Half Life 2 Discussion

Who' s playing this? I didn' t see a thread on this (hopefully I' m not just oblivious) so I thought I' d start one.

This is the most fun I think i' ve ever had playing a PC game. im about 2/3 thru the game and have yet to be bored, irritated or anything bad once. its just incredibly well done. downright ceramic i tell you.

what say you?

I' m not overly impressed with thegame. It' s no doubt a great game but overall it hasn' t done anything that really blows me away.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

I' m kind of with Rampage on this. HL 2 is indeed a great game, and even a worthy nominee for GoY, but it' s still just your standard FPS. The Havoc engine is fantastic, but besides that...nothing new, really.

Definitely worth playing, though. A must-play, actually.

Kikizo Staff Writer

It sounds like you guys both think its great.....but don' t want to say so. I' m not a fanboy by any means, seriously....but maybe thats why I was so pleased. yes, havoc engine is great. but the environments, pacing, little puzzles....all very cool.

I will be playing HL2 soon, most likely after I finally finish Doom 3
Looking forward to it
As long as it' s a good FPS I' m happy, I don' t need anything to bow me away

well i hear that.....but you' ll likely be pretty blown away. guess no one is actually playing it hear....shame...no shop talk. Womp Wom.

I have got to say I absolutely LOVE HALF-LIFE 2. I am a bit of a veteran FPS player and generally find many of them boring now, but this is a true gem.

Unlike most recent FPS games where I get bored " half" way through, I just couldn' t put this one down. Unlike some opinions here (which are somewhat understandable in that yes, it is an FPS game) I really think this brings something new to the table. The physics system just adds so much. Physics isn' t new and HAVOC have got their system in so many games these days I lost count. Far Cry, Doom 3 (for the few movable objects), Halo 2 etc. However, HL2 turns what was an amusing feature in those games into an integrated part of gameplay. See that force barrier? Use your grav gun to unplug it and it powers down! See that table? Pick it up to block people chasing you. See that plank? you can use it as a ramp if you get some bricks in order to pilot your hovercraft over the wall. Use any object as a weapon etc.

Beyond the Physics the game is more the sum of its parts, but what great parts. Amazing graphics, great storyline, vehicles which are awesome fun to drive (more so than in most similar games), really tight and quailty level design, brilliant weapons, team-based squad play etc etc.

It just combines everything possible into a hugely enjoyable experience. Similar in a sense to GTA:SA. GTA:SA brings nothing new to the table really, but combines the best bits of other genres into one great game. HL2 adds a bit of freshness to the FPS experience whilst, bringing in everything from other genres and other FPS games together in one excellent shooter.

I was dissapointed with Doom 3 and didn' t actually like the first Half-life game that much, but this is unmissable IMO!! Valve have just got themselves a new fan.

Oh, and don' t get me started on the excellence of Counter-Strike: Source. Sure, its essentially the same game, but the makeover and physics really bring it to life. Plus, you know there is awesome potential for new maps on this engine.

BUY HALF-LIFE 2 NOW!! One of the few recent games to life up the hype e.g. Halo 2, which is good, but very disappointing IMO (not payed it on LIVE yet though)

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

LOL what HE said. im a slow typer

Indeed HL2 is a great game, and worth every cent. Lip syncing and animations-great. Physics- great. Scripted sequences- Great. Gameplay-great, storyline-Great yet confusing. ( no spoilers, read ahead)

Installation sequence and the pathetic ' unlocking' and ' validating' sequence- not so great. I spent a good three weeks figuring out how to get it to play. I still cant play counter strike source, and HL2 was only enabled through an outside ' fix' .

As great a game as this maybe. some ppl might be put off by the aforementioned process. However, HL deathmatch has proven to be an excellent alternative to CS.

I still get a kick outta of spawning Ant lions and Vortigaunts and watching them fight.

Dashing through the store,
on a three wheeled shopping cart
sliding across the floor
avoiding kids and pots

Reaching for the games,
and taking out my cash
oh what fun will i have today
before my brain cells crash

HEY!
couldnt fit

YES! I knew there were some players in here. Glad im not the only one eating this stuff up. I actually just got to a part that is somewhat more difficult than the game had been before so I' ll see how it is after tonight.

Just add one last comment....at least for now.

The sequences where you have to set up sentry guns are one of the most exciting things ever. Its like playing the " Special Edition" version of Aliens.

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

dooohhhhh.....haven' t gotten to that part yet...but now I can' t wait. I' m actually stuck in this place trying to meet the crazy priest at the church...but cant find the church. meh.

lo. that bits a bit confusing. im not even sure ho wi got there myself, and those zombies kick ass. I enjoyed the sentry guns as well, but not as much as the final level. INSANE

Dashing through the store,
on a three wheeled shopping cart
sliding across the floor
avoiding kids and pots

Reaching for the games,
and taking out my cash
oh what fun will i have today
before my brain cells crash

HEY!
couldnt fit

seriously....there are 3 spawn spots and im running low on ammo....tho im an accomplished crowbar zombie killer now. but i have no idea how to get outta there. anyone anyone?

i dont know what part your talking about , but i love half life 2. i beat it about 2 weeks ago and it was the best game ive ever played. the way the story goes at the end is incredible. the whole scale of the game is amazing. i dont know how you couldnt like it, unless it wont work on your comp

I haven' t had so much time to play H-L2 recently but I think I' m about 1/4 - 1/3 through the game, it has been an amazing experience so far, but I' m now at the part where you get the second major vehicle (the one after the boat levels, your next vehicle is like a wireframe jeep or something) and you' re on the coast with all those sand creatures. This bit just isn' t enjoyable so far and I dunno where to go.

Earlier parts of the game (and I am sure, later parts) have and will continue to blow my head off - the most amazing FPS around (though I still say Exhumed/Powerslave/1999 is LEGENDARY) -- shame the multiplayer, H-L2 style, is plain non-existent...

I have to say that I really enjoyed the buggy level/levels, although its not quite as much fun as the hovercraft. Those levels were totally ace.

Definitely agree that Exhumed was legendary. I remember buying it after reading how much Official Saturn Magazine (UK) went on about it. Very impressive.

Speaking of which, that magazine was fantasic. To this day, my favourite computer magazine of all time. Really kept the Saturn community going far longer than it perhaps should have. I miss my Saturn!! Damn me to hell for selling it off.

Oh yeah, on one final point. There actually is Half-life 2 deathmatch available now (has been for a couple of weeks). I suggest you give it a shot, although it aint really my bag.

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

Agreed on SSM and Exhumed, that' s the reason I snapped it up also.

You know, I seem to remember writing up a rather lengthy and sucky tribute to bith Official Sega mag and SSM...

http://web.archive.org/web/20020214065015/www.segaweb.com/features/SSM/SSM.aspx

Get your fanboy hats out!! (This was written back in 1998!!)

LOL Adam, I remeber reading that back when you published on segaweb in 1998. Nice article I must admit and I agree with everything it says. Does anyone know what Rich Leadbetter (think thats how you spell his name) went on to do after SSM and what he is doing now?

Quality to see " Heart of Darkness" on the issue 8 cover!! Remember that game. Its release date got pushed back more than Duke Nukem Forever, it was hyped up to hell and in the end never released on the Saturn. If I remember correctly, it ended up on PS2 as a mediocre platform game. Precious memories. I had a subcription to SSM and it is the only magazine I have ever done this with (preferring normally to buy random issues here and there of mags). SSM was a must read from cover to cover every month. BRING IT BACK (and the Saturn ;-) )

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

i can only say that i am almost done half-life 2 and was a self addicted....then something happened. i got metal gear solid 3 for christmas and haven' t touched half-life 2 since then. though i' ll admit, Half-life 2 is freaking fantastic.

HL2 looks very good and a lot of fun to play but on a machine like mine it would be a pain and it would ruin the game. Maybe i can pick it up cheap in a few years time when i get a good pc.

To tell you the truth i hated half life 1 and thought it was an over rated fps, and i still do. But hl2 loos decent enough, pity i cant play it. [unless some very kind and rich forumer gives me the money for a new system ;) ]

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

I take back everything I said before. After completing HL2 I can say it was better than Halo 2 and quite possibly the best game I' ve played. After about half way through the game it becomes absolutely incredible.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

No offense but IMO Half Life 2 looks like total ***, and it' s not my PC either, I have a AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 1GB of Ram in Dual Channel, and an ATI Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition

I was expecting something more on par with Doom 3, maybe that spoiled me, BTW If Quake IV uses the Doom 3 engine that will be awesome, outdoor enviromnets on doom 3' s engine = drool. The problem with HL2' s graphics is that its almost like it has no bump mapping, and it almost looks cartoonish, I' ve enabled every setting, everything is on max and it still looks like there is no bump mapping

Anyhow, I played it for a few hours and quit, the story is total ass, multiplayer is fun as hell (picking up stuff and throwing it at people is awesome) but why can I only choose 2 maps?? And I' m talking about HL2 Deathmatch, not CS Source, I hate counter strike.

So you' re saying something has to be bump mapped in order to look good? Pssh... that' s a most craptacullar statement. You' re entitled to you' re opinion, but it' s seems very narrow minded. You do realize from a technical stand point Doom 3' s visuals aren' t as impressive as HL2. Bump Mapping is a way to get around polygon usage. It' s an optical illusion to make you think there are polygons when infact there aren' t as many as it portrays.

HL2 is made of raw polygons. I think there were a few instances where I noticed bumpmapping but it could have been another visual effect. That' s what makes this game so graphically top notch. They also rely heavily on textures. This game has some of the best textures I' ve ever seen in a game. The only thing that comes close is Splinter Cell. Finally the animations, especially on the faces, are some of the best ever in a game. It makes the characters seem much more human. It give off immense personality.

I will agree that I liked Doom3' s graphics a little better, but basing it off of bumpmapping completely is just ignorant. Doom3' s textures and animations are crap compared to HL2. These differences are mainly impart due to which which graphics card each were designed for. Doom3 is nVidia based while HL2 is best on ATI. ATI is better with raw polygons while nVidia goes more towards effects.

Btw, I played both games at top levels on a Alienware laptop with an Alienware custom ATI Mobility graphics card, a gig of Ram, and a 3.2 gig Pentium 4.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

Well I beat HL2 today. After a good run with it, its over. this is the first time in a while that i was sad to see a game end. this was a treat to play.

It doesn' t matter if its an " illusion" , they obviously needed to use it because the game looks like crap without it, and I' ve noticed some bump mapping too, but not much of it, you can just tell when stuff isn' t bump mapped and it looks bad.

And the fastest ATI mobility card you can actually buy is a 9800 Pro, and no you can' t max out doom 3 with a 9800 pro. You can probably max it out with Nvidia' s 6800 mobility cards but not with any of ATI' s, they havent released their new laptop GPUs yet.

I put it on the max setting and it let me. You can tell me all you want that it won' t run but it did. I also think it' s bullsh*t that a game looks like crap without bumpmapping. I' ve seen numerous cases in which bump mapping makes things look terribel. Take Captain Keys daughter for example. In Halo 2 they bump mapped the hell out of her face and it looks like crap for it.

I like bump mapping, don' t get me wrong. But the statements you' re making are stupid. It' s your opinion though so I' ll leave it at that.

Btw, bump mapping is crap compared to normal mapping. Check out the new unreal engine.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

I completely agree with what Rampage is saying here. Your talking absolute crap Evil Man. Half-life 2 is widely acknowledged by both gamers and the gaming press as an absolutely gorgeous game. One of the best.

I agree that Doom 3 looks better. No doubt about it in fact, although the textures in Doom 3 on maximum are still far worse than Half-life 2' s and the polygon is too low. In Doom 3 characters are quite blocky up close, especially the Imps. However, because Doom 3 uses " Normal Mapping" (not bump mapping) and makes extensive use of the lighting and shadow options available as a result of the " normal mapping" , it does look more realistic.

Half-life 2 on the other hand only uses bump-mapping and therefore does not have that same look as a result. However, Half-life 2 has vast, open landscapes, fully implimented physics, still great lighting, excellent particle effects etc. The vast outdoor landscapes (which are graphics intensive) and physics are not seen in Doom 3 which means it must concede some points to Half-life 2 there.

For the record, Normal mapping is basically a combination of bump mapping and advanced shader effects giving more depth and accuracy to lighting than is provided by by bump mapping alone.

Anyway, whilst I agree Doom 3 looks better, how can you say Half-life 2 looks like crap? Crap compared to what? Other than Doom 3 what games look better? Maybe one or two depending on people' s opinions but thats about it.

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

I don' t really like the story in Half-Life 2. The overall story of the game is good, but while you are playing almost everything you do is just plain unrealistic and ruined the mood for me. Gordan may be a genius, but the stuff he has to go through is just outragous. There is no way a guy like him could fight through that many things and live. And other things in the story like when him and alyx are teleporting were just stupid. It just happens to break while he tries to teleport and he ends up right outside...

I still love the game, I think they could have done far better with the story.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

I agree with that at least. As someone who only brielfy played the first quarter of half-life 1 and didn' t like it, I have no idea what the story is about?

I assume completing Half-life 1 explains it, but how the hell did some of the alien things join the resistance side? Why is the world now a crazy policed state? Why are their headcrabs and stuff all over the place now as opposed to just being in the Black Mesa labs? What has Gordon being doing since HL1 to HL2? How did he end up on the train at the start of HL2? Who is the " G-man" . I never met the G-man in what I played of HL1 so I had never even heard of him before? Anyone got the answers for these questions?

Life' s a bitch, and then you die!

i' m right at the very very very end of half-life 2.......minutes away from beating it, and i never will. i have no desire to finish the game.

ORIGINAL: Pierre2k

However, because Doom 3 uses " Normal Mapping" (not bump mapping) and makes extensive use of the lighting and shadow options available as a result of the " normal mapping" , it does look more realistic.

Actually it' s a mix of normal mapping and bump mapping. This game was the first to really test normal mapping and to be honest it barely touched on what normal mapping is capable of. Watch the Unreal 3 engine and you' ll see what true normal mapping is.

That was a big complaint I heard at my school from professors and students alike, they didn' t enough normal mapping was used in Doom 3. The normal mapping wasn' t really pushed. It still looked damn good though. Like you said, characters still seemed a bit blocky up close, that was still due to the use of regular bumpmapping.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

My PC is rubbish and won' t be able to play HL2. It' s a Pentium 3-1.6 Gig, Voodoo 3 with 40 gig hard drive space and 256 bits of ram. What should I do with it... upgrade it (and to what?) or just buy a new PC?

Wow, it let you run it? What' s your PC supposed to do pop up a screen and say " I' m too weak to run this at max settings please reconsider!" ? Of course it' s going to let you run it, I can make my 5 year old 1ghz PC run doom 3 at max settings and it' ll let me run it, do I just ignore the fact that it runs at 3-5FPS? Clearly you know nothing. 9800 Pro' s can barely pull off doom 3 at 40FPS on medium/high settings and dont even think about enabling antialisasing or anistropic filtering, and at max it would just drag everything down to *** I know because I had one, and I upgraded to x800xt, so shut your mouth.

As for Half Life 2, its a crappy looking game, if you can' t see that your blind, end of story.

lol u guys. Almost all of the new games use bump mapping and shader 2.0. The reason you can' t tell is because it looks the same as if you just used more polygons. And HL2 does look really good, especially the characters faces, but I do agree doom 3 pwns it in terms of graphics. While I agree that I didn' t enjoy the story in HL2 that much it was still pretty good overall story wise. I really enjoyed the last level (u know why if u got there) physics stuff.
HL2 pwns doom 3 in multiplayer, both hl2 multiplayer and cs are damn good multiplayer games, although I wouldn' t say they are the best multiplayer games. For me I enjoyed HL2 single player, but I liked Halo 2' s a little better, although they have simmiliar style endings (bastards). For multiplayer cs source is good, and so is hl2 mp, but halo 2 mp is quite a bit better, up there with UT2k4, not quite that good though.
For single and mp overall game i would pick Halo 2 as best and HL2 as second, although it is very close I could see why people think hl2 is better, but thats mostly people who don' t even own an xbox, and will lie and say they do because they are such extreme fanboys.

And Unreal Engine 3.0 just pwns the shit out of all of the best engines today combined. Better physics, better lighting, more polygons, shader 3.0, they have like 2 million source polygons in every seen versus like 200,000 in games now. Just watch the movie its unfreaking believable.
And oh yeah, xbox 2, most likely PS3, and possibly nintendo revolution, will all be able to run unreal engine 3.0 because they' ll have shader 3.0 supported graphics cards. Only thing that can run it now is the newest nVidia cards, but the next ATI cards will be able to too.
Prepare to be pwnd!

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

its a very good game.its also very fun

<img src=" http://tinypic.com/1ij49v" >

I agree....this was DEF better than Halo 2. I loved it! In fact, I' ve been so bold as to say its the best game I' ve ever played....and I stick by that.