Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game
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truly dull sections - yes I'm looking at you the vehicle sections ... makes playing through HL2 a slog. Just a few hours in, I didn't want to play any more. I was done.
Totally agree with this. HL1 is one of my favorite games ever but HL2 was just boring. I tried it a few times and never finished. Opposing Force and Blue Shift are my Half Life 2 and Half Life 3.
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I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.
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is the time shown on steam reviews accurate? cause i'd guess that it takes more than 12 minutes for a casual player to finish half-life 2
in fact i checked and the world record in speedrunning is around 36 minutes lol
Lots of mods for older games circumvent steam, so steam does not know about the game running. Famous example was Skyrim and Skyrim script extender. If this is the case with mmod idk
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Sorry, no. And I am sorry you found LLM useful, and consider experimental/unverified data "dangerous", likely inadequately or for the sense of hateful trolling, and it's hard to live that way, I presume...
Related:
- https://lemmy.world/post/41419554/21487153
- https://mander.xyz/post/45102281/24408089
- https://lemmus.org/post/41151011/21366171 -
Thank you!
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Yeah gameplay wise the game basically leaned a lot on novelty. But they are wrong to say that it lacks world building and lore because it’s scant on narrative. That’s like saying “the Quiet Place lacks world building because there is barely any narrative”. The game is excellent in using game mechanics to tell a story. Instead of relying on the storytelling mechanics of film.
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Ah good catch, that means they lied as well.
He said that he played through it in PS3 back in the day
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is the time shown on steam reviews accurate? cause i'd guess that it takes more than 12 minutes for a casual player to finish half-life 2
in fact i checked and the world record in speedrunning is around 36 minutes lol
If you play in offline mode (Steam Deck) Steam doesn‘t clock your playtime IIRC
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As someone who hates open-world ubisoft style games, I'm nevertheless not much of a fan of HL2 either. I tried it multiple times at different points in my life and each time found it to feel like a slog that I end up giving up on a few hours in.
I enjoyed the 1984 aspects of the world at first, but I ultimately can't get past how bullet spongy enemies are. Virtually every weapon feels extremely impotent except the revolver, which has very limited ammo. I began to dread every encounter with enemies because it rarely felt fun to fight them.
On my last playthrough I cheated and gave myself infinite revolver ammo, which helped me get farther than before, but even then I was struggling to push onward after a certain point, just because it felt like endless waves of enemies being thrown at me with some mildly enjoyable physics puzzles tossed in between them.
Never felt a connection with any of the characters, and without that the gameplay itself just becomes repetitive to me.
I think the pistol and SMG are intended to feel weak, to push you into other weapons that take more interesting use. For instance, half an SMG clip into a soldier could instead be one launch of a barrel from the gravity gun. Notably, you only see those soldiers after getting the gravity gun.
If you’re referring to the early cops, about half of them are around some tricky environmental kill, like an explosive barrel. But, I’ll grant there are times you’d desperately spend a magazine to land headshots with the pistol. So, I guess you’re not wrong.
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HL2 has a ton of story, but it isn't spelled out in cutscenes or written down in item descriptions. It's discussed by NPCs and inferred from the environment. You experience it all in a first person frame, without third person cutscenes or by asking someone to exposit at you. You don't even have to go out of your way with a guide on your second monitor to unlock that info, it's right there with you, you just have to pay attention.
You're a person in the world and nobody will be the explaining the concept of lightbulbs or the where the combine came from or how the city was built. But you can absolutely find out more about that in the game.
But yes, we all hate the cliffhanger.
I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.
Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
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Friends of mine who played at two different points far after launch still found it to be just as great, even if the physics and facial animations were no longer best in class.
I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.
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If you play in offline mode (Steam Deck) Steam doesn‘t clock your playtime IIRC
Afaik it does if it resyncs. Just takes a while to update
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I played this game twice, and tried to get to the end twice, and in both times I just WALKED AWAY. The original was actually playable and beatable in comparison.
One moment it's a shooter, then it becomes a driving game, then it becomes one of the earliest walking sims with long stretches of nothing, then a horror game, then a tactical shooter, and it wasn't good at any of them - it was all just cobbled together. Valve would have had a much better game if they sold just Ravenholm, the only part that actually evoked strong feelings in me.
And by this point in time I can't help but think the funny letter G guy is just a Mary Sue to glue the game together with very little character or substance besides "man in black".
I firmly believe the only reason this game is "beloved" is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them. (And also because of this game every fucking company that breathes has an online DRM launcher)
Fear by Monolith and its expansions on the other hand, they were so much better despite the aiming system being unintuitive in comparison to HL the 2. Everything just clicks. I just loved Fear. But I'm sure this won't save me from "Ubisoft target audience" allegations.
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I think the pistol and SMG are intended to feel weak, to push you into other weapons that take more interesting use. For instance, half an SMG clip into a soldier could instead be one launch of a barrel from the gravity gun. Notably, you only see those soldiers after getting the gravity gun.
If you’re referring to the early cops, about half of them are around some tricky environmental kill, like an explosive barrel. But, I’ll grant there are times you’d desperately spend a magazine to land headshots with the pistol. So, I guess you’re not wrong.
From what I recall, I didn't really enjoy using the gravity gun all that much since bigger objects had a tendency to clip terrain if they weren't aimed quite right, and thus miss the enemy I was aiming at, which prompted me to switch back to the other weapons to finish off a gunfight. Admittedly that might've been just a me problem, and others had more success using it (I know the sawblades with the gravity gun were quite accurate and easy to use in ravenholm, but I don't think they show up much after that area).
I felt like most of the game doesn't really give you enough ammo with the non-standard weapons to really use them outside of one or two bigger fights, then I'd be back down to the smg, pistol, or shotgun (which I also felt was a little under powered unless you used the alt fire, but that chewed through ammo too quickly to be viable most of the time).
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Yeah gameplay wise the game basically leaned a lot on novelty. But they are wrong to say that it lacks world building and lore because it’s scant on narrative. That’s like saying “the Quiet Place lacks world building because there is barely any narrative”. The game is excellent in using game mechanics to tell a story. Instead of relying on the storytelling mechanics of film.
Its world building and such is visual story telling.
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I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.
I don't care much about the Danes either.
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I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.
Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
“What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
But, you KNOW what happened to the Earth. What would spelling it out add to the story, except replacing the wonder and accomplishment with a boring bit of exposition.
Having Gordon be a silent protagonist adds hugely to the first person experience of the game. Sure, you can add dialog and questions and elaborate, but that would detract from the experience. Picasso could have also added pointers to each of the characters in Guernica to explain how they relate to the bombing of the city, and it would make the painting a lot clearer... and a lot worse.
I want to compare Half-Life with SOMA here (so spoilers for both). They're both great experiences, but Gordon is silent while Simon won't shut up. Simon needs to asks questions because the story requires you to understand some things, and some people need very basic explanations. When I played SOMA, I kept waiting for there to be a secret plottwist that Simon was copied incorrectly and was thus either braindamaged, or modified not to recognise reality for a specific purpose. No, that didn't happen, Simon is instead an absolute moron who completely fails to realize that everyone constantly being copied means that he too will be copied instead of having his mind relocated. The game treats this as some kind of big realization, when it was in fact absolutely blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. It's literally the core of the game. Simon, being a moron, then takes this out on the person helping him, because he's a moron.
Not only is the main character an idiot, I'm being railroaded into taking decisions that are stupid, which are then reacted to as if I couldn't possibly have foreseen this, implying I (the player) am probably really stupid too. That was a huge detraction in SOMA. Simon is an idiot for the sole purpose of getting the information to you, the player, because apparently you need to be informed like you're some kind of idiot too.
On the other hand, Gordon doesn't talk. That's a BIG restriction, but it also means you don't even have to option to ask questions. On the other hand, you don't need to; all the reasonable questions you might have are answered in the game by environmental storytelling. Who are the combine? Well, we see them beating up random humans, speaking a weird garbled message, we hear speeches by Breen, we see the combine raid random apartments. It's very clear who they are without Gordon needing to ask about it. It's like starting a book in medias res, which is quite common in writing.
Half-Life 2 assumes you can make connections, and you need to do so because Gordon doesn't talk. SOMA assumes you're an idiot, and reinforces that constantly by Simon talking to people like an idiot.
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Watch Dogs 2 is a weird one. I absolutely understand all the criticism and see the flaws, but I still play it and the breaks between two runs only get shorter. I love its rendition of SF and the Bay Area, the game has that je-ne-sais-quoi that draws me towards it.
Watch Dogs Legion though? Oh my goodness...
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Sorry, no. And I am sorry you found LLM useful, and consider experimental/unverified data "dangerous", likely inadequately or for the sense of hateful trolling, and it's hard to live that way, I presume...
Related:
- https://lemmy.world/post/41419554/21487153
- https://mander.xyz/post/45102281/24408089
- https://lemmus.org/post/41151011/21366171I hope you find the mental health resources and remedial English classes you need.
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As someone who hates open-world ubisoft style games, I'm nevertheless not much of a fan of HL2 either. I tried it multiple times at different points in my life and each time found it to feel like a slog that I end up giving up on a few hours in.
I enjoyed the 1984 aspects of the world at first, but I ultimately can't get past how bullet spongy enemies are. Virtually every weapon feels extremely impotent except the revolver, which has very limited ammo. I began to dread every encounter with enemies because it rarely felt fun to fight them.
On my last playthrough I cheated and gave myself infinite revolver ammo, which helped me get farther than before, but even then I was struggling to push onward after a certain point, just because it felt like endless waves of enemies being thrown at me with some mildly enjoyable physics puzzles tossed in between them.
Never felt a connection with any of the characters, and without that the gameplay itself just becomes repetitive to me.
The revolver's first shot is dead center. Use your suit zoom and you can snipe a headshot.
Other than that, use the appropriate weapon. Soften them up or flush them out with grenades. Pop around a corner and hit them with both barrels of the shotgun. And don't be afraid to use the quicksaves liberally.
HL and HL2 definitely aren't polished AAAA game experiences, they're experimental games from people trying to push the limits, so it's natural that they don't hold up to modern games. The modern games are standing on the shoulders of Half-Life (which stands on the shoulders of Quake, Doom, and Wolfenstein).
