Half-Life 2 (PC)

[Ravon]

Single player is great but I'm sorry. Quake 2 is still much much better than counterstrike.

I still can't belive they didn't bother to make a multiplayer mode using existing maps/weapons in the 5 years they spent on this. Just lazy.

lol i only just read this.. im not much for CS but Q2 was just utter rubbish when it came to DM's.. get some Q3 or UT2004 on the go jesus... Q2 rofl your a funny guy..

[SuperBeatBoy]

that post made me chuckle too

[nips]

[Inertia_]

Concept: The entry to City 17 is just....:O :O :O Words can't explain how cool Dog was on his return.

LOL - that must be the worst attempt at a hidden spoiler I've ever seen.

[Tom Salter]

Thanks

Just finally finished, and the ending was fan-bloody-tastic. Spoilers ahoy!

I'm not quite sure what it meant though. G-man didn't seem to answer any questions, he just kind of...rambles. Did Breen die? It was cool though. The last 10-15 minutes were just amazing. I still want to know more about the Combine though, what did Breen get out of helping them? What did he want to achieve? I hope they make some Half Life books to answer these questions...

[Loc]

Just got up to the mines area.
Game is excellent so far, the Ravenholm area though was just (In a good/fooked up way)
Mines seem to be bad though...from what I've seen

[Chadruharazzeb]

Maybe I've been spoiled by "being" Riddick in Chronicles, but I'm not sure I'm overly keen on this "You never SEE Freeman! He never SPEAKS! Great, eh!!" business. I like characters to have character, and Freeman.... well there's just nothing is there. Aside from his face on the cover we wouldn't even know what he looks like. Why no depth? How can a sceintist go from being a lab-coated nerd one minute to a one man goddamn slaughterhouse the next? Is he insane?

Smacks of a wee bit of laziness to me.

[Concept]

It's the whole point of the game. Freeman is you. Nothing more.

You know... Like Nintendo have done with Zelda and Mario, characterisation has to be sacrificed to essentially conduct it by yourself. To let your imagination fill in the gaps.

You have to make Freeman into the character you want him to be through your own set of actions. That's precisely why we never remove from his point of view. Because it's ours in the game world.

Steven Poole raised a good point with Riddick a while back, which I didn't entirely agree on. He claimed that out-of-body-cutscenes can slice into the immersion of a first-person viewpoint, whereas Riddick utilised third and first person elements both in gameplay and cinematic development to great effect to intertwine a sense that you have a body you're in control of. That you can relate to.

However, Half-Life 2 goes off in completely the opposite direction. No 'cutscenes' (not as we know them), no removal of viewpoint, no characterisation we don't control.

There's never a point when the CPU moves, controls or makes us talk. The game saturates us within a narrative framework that consistently follows it's own mechanics from a very strict standpoint.

Yet the whole point with the creation of this standpoint happens to be assumption of role, and through removing barriers that contradict or impose on our sense of it, this maximalist approach means our connection is never tempered with an alienation.

On the one hand you're more disconnected than you are than with a Halo or Riddick. On the other, you're about as connected as you possibly could be in terms of assuming a consistent viewpoint and character standpoint by which the story can unfold through.

[MartyG]

I have my copy now, annoyingly it's been sat at the post office since Monday, and the postie didn't put a card through the door. Fortunately it runs on my work machine ok.

First impressions (well 5 mins is all I have till lunch) are very good. The skin textures are great, the intro looks almost photo realistic, erm, and that's about all I can say atm Looking forward to playing this all the more now.

[JibberX]

I can't be the only one who has mocking conversations with the NPCs. Usually goes something like "I rock, I totally rock" and they say "The crystals are out of alignment" or something, then I rip into them "Well thats because your an incompetent fool" and so on.... its very cleansing.

Anyways I actually took in a sequence where you have to stave off an attack with a group of buddies, that works great.

[Kotatsu Neko]

I got up to Nova Prospekt last night. Very atmospheric, and the ant lions are great. But... it's not even easier than before! I just send them in to do my dirty work while I take cover.

Great game, but so, so easy.

Was also playing Halo 2 on Legendary last night. Quite the opposite, it's so insanely hard I barely progressed after an hour of play.

[MikeF]

Anyone tried this game on low-mid range hardware?

I'm not too bothered about everything on max settings, but a reasonable frame rate would be nice.....

I'm running a Sempron 2400+, MSI mobo, 512 DDR333 & Radeon 9600XT, should this be okay to run the game before I put down the cash?

Very similar to my setup except I have a standard 9600 (256mb version)

Runs absoultely fine and still looks very nice

[Chadruharazzeb]

Enjoy it Marty! At work!

Concept, I understand that Valve say YOU are meant to put your own character into Freeman, but it doesn't really work on linear games like HL. You're shunted around with no reaction or emotion, never having anything to relate to. It'd just complete the package for me if they had *some* kind of character for the main protagonist.

[Nijo]

What happens if you shoot friendlies? Is there any dialog change or is it on rails?

Anyway, looking back so far it does seem like the game is getting easier. If those zombies were a bit more like legendary Flood it would be nice...

[Spatial]

Great game, but so, so easy.

I've been thinking the same thing. Even though I'm playing through it on hard I've yet to come to a section where I've gone "This is impossible" and been tempted to turn down the difficulty.

Its funny, because Half Life was a bugger on hard mode, so much so that I gave up trying to complete it.

Brilliant moment yesterday when 2 Combine Overwatch guards tried to flank me and flush me out with grenades. Just like the marines in Half Life, they're clever little buggers and it makes for some memorable gaming moments.