Half Life 2 - Pal XBOX

[jimmbob]

Yeah that's the one, I thought I was the only one! More of us freaks should stand up and be counted!
I'm battling through HL2, but damn it'd be so much easier if they'd sort out the thumb sticks. Ah well, I am getting used to it slowly, seems to have that Metroid Prime feel to me where it feels completely unnatural at first and then (Hopefully) just clicks. Only nothing's clicked yet.

[amorenod]

[Darth Vader]Nooooooooooooooooo[\Darth Vader]

First Far Cry, now HL2 falls from my buying list. Is that hard to include customisable controls?

[Wools]

I completed this over the weekend and simply it's one of the finest, most beautiful game's I've ever played.

It's restored my faith in modern gaming and absloutly blown me away.

I can't reccomened it highly enough

[Soi]

I'm about 1.5 hours in, having never played the PC version.

I'm liking it, but it feels a bit hollow and linear, and the combat is a bit ropey.

While some may like the fact that your character never speaks, I find it very strange. I want to ask "What the piss is going on?", but never get the chance. I'm in this strange place, and no one has told me why I'm there.

The beggining (just off the train) was a great tutorial of how to use the physics, but it really showed up the AI. When told to pick up the cup I threw it at the guards head (surely everyone does that) and then continued to do so for about 2 or 3 minutes. The guard would chase me, but he was easy to avoid as he would jus ignore me if I jumped over one of the knee height barriers in the room.

[Concept]

It's been that way since Half-Life. I presume Valve are following the mantra which Nintendo use for a lot of their games - remove player characterisation so the player can more easily step inside the shoes of the character he/she is controlling.

With both games, Valve want to emphasise immersion... that's why the HUD is cut down, there are no 'cinematic' style cutscenes and Freeman never says anything. It may have the opposite effect for you, but the reasoning is to not disconnect the player from the position they move from.

[weresheep]

I feel the same as you Soi.

I enjoyed the game but felt the artifical restrictions dragged it down. One bit that sticks in my mind...

SPOLIER

where you have to take down the three striders but don't have enough ammo. One of the guys you meet says they dropped a box of rockets crossing the court yard. Umm, where? The court yard is massive and I'm supposed to find a tiny box? With three Striders on my ass?! Why couldn't they have told me WHERE the damn box was.

And then just to top it all off we're back to indestructable fences/gates. I have no choice but to run past the Striders and take large amounts of damage becuase these fences are immune rockets and the gravity gun.

When you play around with the gravity gun and things move around like in real life it adds to the game. That is then lost the first time you try and move something blocking your way but can't, not becuase of physics but becuase Valve don't want you to go that way.

/SPOLIER

Anyway, despite my moaning I did like the game.

-weresheep

[Concept]

I thought that bit was the best of the entire game (or at least the most exciting). The Xbox coped magnificently during the parts you'd most expect it to struggle.

[Paleface]

Alyx also makes a crack about the fact Gordon never says anything - "you're a quiet one, aren't you?" early on when she meets him; no-one really acknowledged it in the first game.

I've just hit Ravenholm and am enjoying hugely; Water Hazard was fantastic. There's a real physicality to the combat I've been looking for for quite a while; it's haphazard as to whether a guard goes down or not - six-eight rounds into one Combine guard, and then another takes a lucky headshot and goes down at once. The Magnum is awesome, too.

Favourite scene in many ways, though, is playing catch with Dog. I love Dog. I want a Dog of my own, even a little one - I can build him up later.

The other interesting line is in Black Mesa East, when Eli says "don't worry, Gordon; we'll have you out of that hazard suit and into a labcoat before you know it". And the thing is, in the first game, Gordon donned the hazard suit and eventually discovered he was quite an adept survival-machine. This time round, you hear that line, and think "no! I like my hazard suit! I like the shooting!" Which is actually quite interesting - your character is offered a chance to stop the struggle, but he can't take it, not just because it's impossible within the game, but because the player doesn't want to. It's the blue-pill moment. I found it interesting.

[MJ]

If you've never played Half Life, is the story in 2 easy to follow?

[jimmbob]

lol, yeah as long as you understand he escaped a facility before hand, with the apparent help of the guy with the weird voice at the beginning.
I don't think the story is easy to follow anyway whether you've played HL1 or not!

[Concept]

Yes, it is. The game is very accepting of new players to the series.

You'll be about as confused as Gordon is throughout the adventure.

[Concept]

Just played the game through to the end from the

->Open Spoiler<-

introduction of the striders

again.

Still caught at a crossroad with regards to my overall viewpoint on how far the frame-rate during a few of the other chapters affects the entire experience of the Xbox version. Especially because there are parts during the latter half of Half-Life 2 which make one's jaw drop.

Eurogamer have reviewed the Xbox port:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61761

I disagree with them on their criticisms of the ending. As Spatial pointed out in the PC thread of the game last year, it reminds me of people who criticise Half-Life 2 for not supposedly having as 'extensive' an opening as the original.

The first twenty minutes in City 17 is Half-Life 2's introduction, as the last twenty is its end (

->Open Spoiler<-

from the citadel onwards

).

[Paleface]

Yes; the big difference in that in HL1, you just waited and watched during the train ride; in HL2, you're responsible for your own movements. There's quite a lot to pay attention to, if you want to talk to everybody, but it's entirely optional.

What I would point out about the story is that so far, if you haven't played HL1, you don't realise how long ago Black Mesa was. In short: Gordon was involved in an experiment. It went wrong. He survived a fairly colossal incident through guile, agility, luck, and shooting the **** out of a lot of stuff, and at the end, was made an offer he couldn't refuse.

One of the things I love about the games is that

->Open Spoiler<-

HL2 picks up exactly where HL1 left off

. It just takes a while to work that out...

[Concept]

Yeah - it's for precisely those reasons that I love Half-Life 2's opening. The atmosphere is simply incredible and it's one of the best introductions to any game that I've come across - and yes that does include the original Half-Life. The

->Open Spoiler<-

coastline

also further underlines the options you're able to take to exploration. You can choose to spend ages just exploring all the abandoned buildings and rooms, or simply move past them. For that reason, Valve create the sense of a believable, structured world that will continue to exist whether or not you're in it.

I think critics of Half-Life 2 expect it to literally spell things out, which is baffling when you consider one of Halo 2's main flaws for a lot of people was it's determination to destroy the air of mystery in the original. Half-Life 2 side-steps that by keeping its events purposefully vague, and getting the likes of us to keep talking about what may or may not be happening.

To keep the interest flowing in that way is a fine art in balancing satisfaction with a lack of frustration, and I think Half-Life 2 manages this well.

[Soi]

I can't comment much as I'm only 1.5 hours in, but I would have enjoyed the beggining a lot more if the guards had been able to kill me. The fact that I could throw stuff at them for as long as I pleased took away a fair bit of the menace and respect for them (as emenies) that I had.

Sure, I didn't have to muck about throwing stuff around, but the game gives you tools that were new to me so I played around.