The Orange Box (PC/PS3/360)

[Soi]

The Water Boat section is about 15 minutes long if you play it stright through without dying, so im not really sure how it can be 20 minutes too long.

On a first play through on Hard (as I did it), it was painfully long. Especially as I don't abuse autosave.

[MattyD]

I didn?t feel that ?man against the world? thing. I found the linearity and the lack of explanation for what I was doing extremely stifling and lacking freedom...

HL2 felt like I was dumped in a game world that I knew nothing about and then put me on a convoluted, yet linear quest that from a purely personal perspective I wasn?t that interested in going on. I wanted to hang around the city, but no ?I had to get on a water bike and dodge falling bombs for an hour.

Sounds like you just didn't like the whole setup to me. What you've pointed out are taste preferences rather than flaws in the design. You say you didn't like the linearity, but I personally don't like games like Oblivion as I find them too sprawling and aimless.

Games like Oblivion are designed to allow you to make up your own adventure as you go. Half Life 2 is instead aimed at giving you a specific and contrived experience. Within the context of the HL2 story, it makes sense that you don't know anything - Freeman has been in stasis somewhere for nearly 20 years - and also that you can't just stay hanging around City 17, because the Combine attempt to capture Freeman as soon as they become aware of his presence. You can't keep the experience plausible and focused if you give players the le-way to just wander around poking at things aimlessly in a situation like that.

There are areas where the developers can and have given you some degree of freedom though. The highway stage leaves you more-or-less at liberty to play as you choose, within the set parameters of the story (Freeman driving to Nova Prospekt). If you really must stop at every single house or check-point along the way, you can, But if you don't want to, you can drive straight past probably a good 4/5ths of them.

Another way of saying this is to use an analogy by David Cage from Quantic Dream: games with a story must be like a rubber band. They should allow a little bit of elasticity here and there to accommodate the player, but they should always maintain their essential shape and qualities. I like this analogy because it implies that the developers should, if necessary, 'snap' the player back on track.

[cavalcade]

I often find myself saying about HL2 that it looks great or sounds great. I hardly ever say it plays great.

That, plus everything else you just said is the most accurate summary of Half Life 2 ever committed to electronic media.

Children should be made to study it in school.

[Charlie]

I started playing Episode 2 last night and it looks even better than previous efforts.

Yeah, Episide 2 looks lush, and how cool was the helping Griggs and Sheckley hold off the antlion invasion inside the mine set-piece? The way one of them kept freaking out when the lights lit up had me in stitches and I was laughing out loud on more than one occasion. Just brilliant.

[Wools]

That, plus everything else you just said is the most accurate summary of Half Life 2 ever committed to electronic media.

Tosh.

[Brats]

I started playing Episode 2 last night and it looks even better than previous efforts.

This is really reminding me of next generation GoldenEye. A beautiful, action orientated game with fantastic level design but mixed with brilliant, intelligent puzzles.

I'm now desperate to see what Episode 2's version of Coast is to play.

I presuming you mean just Episode 2, because HL2 and Episode 1 have nothing like the wonderful open ended approach to design that Goldeneye had. If it is, then Ep2 could finally be the game for me.

[cavalcade]

Another way of saying this is to use an analogy by David Cage from Quantic Dream: games with a story must be like a rubber band. They should allow a little bit of elasticity here and there to accommodate the player, but they should always maintain their essential shape and qualities. I like this analogy because it implies that the developers should, if necessary, 'snap' the player back on track.

I don't think he's in any position to offer advice on anything game related. Fahrenheit starts promisingly and soon "snaps" into being a heap of bat dung.

[cavalcade]

Tosh.

If Brats stood on a soapbox in the middle of London and read his posts on Half Life 2 out, and asked people to join him and die by his side fighting a war in his name. I would.

[Wools]

I presuming you mean just Episode 2, because HL2 and Episode 1 have nothing like the wonderful open ended approach to design that Goldeneye had. If it is, then Ep2 could finally be the game for me.

GoldenEye, for all its brilliance, was hardly open-ended!

It was a tight paced, beautifully designed, First Person Shooter. Hell, even the gadgets have been replicated in the form of the Gravity Gun!

[Brats]

That, plus everything else you just said is the most accurate summary of Half Life 2 ever committed to electronic media.

Children should be made to study it in school.

Lol - thanks . Nice to see I'm not alone.

Most games I don't like I can appreciate, but HL2 is one game that I completely fail to see the (admittedly huge) appreciation for.

Imo Valve should make an RPG, because the character design, script, lip synching and art work are fabulous. It's just those shooty bits in their shooters that they aren't very good at.

[Miguel007]

I'm a complete Half-Life newbie, and have been playing them through in order, hopefully leaving the best (Portal) to last, judging by some of the comments on here.

I loved some of the Half-Life 2 set pieces but by the end was hoping it would just finish as I was sick of it, and thought the last level was really terrible and I didn't fully understand what I was supposed to do right at the very end

->Open Spoiler<-

shoot the portal or the gun ships, and the time kept running out which I got frustrated with.

I thought Episode 1 was a complete snore fest, on with Episode 2 at the moment up to

->Open Spoiler<-

shooting the Maddison 'sticky' bombs at the spider things, brilliant level. Loved the previous part where the Combine ambushed me at the house, and had us surrounded.

On another note, I bloody hate those Zombie Combine chaps that light a grenade up and come running for you in tight situations, the times I've died arrrgh! Firing saws with the gravity gun and splitting them in half is so satisfying!

[Wools]

If Brats stood on a soapbox in the middle of London and read his posts on Half Life 2 out, and asked people to join him and die by his side fighting a war in his name. I would.

That's reasoned!

Normally I would say fair enough, let's agree to disagree. But Half Life 2 is so perfectly formed I'm astonished to find so many people have issues with it. I can understand some people not liking the exposition and scene setting plus the combat not being to Halo's strength but other than that it's night on perfect.

[Brats]

GoldenEye, for all its brilliance, was hardly open-ended!

It was a tight paced, beautifully designed, First Person Shooter. Hell, even the gadgets have been replicated in the form of the Gravity Gun!

Nonsense. You could appraoch most of the levels in GE from a number of different angles. The underground Russian base was my favourite. You could choose which way to go, gradually taking out the security cameras.

[Brats]

Half Life 2 is so perfectly formed I'm astonished to find so many people have issues with it. I can understand some people not liking the exposition and scene setting plus the combat not being to Halo's strength but other than that it's night on perfect.

The bit in bold is a MASSIVE but though. Isn't it like saying if say Juiced had better handling it would be nigh on perfect?

Strip all the fluff away and HL2 is a shooter. You spend most of the time shooting. That it doesn't do shooting as well as other games is a huge minus point against it.

[Wools]

Nonsense. You could appraoch most of the levels in GE from a number of different angles. The underground Russian base was my favourite. You could choose which way to go, gradually taking out the security cameras.

In GoldenEye's Severnaya Installation and others you can choose to be stealthy and whether to take out an enemy to the left or right but that was the scope and depth of its levels. Half Life 2 is more narrow in mission depth, granted, but the weapons, gravity gun, space for movement and placed objects do open up the tactical Reponses for each set piece.

All Half Life 2 is missing is the stealth and the slightly more open playing areas. However it succeeds and improves upon GoldenEye in a number of ways such as level design, weapons and the physic based puzzles.