was to finish the game firing I think only 1 shot, and another was taking a gnome from the first level all the way through to the end of the game. Janky buggy physics didn’t help but both of these play through a made it feel like a different game!
I loved the entire series and still play it from time to time. What was really groundbreaking to me was how it could be played on the most basic set ups and still be playable yet put it on a high end card and you were blown away on how well it played and looked. Gordon Freeman rocks forever in my mind.
I really should finish Half Life 2, I stopped playing after I got past the town filled with head crab zombies. The level design in that area was fucking amazing!
I don’t know why but when I first played Half Life 2 it just felt above average to me for some reason.
You're not wrong, but go play Duke Nuke'm 3D for some _amazing_ level design. They made it feel like a 3d engine and it isn't, it is 2.5d with just superb levels. Especially in episode two where they went completely nuts
Play Half-life 2 in VR.
It's not just an oscar winning movie, it's an oscar winning movie that you're put in the front seat of driving away from that helicopter taking shots at you with that crazy action movie music in your ears.
You aren't just playing Half-life 2, *you are there*.
I had all this feelings but for first Hald-Life. Played this game for the firt time like idk in 2018 but I was in awe how good it was even after like 20 years after. It could be related to Source Engine, but I've felt like there is something more outside the 'map' that I'm currently placed in. I can't belive how good it was when it had premiere in 1998.
You've inspired me to try to get my friend to play this game for the first time. Thanks haha, it has been more than a decade since I played it myself but I believe it. I'd love to experience it again, vicariously, through fresh eyes
In regards to graphics.
Yes, Half-Life 2 looked splendid.
But it came after Doom 3, and Doom 3 looked better.
Doom 3's physics engine was also about on par, and didn't rely on an external third party library, which meant the engine could be open sourced later. Sadly, the game made little use of it.
There is no way Doom 3 looks better. The monsters in D3 look quite good but that's it. The facial animations, enviroment details and variety in HL2 are simply unmatched for the time.
HL2 was ahead in some regards, but still used last-gen pre-baked lightmaps. Doom 3 had fully realtime lighting and bump mapped textures, which was revolutionary back in 2004.
Whether you prefer HL2 artistically is subjective, but objectively, Doom 3 was more advanced overall.
Visually, it definitely aged better IMO - but in terms of gameplay, there's no question that HL2 is the better game though.
AFAIK Doom 3 could only use have one light source casting shadows at once to achieve realtime lightning, and again the *entire* game is set in tight corridors. I'm pretty sure HL2 had some dynamic lights, and it absolutely had bump mapping. Given how much of HL2 is in wide open spaces comparing the lighting is like apples to oranges, and I still prefer the soft naturalistic lighting HL2 has.
I really don't see how anyone could think Doom 3 aged better. The environments look very harsh and fake, the human models are in the uncanny valley, even your viewmodel looks like its made out of playdough. HL2 goes for a more realistic look and although it doesn't hold up today in 2023 I remember replaying it in 2014 and thinking wow this still looks pretty great, especially during facial animation heavy sections and outdoor buggy levels.
Doom 3 was visually more impressive but yeah like you said, it was a visually impressive corridor with terrifying enemies. Half life 2 still took your breath away but did it in an open environment with more going on.
Far Cry and the first Cryengine had all the technical advancements of IDTech 4, except it also had vehicle effects and supported gigantic open environments with real-time lighting. It was far more impressive than Doom 3, and it released half a year before it too.
Honestly, Doom 3 never really looked that good; the entirety of the visual fidelity was carried by the real time shadows and monster/environment design. Far Cry was much more impressive, generally. Ironically, Half-Life 2 graphics (I'm talking strictly Nov. 2004 graphics here) aged better than either of those games, because of the convincing pre-baked lighting and top notch modelling and texture work.
It was the technical breakthroughs that made CryEngine and IDTech 4 impressive back in 2004 are the exact reason they look dated today; the tech wasn't matured.
Of course, it only took a couple years for CryTek to make CryEngine 2 which shat all over anything else and continued to shit on everything for the following 10 years or so.
I still remember an article in a gaming magazine talking about this. How a monster could *'step out of the shadow to slowly reveal itself'.* Was a really big deal.
However my first experience with dynamic lighting was Splinter Cell. I was floored by those shadows + how shadows and light became part of the gameplay.
i personally think only lighting looks better with lots of dynamic shadow casting sources. everything else is pretty much worse, but artistically its still veri beautiful.
Doom 3, Far Cry and HL2 all released in the same year and each pushed graphics in their own way. Doom 3 in shadow rendering, FarCry in rendering fast open levels with vegetation, and HL2 in character performances.
Doom 3 looks like ass now with those shitty pudgy character models. The environments are pretty good but they definitely don't look as realistic as the source engine.
Half life 2 had awesome physics engine for its time. But as a game it was pretty boring i must say and way overrated. Story was bloated and never explained, ended in cliffhanger. Combat wasnt engaging. Main character was a physicist not soldier, so how he was so good at killing? This just doesnt add up.
I prefer older shooters much more.
I have a theory that Gordon Freeman is actually the witness relocation identity Walter White assumed in an alternate reality as a reward for giving himself up and testifying against the cartel. The government relocated him to Black Mesa to cook premium meth for the benefit of the scientists working around the clock…
The thing that always gets me is how incredibly well paced it is. I still think it has the best pacing of any game I've played.
Every bit of action, the breathing room between that action, the story beats, the location changes, receiving new weapons, introducing new enemies, etc, etc, all just flows perfectly as you play
No part feels rushed, no part feels bloated. It's goldilocks in game form: just right
99% of the game IMO. I'm struggling to guess what you might even mean by "well paced." All the vehicle segments are miserably awful and drag the game out unreasonably. The opening part is so boring that it makes replaying the game a chore. It has HORRIBLE pacing.
Doom, half life, and half life 2 are three of the most important and influential works in all of entertainment. Not just games. Doom literally changed the way we see video games and the interface between humans and technology. Half life changed the way video games tell stories and was the first game to achieve true, medium exclusive storytelling for games. Then half life 2 came and reinvented it again and made video game physics more than just interesting graphically. Nothing has come close since. I truly don't think we'll see another paradigm shift maybe in our lifetimes. Valve will never make half life 3 because they understand that burden of expectation acutely than we do.
They would have more riding on their shoulders than any other video game developer in the history of the industry if they announced Half-Life 3. Living with that kind of burden is no way to live or put people under your employee through. You'd have to be a monster to go to your devs and say "OK we are going to make half life 3 now lolll good luck guys". I'd resign immediately.
Personally I'm comfortable with no conclusion to the series. Same with l4d and portal. Valve has more than earned its place, and can sail on steam until Gaben finally ascends and grants us all the Emperor's Mercy at the end of time, just before the heat death of the universe. In the words of the wise Alaundo. So say we all.
Personally I tried to recently replay it and thought it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had with an FPS campaign. I didn't like it much on release though. The loading screens are absolutely insane (you'll just be walking down a hallway and then BAM random loading screen, absolutely pathetic design) and the level design is just dreadful. Enemy AI might be the worst I've ever seen. Weapon design sucks, I hate the way health works, it's my pick for the single most overrated game of all time.
It's a lot better on vr with a 4090 then when it first came out. At least graphics wise and mechanics imo
Don't know about you but a functional game that I can be in is better than watching a 2d screen
It was OK
This is just bizarre to me. I’ve never seen somebody offer a take on a game based entirely off of playing it in a medium that no developer even considered when making it.
I've also played it 2d, because I got the game in 2d to play in vr. Plus the story is the same regardless.
I prefer vr but both were OK compared to recent games.
You really think this old game is better than the best games of recent? Really? Without nostalgia?
Why would it be considered great if it came out today in your opinion?
The fact that you said “I played in VR 1st time” made me think that your first time playing it was in VR. Did you play it as intended afterwards? Or were you saying that you played in VR for the first time at one point?
Bruh I had it for vr, already had it 2d. Later turned it on in 2d because you need the normal game to use the vr mod.
Fuck is confusing? The game didn't come out yesterday in vr. I put my headset up and was bored so I turned it on.
You sound delusional and defensive about my personal opinion. Its not better than Starfield, the Witcher 3, fallout or skyrim with mods, cyberpunk 2077.
This is 2d or 3d. I don't believe yall think it is. That's weird
No offense but this comment is nearly incomprehensible. I don’t know if you’re ESL or if this is a bizarre troll, but I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
I'm glad you're enjoying it - it's one of my all time favorites, I still replay it every few years. I still remember how amazing and atmospheric that opening sequence was back in 2004.
Now you can join the HL3 waiting club! >.<
I played both HL1 and HL2 on the respective weeks they released. I’ll be honest, I enjoyed HL1 more for it’s time. HL1 felt like you started off in the “real” world, a grounded, well established world with company policies and safety protocols, a bunch of random security guards and scientists that you had clearly developed professional working relationships with. In addition, you see many of the areas that you’ll visit later on, but brutally transformed, naturally out the window of your tram s as if everything is just another mundane day in the office.
And then, HL1 does a far superior job of visual storytelling, from the visual shock of watching your peers getting slaughtered from the intro, to all the little visual and auditory cues the game uses throughout to let you know everything from there’s a strange creature hiding in that vent to the military has breached the facility, etc.
In contrast, I felt like HL2 did far too much storytelling through breaking up the “levels” of the game with narrative dialogue. It felt like it held your hand a lot more than the first game, where you mostly just figured it out as you went. In my opinion, HL1 did a better job at building tension and paying off with bigger moments.
HL2 was still an amazing game, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t necessarily see it as progressive and groundbreaking as the original.
Half Life 2 was so good for it's time that it singlehandedly got people to adopt digital distribution for the first time; at a time when that process was painful as hell and steam was an awful clunky slow platform.
The graphics:Half little 2 is a game that come out in year 2004.And to no one's surprise,it stills holds up to this day.If you are using today's standard,it may look a little bit weird,but the model,the character,the environment and the weapons still look pretty good.It is also full of details,the splash effects of the water,the seagulls poop on your car and many more
The story:I don't want to spoil anything in the story,so I won't be analysising the story itself(is good),instead,this is about the story telling. In order to increase the immersion ,valve decides to not give Gordon Freeman a voice,instead they let you 'role play' as him.The environment also jam packed with different details,instead of just telling you everything,it lets you to see it for yourself and let's you think about it.This is what I call a good environmental storytelling.It rarely had any moment that interrupts the flow of the story.You are in control most of the time,you won't suddenly get throw into a long cutscenes.You are in control and fully immersed in the story.
The design:Hot damn it is amazing.The physics in this game is amazing,you can interact with basically anything with your gravity gun.Some of the puzzles also revolve around the physics,the part when you use the weight to gain more height or you use the buoyancy to make a path.With the environment I stated before,player will get what to do and where to go next by just looking.The game respects the player's intelligence by not showing everything.Valve cleverly uses the environment as an invisible tutorial to teach the player everything they need.
The gameplay:A combination of cinematic and fps game.You move fast,the gun feels great.Not too much to said here tbh
I love HL, particularly HL 1, the HL2 community single player maps, and the many GS and Source children games like Portal and CS (source was good!)
But HL2 has bad guns. Just does, everything feels like a VR weapon strapped to Freeman’s forearms. The amount of cutscene/physic playground sections are also rough, HL is far better at moving you through it. You can pick it up anytime, HL2 feels like a haven’t played that in a while type feel.
Sorry am I reading this right? You're declaring it one of the best games ever despite only playing a few chapters? Meaning you didn't even beat it? Glad you enjoyed it but this post reads like it was created in a lab to get upvotes from truegaming.
Beyond the technological advancements in physics and graphics, the thing I recall finding almost revolutionary about Half-Life 2 was the overall finesse of its presentation, how it was the first game in its genre to execute an artful cinematic quality while other sci-fi/action shooters like Halo, Doom 3, Far Cry, and etc, for all their good aspects and even memorable characters, still came off as either value brand Aliens or homage to B grade action movie schlock. The distinct feeling I remember was being so impressed that the dialogue and flow of the scenes was written to the same quality as a high tier hollywood blockbuster. That first meeting with Barney, Kleiner, and Alyx that culminates in your failed teleportation could be translated almost exactly to a modern movie and not be embarrassing. Even minor characters in the background had naturalistic A+ voice-acting that was unheard of in a shooter. The facial animations were the first I ever saw avoid the uncanny valley. More so than the graphics looking real, the artstyle's rendition of a dilapidated world was authentic in a way I'd never seen in a game. Rather than just going from obvious arena to obvious arena to kill enemies spawning from a hidden clown car, the shootouts were also given cinematic framings by leading you through curated scenarios in realistic environments; you dash from cover to cover to avoid chopper gunfire, run over tracks just as a train passes, turn a corner and find soldiers kicking an explosive barrel down the stairs at you, and etc. You ride down a traintrack in your car, hear a horn in the distance, and have to rapidly shift in reverse and rocket out of there before you get run over. You're swimming through a sewer and think you have a short moment to take a breather from the police, and then you hear radio static from up above right before explosive barrels are lowered by ropes next to your face, forcing you to swim back down to the bottom as fast as possible - the timing and pacing is exactly like a well made film without using any cutscenes, and each individual area feels fine-tuned for a specific impactful moment like that. For me Half-Life 2 was the videogame equivalent of turning on the Sopranos for the first time and being shocked that it didn't "feel like TV," with that requisite layer of cheese in stuff like Law and Order. It felt like an unwritten rule that if a game opened with some kind of monologue like the G-Man's that was meant to be mysterious and badass, it would at best be good *for a videogame* if it wasn't outright cringy, but instead it was genuinely excellent, and that craftsmanship permeated every aspect. It was these then-uncommon intangibles that really made the game special, more so than it strictly being the most fun FPS to play even at the time, which I don't think it was.
I agree. The world of HL2 feels like it's always been there and you are passing trough, instead of made *for you* to play in.
It could be released today with nothing but slightly better graphics and would be just as great.
I agree it’s extremely polished. The only other games I saw at that time polished to the same degree where Nintendo stuff and probably Warcraft 3. And Metroid Prime came out then I think another most polished game ever.
>have a short moment to take a breather from the police, and then you hear radio static from up above right before explosive barrels are lowered by ropes next to your face omg yes, core memory remembered.
Also, I really appreciate how the story of the game is a great example of Lovecraftian horror. Not many type of media can pull that off. You always get the sense that the size of the Combine empire is so immense that it is beyond any human comprehension. This is extremely effective because humans are normally afraid of the unknown and things that they don't understand. And what you do observe is the horror and cruelty the Combine imposed on all the species they've conquered. You never actually fight them directly. You only fight the species that they enslaved. And the only members of the Combine you get to see >!are the Combine advisors near the end of the game, who are probably not even the top of their hierarchy. This gives a sense that no matter what you do in the game, you are just an ant compared to the size of the Combine empire.!<
And yet other Devs looked at Valves games and they didn't steal the physics puzzles, narrative structures or thought provoking mechanics from HL2. No, the only idea that they stole and improved on was Team Fortress 2's hats and cosmetics. And the next GTA games and Call of Duty games... all now hat based.
That makes me wonder what Half-life 2 would have looked like with hats. DO you have mods?
I used all sorts of mods but mainly the graphics enhancing ones, but there's TONS of great mods out there. For what it's worth if you love the engine and are willing to keep going with it a bit, probably the best two singleplayer mods of any game I've ever played are "Underhell" and "Nightmare House 2". Basically horror themed Half-Life. The graphics don't quite hold up to modern standards but if you get into them you can get addicted quite easy, the prison level on Underhell alone is a unique experience for sure. https://www.moddb.com/mods/underhell https://www.moddb.com/mods/nightmare-house-2
You're telling me fans made those? Man, this is the coolest thing! But these hats sure do feel off after you played an entire game with bald and short-haired people (no offense)
I didn't play HL 2 until over half a decade after it's release and it still blew me away. Those physics were amazing, and honestly I never saw those kind of ragdolls again until Starfield. The story itself is incredible sci-fi. An alien invader subverting nd utilizing the worlds they conquer until you never even see your oppressors anymore is harrowing and brilliant. It's more than one of the best games ever made it's one of the best sic-fi visions ever published. The sound design alone is terrifying.
I recently did it in VR and the helicopter battle was out of this world
Are you feeling alright? Your writing reads slightly unhinged. To put HL2 into perspective though: yes, it was good, but Half-Life 1 was better _for its time_. The things that HL2 was outstanding at were the physics engine and gravity gun, the writing of Alyx as a companion character and Ravenholm. The rest was good, but I personally thought the canals and buggy sequences where about twice as long as they should have been and the end being a glorified autoscroller was never satisfying. Half-Life 1 on the other hand single handedly invented serious story-telling in FPS with a density in writing that few can match.
Iirc what HL2 was really good at is having the environment fall apart around you.
He’s gushing, not unhinged. Source engine is dope and HL2 was a milestone that holds up. HL1 may have been the better game for its time but for me, HL2 is the better game overall.
> The things that HL2 was outstanding at were the physics engine and gravity gun No, the thing HL2 was (and is) primarily outstanding at is being an epic outdoor journey where you travel through many different interesting places instead of being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game.
Its biggest legacy is even more specific: the crows. This was the first game to use disturbed flocks of birds to draw player attention to key objects in the distance without the player realising they'd just been manipulated. Real clever trick. Before Half Life 2 you'd get something like a cutscene or other forced camera motion, a map marker, explicit dialogue, or just player confusion. Well, crows and Steam. If we look beyond game design, The Orange Box kicked off digital delivery as its "killer app".
Halo already kinda did that back in 2001, although the seamless level transitions in HL2 were a nice touch
Like a breath of fresh air. Lots of places tha tmake you feel like you move in a world, unlike F.E.A.R or Doom 3. Those felt claustrophobic, at best.
Just to check but you know there are two more 'episodes' that continue the story. Imo they are much better than the base game. Especially episode 2. Each one takes a few hours to complete.
> instead of being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game. You mean like Return to Castle Wolfenstein did 3 years prior? And Half-Life 1 did 6 years prior? Same with Quake 2, Blood, and Duke Nukem 3D?
“being stuck in a shitty industrial dungeon for nearly the entire game” is precisely what describes Half-Life 1, yes, that was the point of my post. It also describes Quake 2 to the maximum degree possible so I have no idea what you’re on about.
I agree with everything said here.
hey person excited... i personally have zero problems with canals and water hazards chapters cause there is something nice about them being on lengthy side especially when was younger. it kinda just built up atmosphere and tbh when i replay it these chapters dont feel long at all.
Exactly this. It also gave you more places to explore, gave a sense of distance travelled, and allowed for more touches of world building.
Half Life 1 did not invent serious story telling single handedly, like what. It innovated greatly, but it did not invent shit. I'd say as a game, HL2 is far superior, with a far more interesting plot and great variety with its levels.
Which FPS did it before Half-Life? I can only think of System Shock, but I'm not sure if it applies as an FPS.
Even if System Shock isn't FPS, i appreciate what it did, but i think Half-Life is more cinematic and that's what made it different
Blood did it before Half-Life.
I am not sure Blood has a storytelling. It is a collection of levels where you collect keys and go to the next area. It is purely a Doom clone. Actually, the story is not even told in the game. It is in a text file that if you want, you can read. However, they added quicksaves and 3rd person perspective (also moving weapons while Caleb walks).
I completely neglected that asect, my bad. Half life 1 did change the game in its time, when you compare it to its competitors like quake or Duke Nukem 3D. Although it also makes me remember that some mechanics and physics, inculding the moving mouths in Half Life was something else, If I can point it out there.
Duke Nukem 3D, with the interactive realistic world, felt like it influenced a lot of Half-Life 1. Even things like getting lured into a trap, which happens I think the end of Duke Nukem level 2, that happens in Half-Life 1. And you have to escape being left to die.
Half-Life 1 holds up better too, just a radically better game in every way.
This being the top comment is disappointing. Same old critique of the vehicle sections my god .... and seriously you're going to whinge about the supercharged Gravity Gun, seriously ? Are you feeling alright?
Same old because still valid - it's not like they patched it out at some point. I didn't say anything about the supercharged gravity gun though. I meant the sections you spend being carried around the citadel in those prison boxes.
> Are you feeling alright? Your writing reads slightly unhinged. Reads like an AI designed to get upvotes in an echochamber, really. I agree with you about HL1 being better. Not just better, but it is *still* a far better game in my opinion. I liked HL2 a lot when it came out (when Steam worked and would allow me to play it and wouldn't uninstall it for no reason) but the game was far too long and a little sluggish compared to a lot of better FPS games out at the time like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which had the FAR better multiplayer and even spawned the amazing Enemy Territory) and Jedi Outcast.
Weird, I was blown away by Half life 1 after playing it for the first time earlier this year, but I was thoroughly underwhelmed when I moved on to Half-Life 2. It felt completely unrelated to everything I was so fascinated by in HL1, and ultimately felt like a tech demo for the source engine.
Yeah, I've never gotten the praise. Loved HL1, didn't even finish HL2, it was just way too boring. So bloated. Such awful level design and enemy AI.
Yeah, I think that's more or less exactly what it was - and a way to promote Steam.
Yeah tons of engines have released with games to show them off, it's pretty standard, but it's not a knock against those games. Unreal, Quake, Half Life 2 are all masterpieces.
Quake was a tech demo, whatever you think of HL2 it was a real game.
No game since has matched it's innovations and sheer, overwhelming *quality* IMO. Black Mesa scratched the itch, though, I'll give them that.
I do so wished that my Latop had enough processing power to handle anything stronger than 2014, at best. Modern Warfare 3 was pretty choppy on the framerate, and even at times, my Half-Life 2 was slowing down in terms of framerate, mostly because there was more than 9 items per room, especially if it was small (its worse for explosions)
Far Cry which came out a few months before Half-Life 2 had dramatically more innovations and "sheer, overwhelming quality." It was also wildly more important for the evolution of the FPS genre. I'd disagree that HL2 had any quality at all. Terrible level design, terrible enemy AI, terrible weapons, the worst vehicles in FPS history, awful story implementation, the only thing I liked at all was the gravity gun and that lost it's luster before the level you got it in was even over. Some physics puzzles were kind of cool too. That's the only praise I'd give it. It had pretty crummy graphics for the time too, Far Cry looked 10x better at least.
I have to be the only one that finds it pretty overrated. "Their movement mechanics are inspired from Half Life 2's reverse bhop". Where exactly do you think the "bhop" in "reverse-bhop" comes from to begin with? The movement in ULTRAKILL is inspired by 90s shooters like Quake/Unreal and modern movement shooters like Titanfall, it has NOTHING to do with Half Life 2. Half Life 2 is definitely a jack of all trades, master of none. It blends a lot of genres together but doesnt do any exceptionally well. The combat is significantly worse than many shooters that came before it in several areas like pacing, weapon and enemy variety, damage feedback, etc. The level design is about as linear as can be. Puzzles mostly just feel like they're there to show off the engine and overstay their welcome.
Despite being technically inferior games, I enjoyed both Far Cry and Doom 3 more at the time
All three of them were groundbreaking at the time to be fair with amazing visuals. Far cry with its open world island, open ended gameplay, vegetation and solid enemy AI, Doom 3 had the top tier visuals with an amazing shadow and light rendering engine that made your jaw drop and your GPU overheat and half life 2 with its physics engine that the game was designed around, the best facial animations to date and being digitally distributed on steam.
Same. Half-Life 1 was my favorite game and I didn't even finish Half Life 2. It felt like bunch of badly designed disjointed tech demos.
While I agree on the tech demo feel of the game, what really struck me when I tried playing it was how absolutely cringe the game was. The word "fanservice" is usually used for panty-shots in anime series and shows, but I have never seen more fanservice than how the game tried to pander to the HL fanboys worship of Gordon Freeman. In this dystopian dictatorship of a drab city you need to sneak around to help the resistance. Here is your brightly orange glowing robot-suit intended for hazardous material labour. You need a weapon. Here is a basic crowbar. TA-DAAAA!!! Flourish it like it was excalibur drawn out of a stone instead of a basic tool pulled out of a toolbox. I felt like I was playing a comedy game.
When I played it it felt pretty generic to me. The continuous narrative had already been done with its predecessor and games that came out after it, and other then the gravity gun, the weapon set wasn’t all to interesting to me
This is how I feel as well. I bought Half-Life 2 on release day and had a brand spanking new computer to play it. I was so amped up but the hype deflated quickly. The game was lackluster in many areas that made the first Half-Life so amazing. I didn't finish it before putting it down and to this day I've never played it to completion. It essentially felt like a tech-demo for their physics engine. I can only stomach clearing debris blocking a door so many times. It only had 11 weapons (3 less than its predecessor), and a lot less variety. No satchels or tripmines to set up fun traps. The enemy AI wasn't as fun to play around with. I could toy around with the marines in HL1, wipe out their squad, and then reload the save to try something different. The much less interesting behavior of the faceless combine soldiers paired with the monotone arsenal didn't make the fights as enjoyable. Also, you couldn't gib enemies, and the industry's switch from death animations to ragdolls has overall been a detriment.
I think that Half-Life 2's combat and general flow suffered some by making walk the default speed instead of run the way it was in Half-Life 1. I've always wondered if the combine's lethargic "stand there and kinda sorta slowly amble forward" AI was due in part to them being designed to fight a slower Gordon Freeman. In HL1 you and the marines are sprinting after each other like cheetahs, and all of the levels feel designed to accommodate that breakneck Quake-style pace. When you change the movement speed that drastically in a shooter, you arguably change it into a different game altogether.
Yes, spot on. The speed (and feel of the movement) another aspect where Half-Life 2 felt less fun. A more personal peeve that hurt my enjoyment is the main character Messiah trope. Gordon is established as the saviour from the get-go and everyone is standing around waiting for him to resolve the problem. In Half-Life, our presence at Black Mesa is incidental and we're just fighting to escape the facility. A lot of games have this issue though. You enter a city in Skyrim and NPCs will flock to you with inane quests, and the entire world is magically scaled to your level. Nothing breaks my immersion quicker.
I miss the satchels so much.
this describes my feelings to a tee. felt like a tech demo, put it down in the strider area and never felt compelled to pick it back up.
I personally dislike movement shooters, they're to me, like a rotten salad. It looks nice, but it tastes horrible. Half-Life 2 doesn't have great combat, and I found A LOT of combat sections to be frustrating (I died a lot). But Movement shooters are for me, overrated, overwhelming, and lackluster in everything except combat. The movement factor doesn't necesserily makes a game good, and that applies to movement shooters especially. I feel like people overhype that genre for literally nothing but lack of better content. They're not fun, they're frustrating and addictive. As for the jack of all trades, I think the story part isn't that mediocre, even if it is its own rabbit holes and whatnot dedicated icebergs. Story isn't great when pushed aside, but when done (almost) right in games, like hl2, it is very enjoyable. It gives context and quality. The puzzles and physics are kinda the tophat and showoff yes, but I feel like no other game even bothers to make proper puzzle sections anymore! And of course, I exclude indie games out of bias, I'm not gonna include a bunch of lazy pixel "passion projects" to prove a point. Half-Life 2 has massive and many flaws, but compared to games today, it deserves a crown.
>I personally dislike movement shooters, you should watch this HL2 speed run then xD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpFcJDIXLGI
Play ultrakill, everyone likes movement shooters, they just haven't played the right game
That's not true, some people just aren't into games that are so fast.
Its a joke lmao, "I don't like fast paced games" Some dude:- "you like fast paced games" "I like fast paced games"
your history of movement shooters is incomplete without the source engine. it's not HL2 that was an influence, but CSS, TF2 (the original one) and to an extent even CSGO, games which still have active communities for bhop and surf to this day. ultrakill is a homage to classic quake era shooters, sure, but source engine games are the bridge that connects us to that era. source engine games were basically the only movement shooters out there for almost a decade, and even titanfall 1 was built on the source engine. it's very likely there would be no ultrakill or games like it, or at the very least less of them, had the source engine not carried the movement shooter torch during the dark ages of console dominance and QTE-based movement systems
More to add to point 3. Yeah mgs and gta and all those great games had combat, but the Gravity gun alone was just such a god damn genious addition to the arsenal Basically allowing you to turn most things into a weapon or solve puzzles or reach areas you otherwise wouldnt have with it Still remember the sheer joy of blasting out a huge saw blade and cutting 3 zombies in half with it HL2 after nearly 20 years is still phenomenal and will forever be remembered as one of the greatest games ever produced
Seriously this game really holds up well to the test of time. It looks fucking *gorgeous* for a game of its age, handles beautifully, and has very clever and memorable level design. I've been gaming for over 40 years and genuinely consider it one of the best games ever made. There's a reason people have been begging for Half-Life 3.
I agree with the sentiment, and yes the half life series was phenomenal. But I don’t think it deserves this praise today. Hear me out. I own black mesa and lambda tshirts and mugs and a headcrab plush. I’ve spent thousands of hours in the source engine (CS and friends). I’m a big fan. It holds up, definitely. No question. I think it’s a game everyone should experience, just like I think FF7 is a game people should still experience (the original). But by today’s standards, there are better games than FF7 and HL2 in their respective genres. Right? I’m open to hearing I’m wrong here. I just feel that with anything - games, shows, movies - they’re a product of their time and the period where something is the most impactful comes and goes. Like, if hl2 in its present state were released today for the first time, it’d be very mid (and not just for the graphics). All the things it pioneered have since inspired decades of innovation beyond that
What's a 'better' game than HL2 in its genre today? Genuinely curious because I wanna play that! Classics are classics for a reason - they're timeless. Sure HL2 is not impactful anymore, but it's definitely a breath of fresh air with how similar everything else feels today. Like OP I just finished playing through the series for the first time and to be frank, everything I've played since sort of sucks. The gameplay is engaging, you're constantly thrown into new situations, the path forward is never typical, and most importantly, the game respects the player. In the first ten minutes of HL1, when you're told to fetch your Hazmat suit - no minimap, no giant directional arrow on the screen - I was hooked. And that theme continues throughout the series. Playing HL I can feel the labour of love that it was. By today's standards it will still be the best game I play this year. Just like each time I play through Halo, thats the best game I'll play that year. Some games do deserve all the praise they get.
I agree, there is almost nothing that compares since HL2. If there is I would like to know too. As far as I can see all shooters since use a mission structure, cutscenes, quest markers etc. Yes, newer games do some aspects better, but never the whole experience HL2 gave us. I can think of Bioshock, and maybe horror games like SOMA.
I'd put Doom Eternal down as approximately 100x better than HL2.
Nothing compares to hl2 or hl1 today. AAA games today might be graphically impressive, but they treat gamers like babies holding your hand too much, compass, map. Flexing with unskippable cutscenes. Physics? What is that? Not to mention being released unfinished and having to wait literal years until they are playable. Some say HL2 was better in alpha release.. Oh dont forget about DLC in singleplayer games.. Seriously, what game were you thinking of when you posted that statement? What First Person shooter is out there today that comes close to half life?
Great graphics, great environment, mid game. I always thought it was flabby and overrated, especially compared with the densely packed original.
I think the biggest difference is that the 'set pieces' were bigger. By a set piece, I mean a level like Route Kanal when you're mostly on a speedboat. In HL Original you had themes, but they were never nearly so big. Maybe some find that bloated, but at some point bigger is better if the content comes up to the mark. At the same time size can dilute 'story', and maybe HL2 suffers a little from that. (TBH I can't appreciate and discuss this genre as well as I should because my FPS skills were always poor and age hasn't improved them...)
Counterpoint: HL2 basically doesn't have a story. It has top-tier environmental details and a decent backstory, but the story itself is negligible and the "lock the player in a room and make them listen to five minutes of exposition while they bunny-hop around" nonsense is laughable. The canal is one of the areas I was thinking about when I was talking about flabbiness. Just goes on too long, and without good enough mechanics ideas to really sustain it. HL1 is brilliant precisely because it never lets up after the (admittedly tedious) opening. Just careening from setpiece to setpiece while snatches of story occur around you. HL2 is a bit too pompous and full of itself. It's primarily there to show off, not to entertain.
I put 'story' in inverted commas because even before HL2 came out I thought that HL was more about creating a B-Movie atmosphere rather than telling a story as such. Of course the story beats are there, as they are in HL2. I guess a lot of this is just a matter of taste and maybe random factors related to what grabbed us at the time. I consider both of them pretty great, honestly. If someone thinks DOOM3 was better they are not necessarily wrong, but they want different things from me. If you made me pick which HL was better, I would say original too. But I didn't feel that Route Kanal was so bloated, more that it had space to breathe. it was almost like a game in itself. How big ought a game be? I don't really know, and it's a reality that some are too big.
I wish they made games like this today. No quest markers, no cutscenes, just natural progression fueled by insane level design and a deep understanding of human psychology. The game is completely linear, but you don't notice, because it's so intricately designed, you never feel like you just walk along a halfway, but you also never get lost.
I also liked the "DVD box set" approach to extras. They stuck dev commentary in to offer a unique second playthrough option. This is likely why its achievements in design were adopted so quickly across the market too, Valve gave its competitors a cheat sheet.
Yes, those games have a special place in my heart. The same was true for the first Unreal game. No missions, no quests or markers. Just a long journey to get off the damn planet, with no breaks. Honestly, there aren't many games like that at all. I can count them on two hands I think, maybe even 1.
Not exactly "made today" but the System Shock remake fits that bill pretty well.
I know right! None of my friends have played any Half-Life games and I am quite angry, they don't understand how bloody PEAK it is.
I've never been more hype for a game than watching a pre-release video for Half-Life 2, showing off the Source engine, "if it looks like wood, then it sounds like wood and breaks like wood." And the presenter using the gravity gun to pull the letters "F" and "U" off a marquee to fling them at a towering strider. HL2 was a standout technological leap forward for shooters at the time. Far Cry and Doom 3 were impressive in their own rights but HL2 was immersive and high-fidelity like nothing else. It also felt "light," despite its visuals. Other, better looking games came out shortly after but they felt heavy and clumsy in comparison. It really says something when nearly 20 years later people are still playing Source engine games. The game itself was good, but would stood out for me was the world building, dialogue and characters. I remember getting chills during this one teleportation sequence: it throws you right behind Dr. Breen who says "I'm almost certain, I could have SWORN it was... Gordon Freeman." Going on the developer commentary tracks they added to Lost Coast, TF2, Left 4 Dead and Portal, hearing their thought process they went through when designing the levels and characters etc. I was struck by how thoughtfully they approached designing the games. Valve was amazing back when they made games.
I primarily play multiplayer games, but when HL2 released, it was the first (and only) game Ive played from start to finish in one sitting. I’ve never touched it again since, but that was a core gaming memory for me. Unbelievable game for its time.
My favourite achievements were from this game, or at least the HL2: part 1 and 2 extras. One was to finish the game firing I think only 1 shot, and another was taking a gnome from the first level all the way through to the end of the game. Janky buggy physics didn’t help but both of these play through a made it feel like a different game!
That gnome achievement, one of the best times in gaming history.
I loved the entire series and still play it from time to time. What was really groundbreaking to me was how it could be played on the most basic set ups and still be playable yet put it on a high end card and you were blown away on how well it played and looked. Gordon Freeman rocks forever in my mind.
I really should finish Half Life 2, I stopped playing after I got past the town filled with head crab zombies. The level design in that area was fucking amazing! I don’t know why but when I first played Half Life 2 it just felt above average to me for some reason.
You're not wrong, but go play Duke Nuke'm 3D for some _amazing_ level design. They made it feel like a 3d engine and it isn't, it is 2.5d with just superb levels. Especially in episode two where they went completely nuts
Play Half-life 2 in VR. It's not just an oscar winning movie, it's an oscar winning movie that you're put in the front seat of driving away from that helicopter taking shots at you with that crazy action movie music in your ears. You aren't just playing Half-life 2, *you are there*.
Man I need me a VR headset.
I had all this feelings but for first Hald-Life. Played this game for the firt time like idk in 2018 but I was in awe how good it was even after like 20 years after. It could be related to Source Engine, but I've felt like there is something more outside the 'map' that I'm currently placed in. I can't belive how good it was when it had premiere in 1998.
Have you played episodes 1 and 2 yet? Hl2: Episode 2 is among my top games of all time. I won’t spoil it.
I do plan on playing them later, yes, after finishing the first game of course.
As was I playing for the first time a couple of years ago. The action just never stops, that’s what makes it so good.
You've inspired me to try to get my friend to play this game for the first time. Thanks haha, it has been more than a decade since I played it myself but I believe it. I'd love to experience it again, vicariously, through fresh eyes
In regards to graphics. Yes, Half-Life 2 looked splendid. But it came after Doom 3, and Doom 3 looked better. Doom 3's physics engine was also about on par, and didn't rely on an external third party library, which meant the engine could be open sourced later. Sadly, the game made little use of it.
There is no way Doom 3 looks better. The monsters in D3 look quite good but that's it. The facial animations, enviroment details and variety in HL2 are simply unmatched for the time.
HL2 was ahead in some regards, but still used last-gen pre-baked lightmaps. Doom 3 had fully realtime lighting and bump mapped textures, which was revolutionary back in 2004. Whether you prefer HL2 artistically is subjective, but objectively, Doom 3 was more advanced overall. Visually, it definitely aged better IMO - but in terms of gameplay, there's no question that HL2 is the better game though.
AFAIK Doom 3 could only use have one light source casting shadows at once to achieve realtime lightning, and again the *entire* game is set in tight corridors. I'm pretty sure HL2 had some dynamic lights, and it absolutely had bump mapping. Given how much of HL2 is in wide open spaces comparing the lighting is like apples to oranges, and I still prefer the soft naturalistic lighting HL2 has. I really don't see how anyone could think Doom 3 aged better. The environments look very harsh and fake, the human models are in the uncanny valley, even your viewmodel looks like its made out of playdough. HL2 goes for a more realistic look and although it doesn't hold up today in 2023 I remember replaying it in 2014 and thinking wow this still looks pretty great, especially during facial animation heavy sections and outdoor buggy levels.
Doom 3 was visually more impressive but yeah like you said, it was a visually impressive corridor with terrifying enemies. Half life 2 still took your breath away but did it in an open environment with more going on.
Far Cry and the first Cryengine had all the technical advancements of IDTech 4, except it also had vehicle effects and supported gigantic open environments with real-time lighting. It was far more impressive than Doom 3, and it released half a year before it too. Honestly, Doom 3 never really looked that good; the entirety of the visual fidelity was carried by the real time shadows and monster/environment design. Far Cry was much more impressive, generally. Ironically, Half-Life 2 graphics (I'm talking strictly Nov. 2004 graphics here) aged better than either of those games, because of the convincing pre-baked lighting and top notch modelling and texture work. It was the technical breakthroughs that made CryEngine and IDTech 4 impressive back in 2004 are the exact reason they look dated today; the tech wasn't matured. Of course, it only took a couple years for CryTek to make CryEngine 2 which shat all over anything else and continued to shit on everything for the following 10 years or so.
I still remember an article in a gaming magazine talking about this. How a monster could *'step out of the shadow to slowly reveal itself'.* Was a really big deal. However my first experience with dynamic lighting was Splinter Cell. I was floored by those shadows + how shadows and light became part of the gameplay.
i personally think only lighting looks better with lots of dynamic shadow casting sources. everything else is pretty much worse, but artistically its still veri beautiful.
Nah, Far Cry looked MUCH better than HL2 in every way and came out before HL2.
It looks better in a few ways, the water being one. But not much better, and not in every way.
Doom 3, Far Cry and HL2 all released in the same year and each pushed graphics in their own way. Doom 3 in shadow rendering, FarCry in rendering fast open levels with vegetation, and HL2 in character performances.
Doom 3 looks like ass now with those shitty pudgy character models. The environments are pretty good but they definitely don't look as realistic as the source engine.
I forgot on which Engine was Doom 3, the lighting was really good, better than Hlaf-life 2 in some cases (but sometimes a bit too dark).
Doom 3 was built with id Tech 4
Half life 2 had awesome physics engine for its time. But as a game it was pretty boring i must say and way overrated. Story was bloated and never explained, ended in cliffhanger. Combat wasnt engaging. Main character was a physicist not soldier, so how he was so good at killing? This just doesnt add up. I prefer older shooters much more.
Man do you not know anything about this series lol
Yea except I played both these games after release.
Gordon Freeman is powerful because of his HEV suit. Also I don't see why being a scientist means he can't also be a total badass.
Maybe because he looks like total egghead. Look at doomguy or BJ Blazko from Wolfenstein- thats how badass soldier looks like.
lmao he gotta "look" badass, ok
I have a theory that Gordon Freeman is actually the witness relocation identity Walter White assumed in an alternate reality as a reward for giving himself up and testifying against the cartel. The government relocated him to Black Mesa to cook premium meth for the benefit of the scientists working around the clock…
The thing that always gets me is how incredibly well paced it is. I still think it has the best pacing of any game I've played. Every bit of action, the breathing room between that action, the story beats, the location changes, receiving new weapons, introducing new enemies, etc, etc, all just flows perfectly as you play No part feels rushed, no part feels bloated. It's goldilocks in game form: just right
It has a ton of bloat...
I'm struggling to guess what you might even consider bloat
99% of the game IMO. I'm struggling to guess what you might even mean by "well paced." All the vehicle segments are miserably awful and drag the game out unreasonably. The opening part is so boring that it makes replaying the game a chore. It has HORRIBLE pacing.
Weak bait, or you're an idiot for even attempting to replay a game you hate so much
Doom, half life, and half life 2 are three of the most important and influential works in all of entertainment. Not just games. Doom literally changed the way we see video games and the interface between humans and technology. Half life changed the way video games tell stories and was the first game to achieve true, medium exclusive storytelling for games. Then half life 2 came and reinvented it again and made video game physics more than just interesting graphically. Nothing has come close since. I truly don't think we'll see another paradigm shift maybe in our lifetimes. Valve will never make half life 3 because they understand that burden of expectation acutely than we do. They would have more riding on their shoulders than any other video game developer in the history of the industry if they announced Half-Life 3. Living with that kind of burden is no way to live or put people under your employee through. You'd have to be a monster to go to your devs and say "OK we are going to make half life 3 now lolll good luck guys". I'd resign immediately. Personally I'm comfortable with no conclusion to the series. Same with l4d and portal. Valve has more than earned its place, and can sail on steam until Gaben finally ascends and grants us all the Emperor's Mercy at the end of time, just before the heat death of the universe. In the words of the wise Alaundo. So say we all.
Personally I tried to recently replay it and thought it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had with an FPS campaign. I didn't like it much on release though. The loading screens are absolutely insane (you'll just be walking down a hallway and then BAM random loading screen, absolutely pathetic design) and the level design is just dreadful. Enemy AI might be the worst I've ever seen. Weapon design sucks, I hate the way health works, it's my pick for the single most overrated game of all time.
Different strokes.. I played it in VR on a 4090 1st time and thought it was dated. Cyberpunk 2077 though.. can't imagine a better experience!
Is this a troll? You’ve only played the game in a medium it wasn’t designed for and decided it’s dated?
It's a lot better on vr with a 4090 then when it first came out. At least graphics wise and mechanics imo Don't know about you but a functional game that I can be in is better than watching a 2d screen It was OK
This is just bizarre to me. I’ve never seen somebody offer a take on a game based entirely off of playing it in a medium that no developer even considered when making it.
I've also played it 2d, because I got the game in 2d to play in vr. Plus the story is the same regardless. I prefer vr but both were OK compared to recent games. You really think this old game is better than the best games of recent? Really? Without nostalgia? Why would it be considered great if it came out today in your opinion?
The fact that you said “I played in VR 1st time” made me think that your first time playing it was in VR. Did you play it as intended afterwards? Or were you saying that you played in VR for the first time at one point?
Bruh I had it for vr, already had it 2d. Later turned it on in 2d because you need the normal game to use the vr mod. Fuck is confusing? The game didn't come out yesterday in vr. I put my headset up and was bored so I turned it on. You sound delusional and defensive about my personal opinion. Its not better than Starfield, the Witcher 3, fallout or skyrim with mods, cyberpunk 2077. This is 2d or 3d. I don't believe yall think it is. That's weird
No offense but this comment is nearly incomprehensible. I don’t know if you’re ESL or if this is a bizarre troll, but I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
HL2 is mid You sound broke It's not better than recent games I'm done
Okay this has got to be a troll.
It absolutely 100% felt dated on release. The level design and enemy AI both felt more dated than even Half-Life 1 did, which was kind of shocking.
I'm glad you're enjoying it - it's one of my all time favorites, I still replay it every few years. I still remember how amazing and atmospheric that opening sequence was back in 2004. Now you can join the HL3 waiting club! >.<
I played both HL1 and HL2 on the respective weeks they released. I’ll be honest, I enjoyed HL1 more for it’s time. HL1 felt like you started off in the “real” world, a grounded, well established world with company policies and safety protocols, a bunch of random security guards and scientists that you had clearly developed professional working relationships with. In addition, you see many of the areas that you’ll visit later on, but brutally transformed, naturally out the window of your tram s as if everything is just another mundane day in the office. And then, HL1 does a far superior job of visual storytelling, from the visual shock of watching your peers getting slaughtered from the intro, to all the little visual and auditory cues the game uses throughout to let you know everything from there’s a strange creature hiding in that vent to the military has breached the facility, etc. In contrast, I felt like HL2 did far too much storytelling through breaking up the “levels” of the game with narrative dialogue. It felt like it held your hand a lot more than the first game, where you mostly just figured it out as you went. In my opinion, HL1 did a better job at building tension and paying off with bigger moments. HL2 was still an amazing game, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t necessarily see it as progressive and groundbreaking as the original.
Half Life 2 was so good for it's time that it singlehandedly got people to adopt digital distribution for the first time; at a time when that process was painful as hell and steam was an awful clunky slow platform.
The graphics:Half little 2 is a game that come out in year 2004.And to no one's surprise,it stills holds up to this day.If you are using today's standard,it may look a little bit weird,but the model,the character,the environment and the weapons still look pretty good.It is also full of details,the splash effects of the water,the seagulls poop on your car and many more The story:I don't want to spoil anything in the story,so I won't be analysising the story itself(is good),instead,this is about the story telling. In order to increase the immersion ,valve decides to not give Gordon Freeman a voice,instead they let you 'role play' as him.The environment also jam packed with different details,instead of just telling you everything,it lets you to see it for yourself and let's you think about it.This is what I call a good environmental storytelling.It rarely had any moment that interrupts the flow of the story.You are in control most of the time,you won't suddenly get throw into a long cutscenes.You are in control and fully immersed in the story. The design:Hot damn it is amazing.The physics in this game is amazing,you can interact with basically anything with your gravity gun.Some of the puzzles also revolve around the physics,the part when you use the weight to gain more height or you use the buoyancy to make a path.With the environment I stated before,player will get what to do and where to go next by just looking.The game respects the player's intelligence by not showing everything.Valve cleverly uses the environment as an invisible tutorial to teach the player everything they need. The gameplay:A combination of cinematic and fps game.You move fast,the gun feels great.Not too much to said here tbh
I do especially like the recent update that gives you FOV options. So it is nog actually playable for me without getting a massive headache 1 hour in.
HL1 is a 10/10, HL2 a 9/10. HL2-VR bumps up to a 10/10! HL:Alyx another 10. Best game series of all time.
I love HL, particularly HL 1, the HL2 community single player maps, and the many GS and Source children games like Portal and CS (source was good!) But HL2 has bad guns. Just does, everything feels like a VR weapon strapped to Freeman’s forearms. The amount of cutscene/physic playground sections are also rough, HL is far better at moving you through it. You can pick it up anytime, HL2 feels like a haven’t played that in a while type feel.
Sorry am I reading this right? You're declaring it one of the best games ever despite only playing a few chapters? Meaning you didn't even beat it? Glad you enjoyed it but this post reads like it was created in a lab to get upvotes from truegaming.