I understand Valve works or used to work very differently, people collaborating without a strong top-down steering from management. Yet whatever explanation they have, we were punched in the gut at the end of Ep2, then left waiting, holding our breath. It’s just a piece of media, but it was an important part of my teenage years, and I could never experience the end of the story (outside of reading it in a blog) I waited so much for.

This made me really resent Valve, and soured my experience/memories with the series, I haven’t touched HL or other Valve game for 10+ years, and I don’t think I will in the future.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Half-Life 2 doesn't even have a good combat loop. Half-Life 1 has more variety in the weapons and the map team in HL1 actually talked to the AI team. Notice how the combine just stand in doorways or out in the open? It's lost, but I once saw a video showing that the combine can flank the player and do other complex maneuvers if the maps are properly designed, but Gabe was too obsessed with the Gravity Gun and everything else suffered. The "puzzles" are all either busy work or another seesaw task. I remember being hyped when Gabe said that Ep2 would have the biggest physics puzzle in it, but it ended up just being a huge seesaw "puzzle" that was solved just by clearing the cars off of it.

Every time I do a Half Life replay, I always end up getting bored in HL2 and skip to the community made stuff. Half-life Echoes and Entropy: Zero are musts.

[–] Excrubulent 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The combat may not have been the most interesting versus basic grunts, but it never got stale. I've never played another game where the core gameplay changed so much so frequently.

Physics interactions -> Basic FPS -> Fan Boat -> Mounted Gun -> Gravity Gun -> Zombies & Traps -> Car -> THE CRANE FIGHT -> Rockets & Gunships -> Ant Lions -> Ant Lion Minions -> Turrets -> Resistance Squads -> Striders -> Super Gravity Gun

Honestly the HL1 combat may have been somewhat more challengjng, but it was a grind. Fights were often just frustrating. I've abandonded playthroughs because I didn't feel like spending another 10 hours beating my head against the endless amounts of enemies just to get to the end of... whatever I was doing I forgot.

HL1's big innovation was never removing control from the player just to tell the story. Beyond that they also had some interesting AI behaviour and weapons. It was a game with old-school length and old-school difficulty.

HL2's big innovation was the physics engine, and they played with it in so many ways, while polishing every other aspect of the design. They kept the gameplay tight and did something just long enough to explore it and then they moved on. They never forced you to hang out just repeating the same loop over and over to pad the length.

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