Finishing my single-player backlog

Yeah, don't fret about HL2, I also played just the beginning of it and left it. Not saying it's a bad game, I simply wasn't in the mood at the time. Maybe I will try again once I get a Steam version of it.
 
Half Life 2 is basically just a tech demo for their source engine at the time. Now Valve is better at doing tech demo's than other studios out there but that doesn't make it any less of a tech demo. Its levels are segmented into little minichallenges that are designed to show off their physics engine to the point that the world design and encounter design is completely nonsensical. The narrative that starts off relatively strong just kinda falls away into basically dead air until the game remembers to have a story again.

Then there are other nuisances that I personally find irritating about it but those are my problems. I'll just say that the "flow" of the game feels bad. It never becomes a shooter. Never really becomes a narratively heavy game. It never really fully embraces its puzzle design. It just... Lingers. Drags. And at a certain point I felt like "would you just get to the point already".

Half Life 2 is a product of its time and it shows. If you're not into the game in the first 40 minutes then you're probably not going to change your mind at 2+ hours.
 
Back
Top