I would argue that there's a lot of redundancy in HL2 as you will always stick to your strongest weapon until the ammo runs out. To be honest I am styill massively disappointed in the whole game; frankly, the plot was just missing. Any game where you just keep going rather than follow the plot isn't good to me.
Fave weaponset ever is hard to name, really; can't remember the name of the game ^_^ The following, however, would all be top 10:
*Turok 2 (CEREBRAL BORE!!!) *Perfect Dark *Goldeneye *Quake 2 *Halo 2 *Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the only game without physical force feedback to seem like it did) *GTA: Vice City *Far Cry: Instincts (mm, blow pipe)
And yes, Epic debunked UT2K7 as a launch title, saying that "only the engine is currently running well on PS3, so maybe later". This may have something to do with that Unreal Championship franchise that's exclusive to Xbox...
By "frankly, the plot was just missing", I take it you mean "the plot was subtly and elegantly filled in without resorting to the hackneyed and clumsy devices typical of every other game, so as to maintain atmosphere and consistency throughout. This clearly signals the way forward in game design, but all other developers will ignore it anyway"?
Nope, I mean that "nobody is really telling me how the world has changed so much, and by the time I find out I no longer care. Ooh look, vast tracts of boredom."
Like Halo 1 all over again.
Now Wolfenstein, THERE is a tight game. Mission structure is tight and well paced, weaponry functional and meaty, plot eked out as necessary...
You appear to have missed the HIDDEN SUBTEXT in Giles's reply, which is that the reason that the Half Life 2 storytelling is so superb is that it doesn't have to directly tell you anything.
The frequent comparison is with an army officer briefing his troops, about to go into the field. They don't start by saying "Several years ago, a group of men from the Al Qaeda organisation hijacked four planes whilst they were flying over the continental united states (and so on, and so forth)".
HL2 spends a considerable amount of time explaining what changes have occurred, and in so far as we don't know the mechanism of - or motives for - the invasion, that is what contributes the narrative tension. It's the inversion of HL1, where we know more or less what has happened and why, but not what will happen next. We don't really find out why the occupation has happened in any ultimate sense at all, of course, as there is more to come.
If you don't care about what happens, that is an issue, but HL2 puts more effort and skill into establishing relationships with characters you actually care about than pretty much anything else - certainly any other FPS - and also shows you the consequences of what is happening in a visceral way immediately. If that made no impression then I'm honestly quite surprised. It has on everyone else I've spoken to.
The plot/information is eked out across the game - you see the Citadel practically immediately, for example - very carefully.
Can you give an example of a "vast tract of boredom"?
So your definition of "Vast tracts of boredom" is "A section that is either less than five minutes long, or broken up into contigious elements less than five minutes long"?
I'm surprised you managed to get past the loading screen, that takes a while to get going.
The car section, where all there was to do is avoid Antlions, was way longer than 5 minutes. As was the train bridge. As was the use of objects to pass the desert.
I just found that, on a second play, I was uninspired, without any reason or want to carry on. I just ended up doing Ravenholm again and again.
The gravity gun's a bit of a crutch; usage of it that goes beyond "for fun" is usually laborious. Plus, it was broken; how does it differentiate between living and dead? Why can I make hanging corpses move with it, but not someone freshly shot dead? If you had the blue one all the way through - wow. But no, instead it made no sense. To top it all, the Combine rifle looks so rough when used it's almost sprite-like.
The "Use of objects" section just took me 3 minutes 25. Way longer than five minutes. I have to get to a lecture, so I can't realistically play through the other sections to see how you're doing there.
The bridge section is an enormous set piece, which the Half Life series is famed for, assuming we're talking about the same one. It involves shooting down a helicopter, killing lots of combine, and a small amount of jumping. If you consider that one long, boring, section, then you obviously don't like the game as a whole.
Oh wait.
The gravity gun is a fine tool. Calling it "a bit of a crutch" seems a bizarre thing to do when it's a weapon - the fact that it's pretty unique doesn't mean it has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Yes. Yes I do. Those textures are AWFUL. For a game so supposedly high-end, it is blocky and dreadful. Compare the detail level to, say, this image of RTCW's Thompson (IIRC) and you can see the horrific nature. Wolfenstein is ancient by comparison, but look how crisp the gun looks! The guns look shoddy by the graphical standard of HL2.
And the gravity gun is used, in many parts, as way to pique curiosity and nothing more. Look at Ravenholm, THE best level in the game. It plays out like one long excuse to gravity gun things to death. Apart from that, it's quite empty; let's face it, shooting fuel canisters in FPS games has been around a long long time, and I don't see how picking them up and lobbing them is so "innovative".
So I take it you admit defeat about the "boring" thing then?jakiriJanuary 27 2006, 13:00:45 UTC
How am I supposed to compare a 1280x1024 image to one that's 340x255? Of course the gun is going to look crisp at that resolution. Furthermore, the textures on the Overwatch Rifle are perfectly reasonable, especially when you consider that it moves a rather large amount whilst you're using it.
As to your second paragraph, I don't think you're making much sense, especially not the first sentence. Half Life 2, like Half Life before it, does not have to claim "innovation" for a reason for its brilliance (although they both are, undoubtably, innovative) and if you can't see how something like the gravity gun changes the way we interact with our environment in an FPS game you're demented.
The desert section is really short, but I wouldn't have called it boring in any case. It's tense, and there are a variety of puzzles with a variety of solutions. I suppose there's not much blowing things up, and if you don't like the chance to play with the grav gun, it's less entertaining. Likewise the vehicles sections: varied, inventive, and interspersed with other activities. As for the sniper part, surely that's very short - and once again, a new and different challenge. It's also rather brilliant - you think, "thank god, daylight and open space" - and then those things become your worst enemy.
As I was remarking to someone a moment ago, I seem to find gunplay per se less engrossing than most people anyway: perhaps that's the difference.
Fave weaponset ever is hard to name, really; can't remember the name of the game ^_^ The following, however, would all be top 10:
*Turok 2 (CEREBRAL BORE!!!)
*Perfect Dark
*Goldeneye
*Quake 2
*Halo 2
*Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the only game without physical force feedback to seem like it did)
*GTA: Vice City
*Far Cry: Instincts (mm, blow pipe)
And yes, Epic debunked UT2K7 as a launch title, saying that "only the engine is currently running well on PS3, so maybe later". This may have something to do with that Unreal Championship franchise that's exclusive to Xbox...
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Like Halo 1 all over again.
Now Wolfenstein, THERE is a tight game. Mission structure is tight and well paced, weaponry functional and meaty, plot eked out as necessary...
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The frequent comparison is with an army officer briefing his troops, about to go into the field. They don't start by saying "Several years ago, a group of men from the Al Qaeda organisation hijacked four planes whilst they were flying over the continental united states (and so on, and so forth)".
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If you don't care about what happens, that is an issue, but HL2 puts more effort and skill into establishing relationships with characters you actually care about than pretty much anything else - certainly any other FPS - and also shows you the consequences of what is happening in a visceral way immediately. If that made no impression then I'm honestly quite surprised. It has on everyone else I've spoken to.
The plot/information is eked out across the game - you see the Citadel practically immediately, for example - very carefully.
Can you give an example of a "vast tract of boredom"?
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Practically all the time spent travelling by vehicle.
The sniper section post-Ravenholm.
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I'm surprised you managed to get past the loading screen, that takes a while to get going.
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I just found that, on a second play, I was uninspired, without any reason or want to carry on. I just ended up doing Ravenholm again and again.
The gravity gun's a bit of a crutch; usage of it that goes beyond "for fun" is usually laborious. Plus, it was broken; how does it differentiate between living and dead? Why can I make hanging corpses move with it, but not someone freshly shot dead? If you had the blue one all the way through - wow. But no, instead it made no sense. To top it all, the Combine rifle looks so rough when used it's almost sprite-like.
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The bridge section is an enormous set piece, which the Half Life series is famed for, assuming we're talking about the same one. It involves shooting down a helicopter, killing lots of combine, and a small amount of jumping. If you consider that one long, boring, section, then you obviously don't like the game as a whole.
Oh wait.
The gravity gun is a fine tool. Calling it "a bit of a crutch" seems a bizarre thing to do when it's a weapon - the fact that it's pretty unique doesn't mean it has its own advantages and disadvantages.
And you consider THIS rough and sprite like?
( ... )
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And the gravity gun is used, in many parts, as way to pique curiosity and nothing more. Look at Ravenholm, THE best level in the game. It plays out like one long excuse to gravity gun things to death. Apart from that, it's quite empty; let's face it, shooting fuel canisters in FPS games has been around a long long time, and I don't see how picking them up and lobbing them is so "innovative".
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As to your second paragraph, I don't think you're making much sense, especially not the first sentence. Half Life 2, like Half Life before it, does not have to claim "innovation" for a reason for its brilliance (although they both are, undoubtably, innovative) and if you can't see how something like the gravity gun changes the way we interact with our environment in an FPS game you're demented.
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As I was remarking to someone a moment ago, I seem to find gunplay per se less engrossing than most people anyway: perhaps that's the difference.
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