EricBall's Tech Projects - 'nother review of an old(er) game

RSS Bot · November 24, 2009

This weekend while my wife was in Miami and my son was at school or asleep I played far too much Half Life 2. I got the game as part of the Orange Box for the PS3, which I bought to play Portal. But HL2 is an FPS and thus is verbotten in my wife's opinion. But what she doesn't know. . .

Based on the walkthrough, I've played through over half of the game (maybe even two thirds). And although I had fun, it wasn't quite as satisfying as the original.

I will say that I thought many of the environments were extremely well done. City 17 felt real. You could feel the oppression, depression and collapse. The sheer hopelessness is amazing. Ravenholm was convincing as a zombie town. And the train bridge captured the feeling of climbing hundreds of feet over the river.

But there were many other things which I didn't like. The biggest is how linear the game is. You can't get lost, although you may have to search a little to find the next exit. But when I was trying to escape City 17 I quickly realized I simply had to follow the most obvious path and I would be on the right track, which kinda defeated some of the fear & tension.

Also high on my list of dislikes is how long the loads take. Maybe it's just the PS3 port, but I found it very annoying when the action stops as it loaded the next section. Since the game is linear, couldn't the next level be loaded in the background half-way through the level? It's also kinda sad when I can predict when a set scene is going to occur.

I also found the story worse than HL1 - in spite of it being more complex. Why the G-Man brings you back and where the new Combine aliens came from is never really explained. And maybe Dr. Breen isn't the "bad guy", he's just trying to make the best of a near hopeless situation.

Finally, the NPC and enemy AI doesn't seem to act as intelligent as HL1 - i.e. charging mindlessly into overwhelming fire. (Although it's kinda nice when I had the big gun on the car. I'd park the car, spring the trap, then run back to the car.) And although it's initially distressing when "friendly" NPCs get killed, I quickly realized there was no impact. (And if they are dumb enough to attack a gunship with an SMG standing out in the open, then the predictable will happen.)

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