Lol! If you do decide on HL2 clueless then report back and tell us who's right.

(it's me)

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-19, 08:55:

Half Life 2 was the biggest hyperbole hype train I ever played. Incredibly bad, boring, [LOADING...] scripted and linear gameplay, some of the most attrocious [LOADING...] driving and platforming sections in any game I [LOADING...] played and a shitty anticlimactic cliffhanger ending to a mediocre story that never ended up going anywhere.

The best things about Half Life 2 for me were Full Life Consequences and Freeman's Mind.

To each their own I guess.

I treat my games like I treat my movies and TV shows: they either entertain me or they don't, but I'm not so picky as to miss out on a lot of entertainment based on a little bit of criticism. Most criticisms of games can be appreciated or at least tolerated. The main issues that are bad enough to keep me from completing a game are poor control schemes, lack of creature comforts that force me to do hard work (ie, no automap, only one save slot, etc), difficulty in navigating the world, or it's plain just not fun/entertaining. Once (Martian Dreams) the boredom-to-fun ratio was just a little too far on the boredom side. In the end, my goal is to be entertained. And I'm not too picky about how. 😀 I'm 30 minutes into HL2 and just got to the train yard. So far, I'm being entertained and there have been zero issues with "bad", "boring" or "atrocious". Granted, I've got a long way to go and it' still possible that I may end up bailing out of HL2. I'll keep you guys posted.

There's overwhelming evidence that the majority of people who play HL2 enjoy it. There can be no doubt about that.

Every game, no matter how good or bad, has it's detractors who just don't gel with that particular game. Nothing wrong with that.

Myself, I've never been tempted to spend more than 2 minutes in Counter Strike, WoW, Starcraft, Battlefield anything, any Quake except II, or indeed any online/multiplayer game at all. <shrug> And yet I'm still overwhelmed with a Waiting List of far far more games than I can possibly play properly within my lifetime.

Shreddoc wrote on 2020-12-19, 20:44:

There's overwhelming evidence that the majority of people who play HL2 enjoy it. There can be no doubt about that.

Every game, no matter how good or bad, has it's detractors who just don't gel with that particular game. Nothing wrong with that.

Myself, I've never been tempted to spend more than 2 minutes in Counter Strike, WoW, Starcraft, Battlefield anything, any Quake except II, or indeed any online/multiplayer game at all. <shrug> And yet I'm still overwhelmed with a Waiting List of far far more games than I can possibly play properly within my lifetime.

Add Diablo anything and I'm pretty much in agreement with you. Although, I did play the first episode of Quake I and enjoyed that. But I was done by then with no interest in episodes 2 or 3.

I have never played original HL or HL2, only the versions with CS mods in lan houses back in late 90/early 00s. Great years

badmojo wrote on 2020-12-19, 11:17:

Lol! If you do decide on HL2 clueless then report back and tell us who's right.

(it's me)

You're right. 😉

I just got to Water Hazard and have sunk a little over 4 hours getting to this point. Given my lack of natural skill, I'm playing it on Easy, and it's still fairly challenging for me. The tension in the storyline and my frustration when I get stuck makes for short play periods (15 minutes to 1 hour tops) but I'm having a blast playing this way. Yeah, it's on rails, but that doesn't bother me at all. That's just one style of FPS and I can appreciate it while also enjoying more open world games. I do like how the Lambdas signify secret cache areas and I love how I can quicksave as often as I want. It lets me keep my progress when I hit a tough spot. Also, I haven't noticed any respawning, which I prefer. It lets me catch my breath after I clear an area and decide if I want to reload for a better result (such as trying not to lose any health). Great game so far!

I remember getting into college arguements about the merits of HL2 when it came out. I thought the gameplay was strictly worse than the original. That the physics puzzles were gimmicky, the array of enemies and weaponry less varied, and the supply of ammo for the weapons you did have was far more constrained. I thought the progression of levels in and around City 17 was far less cohearant and cohesive than Black Mesa. The whole thing felt like a bunch of teams working on parts of the game in isolation that rarely communicated. Turned out that was exactly how it was made.

Of course, all that being said, I still beat HL2 in its entirety probably a half dozen times.

Still playing FF7, just left Midgar.

Looks like my rig might be a bit too fast for certain parts of the game. The motorcycle chase ran at something like 120 FPS! Barely managed to finish it properly. I'm guessing other mini-games may suffer from the same issue. Combat and exploration seem to run at normal speed though.

Open world is overrated, It leads to all game designs being similar and samey. I'd love to see more gameplay-centric deisgns (which are usually linear) which scale the gameplay at a planned rate. I alos can't stand the Mario collectible garbage that's all over open world games. I think open world in the way it has evolved to today is a step backwards for gameplay.

abso-fucking-lutely !

I love an open world but agree that they can turn into a generic set of game mechanics spread thinly over a massive area - that's the "our world is bigger than your world" problem. I much prefer a smaller hand crafted world like Gothic II but those are out of style it seems. I saw a review of Cyberpunk 2077 in which the reviewer mentioned that most of the shops and buildings in night city are closed - what's the point of huge if you can't interact with most of it?

I'm playing Pete Sampras Tennis 97 on my Cyrix 6x86 machine - this is the PC port of Sampras Extreme Tennis from the PS1 (a favourite of mine). The PC version is good too but I'm pretty rubbish at it and I haven't figured out if it's me or the game - the gameplay is identical at first glance but the timing and AI seems subtly different so maybe I just need to rewire my synapses. I'm using a Logictech Thunderpad to play which is a very nice pad I think and there's no lag, so I don't feel like I'm being cheated by the controls. It looks great in SVGA - better than the PS1 - but yeah, I'm only about half way through the tournament mode and am struggling. I play at the fastest speed so it's wicked fast - I'll get there I'm sure. There are some annoyances though like the ball is often called in when it's clearly out, and the AI usually goes for an epic huge serve on the second serve which doesn't reflect real life. Overall a really fun game.

Started playing Need For Speed Underground for the first time since 2003. Remains one of my favorite games...the music plus immersion of night driving makes it fantastic IMO. Add on a decent force feedback wheel (which I didn't have at the time) and max out the settings with a slightly modern GPU and the experience is as good as any driving game out there.

I really enjoyed NFS: Underground back when it came out. I had it on my Xbox and later got it for the PC.

I played quite a bit of NFS : Porsche and NFS : Underground when they came out. The basic arcade-y driving feel made them a fun blast.

I didn't really like the "soft gangster" / "Fast'n'Furious" aesthetics and music of Underground personally (no great surprise, as a prog metaller!), but I could put that aside in favour of the fun gameplay.

I think open world in RPGs make much more sense than Shooters, but I guess since all games have to have RPG elements forced into them now, that's how we end up with open worlds in all games.

Shreddoc wrote on 2020-12-21, 01:07:

I played quite a bit of NFS : Porsche and NFS : Underground when they came out. The basic arcade-y driving feel made them a fun blast.

I didn't really like the "soft gangster" / "Fast'n'Furious" aesthetics and music of Underground personally (no great surprise, as a prog metaller!), but I could put that aside in favour of the fun gameplay.

what about NFS World?

Shreddoc wrote on 2020-12-21, 01:07:

I played quite a bit of NFS : Porsche and NFS : Underground when they came out. The basic arcade-y driving feel made them a fun blast.

I didn't really like the "soft gangster" / "Fast'n'Furious" aesthetics and music of Underground personally (no great surprise, as a prog metaller!), but I could put that aside in favour of the fun gameplay.

I was a NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 fan myself. Plus, there was a Rush song on the soundtrack!

appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-19, 08:55:

Half Life 2 was the biggest hyperbole hype train I ever played. Incredibly bad, boring, [LOADING...] scripted and linear gameplay, some of the most attrocious [LOADING...] driving and platforming sections in any game I [LOADING...] played and a shitty anticlimactic cliffhanger ending to a mediocre story that never ended up going anywhere.

The best things about Half Life 2 for me were Full Life Consequences and Freeman's Mind.

To each their own I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vBesOFURek

I had so much fun with the gravity gun. I remember getting a rusty saw blade from Ravenholdt, and I used that CONSTANTLY since then. I think I even got the garden gnome from the start of the game to the very end.

Also, freeman's mind is AWESOME. I kinda wish it was a bit more predictable on the release schedule, but Ross also does old game videos. An amazing individual all around.

Yeah the gravity gun was my weapon of choice with the zombie level may more fun than a regular gun.

A lot of Cybermage talk here lately, and this came up on my YouTube subscription feed today.

Watch it. Seriously.