Half-Life 2 Review Created 18 years ago2006-04-25 23:16:03 UTC by satchmo

Some of you might have already seen this review of Half-Life 2, but I thought it was a good read.

The reviewer is obviously mature, and insightful. There is no unreasonable "fan-boy" bias for Valve nor the vehemently diatribe against Steam. It's fair and balanced.

I enjoyed reading it.

hum not bad. i never even heard of the crushing wall. woulda been nice to hear about that part in HL2 >:(
other then that, half life 2 plot has to be the way it is, otherwise people wont buy the 3rd (talking about thiose who care about plots and stuff).

The crushing wall? That's the mechanical, ginormous wall that moves up and down and crushes the houses. The player has to escape such wall before arriving at the Citadel.

Halflife is just so wonderful, It is super-ultra great and heres a big shiny star to show just how great it is, go valve, steam is brilliant.

(To save a wasteful topic....)

This video shows off the beta of HL2 and the enemies I wished to fight

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6066209700507369317&q=half+life+2+beta&pl=true

http://www.youtube.com/results?search=half+life+2+beta&search_type=search_videos&search=Search

Shame they cut bits out...

I actually think its the best game ever, and changed how we play games. Every game after HL2 tried to emulate the superb physics. Even Doom 3 added a gravity gun to their game! It actually did change the way we play games.

Off topic: Did you know they are making physics cards for pci slots in computers now? A card dedicated to animation and physics. Is it a good idea? Idk......maybe

HL2 is hardly the most revolutionary game to come along, and yes, PPUs have been in development for a while now, it's a great idea.

With the ever so powerful CPUs Intel and AMD are churning out, I am not sure whether a physics card would be necessary.

I think it'll become one of those ideas that seemed great at the time but eventually be rendered irrelevant because of technological advances.

Like the floppy disks and parking utilities for old HDD.

With the ever so powerful CPUs Intel and AMD are churning out, I am not sure whether a physics card would be necessary.

There's a limit to the amount of physics to process when you also have to run AI routines and a lot of other stuff on it at the same time. In the past, before 3D cards existed, the rendering would be run on the CPU as well.
Now I agree with you when you doubt it's usefullness, as not every game needs physics as much as rendering, but it might be a nice addition anyway. Perhaps it'll stimulate some innovation in games?

As for the review, fair review, but I don't agree with the author on all parts. Especially the story - there's a lot of info for the observant ones, which I think is a sort of reward for those that seek it. The Combine walls weren't a weapon against Gordon - to me it was obvious it was their way to slowly process earths capitals. And the unknown things leave room for speculation. I do agree that the end was rather abrubt and less satisfying though.
Oh well, it's his review, not mine, and it's interesting to see how others think about games, so yeah...

Heh, it has me hooked from the "one flaw" thing, which I know won't be revealed 'til the end...

interesting.

Halflife 2: Episode 1

What the hell is an episode, and why is the sequel to halflife episode 1?

Interesting article. Like 7th, I was hooked by the "flaw" thing and was rather disappointed when he revealed it as if it were the Holy Grail or something. Very anti-climactic.

However, overall it seems a fair article. And I agree that HL2 is a very good game but not something to go into spasms over.

Actually, the aspect of HL and HL2 that I like best is, like the original DOOM, we can make our own levels and mods using the main engine. The referenced article didn't touch on that.

I believe the author of the article is actually a woman.

Isn't that something?

ignoring Trespasser, Max Payne 2 was the first PC game we saw that had real physics

Unreal Tournament 2003 precedes Max Payne 2 by more than a year and it had it had a very decent physics engine. Of course, you only saw it when players died and fell (specially nice in Bombing Run mode).

I think the author of the article defines the 'flaw' as the end, wich he found very disappointing.

Yeah I noticed that from her comments like
"Halflife 2 is far too violent, perhaps the G-Man could be a gay love interest of Gordon or the Vortigaunt could meet him in a spicy bit of cross-species bum love"

Have you noticed that the Vortigaunts run around completely naked all the time?

That's enough to stir the gayness in every dormant homosexual.

Oh my, he's naked? Who did let those perv's on earth? Gordon eh?

and the headcrabs fuck with your head, literally