21st Century Digital Boy

So, I just finished Half-Life 2 yesterday. For those who haven’t finished it yet, do not fear - I will not spill any details about the plot or stuff.

Let me say this much - HL2 ends just like it starts - very, very abruptly. The ending makes most of the game seem rather pointless, in a “Uh, dudes, I can’t think of an ending” kind of way. In general, HL2 is very much like its predecessor - in particular in that it spectacularly excels at skillfully avoiding doing too many new things.

Oh yes, it is pretty, but looking at other games - in particular this year’s incarnations of the Metal Gear Solid series, Twin Snakes and Snake Eater - it’s not as spectacular as it’s made out to be. Yes, the facial animation is nice, but seeing as how Valve circumvented any kind of player-induced changes by cleverly hard scripting all scenes that gave the player time to properly look at people’s faces, it doesn’t seem all that awesome.

Also, while I was only playing it on medium Texture and Model detail due to lack of RAM in my machine, the texture and model quality massively fluctuated from “good” to “what the fuck, this looks like Quake 2 or Quake 3″.

The gameplay is, as in HL1, about as pedestrian as it comes. The physics engine is a marvelous toy, but you’re not really able to do anything you weren’t supposed to be able to do. Other than that, HL2 is an über-linear run&gun shooter, just like HL1. It does do a better job at hiding the fact that you can’t go anywhere you’re not supposed to than HL1, but not everywhere and not much.

The vehicles are fun - a lot more fun than Far Cry’s; you can actually go faster than 20km/h without completely losing control and randomly crashing into things - but still no real competition for Halo’s vehicles, which were both sufficiently plausible in physics and really, really fun to drive.

The level geometry is another thing that caught my attention - I used to do some mapping myself, so I tend to pay a bit more attention to that kind of thing. Most of the levels look like they’d been modelled in Lego. Square houses, rectangular houses, a really large amount of the major level geometry is done in 90° angles. Or, to put it another way, much of the game’s level design is rather bland if you take a closer look.

It was a fun ride while it lasted, with the exception of a few places, but I’m sorry to say that I can’t agree with any of the major gaming press who call it “revolutionary”. If there’s anything Half-Life 2 is not, it’s revolutionary. Evolutionary, maybe. Sorry, Gordon.

Next up in the queue: Paper Mario - The 1000 Year Door and Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake Eater. I played a bit of both so far, and I like what I’ve seen.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2004 at 14:45 and is filed under gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.