DAMN YOU Half Life 2!

ImagoX

ImagoX

PC Editor
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Jun 23, 2005
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OK, so I fire up some old saved games from Half Life 2 last night to test outt this new Razer Copperhead Gamer's Mouse I'm reviewing...

*7 hours later* (yes, it was like 4:30 AM) I have to effing PRY myself away from the PC to try to get a scant few hours' sleep. Even though I'd already played the game twice, the damn thing just sucked me in, like a dark, irresistable undertow. I challenge ANYONE to compare Halo to a true shooter like Half Life 2. I had planned to play some F.E.A.R. last night with the mouse as well, but after last night I'm honestly afraid of killing myself. :cookiemon
 
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Eh, I haven't even played it yet. I don't really like FPS's on the PC. I'll probably get the Xbox version when I get my 360 though.

Haha! Looks like my beginner's punctuation class paid off!! lol
 
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Half-Life 2 is probably the best crafted single-player shooter I've ever played. Mostly because of Dog. And the physics cannon.
 
It's just so polished on every level- great story, excellent pacing, incredible, believable worlds... even the smallest things, like the patter of brass shell casings on different surfaces to the gentle swaying of power lines in the breeze, escalating to a whip-like lash when a flying troop transport flies overhead, work to immerse you.

And yeah, Dog r00lz!
 
no no matt, silly little boy. I am simply saying that Halo storyline, to me, is a very good one. With your first post you said..."I challenge ANYONE to compare Halo to a true shooter like Half Life 2." and then your later post you said something about the awesome storyline of Half Life 2.

I am simply coming in to back up my buddy MC. :-D haha
 
When did Half Life get a story anyway? All I saw was a little opening sequence, some shooting, then an ending.
 
(( shakes head ))...

My theory is that Halo is shot through witn 1/100th of a second subliminal ads.... you know, screens that pop up with naked chicks with the Halo logo on their boobs and such, faster than the eye can see, and that's why people seem to lose their minds when it comes to that game. Don't get me wrong... Halo and Halo 2 both are technically competant shooters, but compared to a whole RAFT of other PC titles, it's just a B-list game. Honestly- if Halo had been released on the PC (where it would have just been another sci-fi shooter amongst dozens of others) and not the Xbox (where it was a launch title, sitting beside games like Blood Wake), it would have been in the bargain bin inside of 45 days.

But peeps like what they likes, so more power to you.
 
Yes, yes, B-List. It's so great we can play the 60 Unreal clones that come out each year which (outside of the actual Unreals) have mediocre multiplayer and questionable single player, necessitating you to play with a band of random strangers (30% of which are modders). Fact of the matter is that the differences in multiplayer between PC games and console games is what set Halo apart from all FPSs. Halo 2 has options for generally excellent online and offline multiplayer, and you can invite your friends to play in your own games, with your own rules, or to take on the world. Mainly though, Halo has offline multiplayer that's good. Half Life, and pretty much any other PC FPS does not.
 
All your points are valid about what Halo offers... which does not change the fact that all those same things were done in PC games years before Halo- and they were done better (IMHO, of course). Please direct me to the web site that allows you to download any of 3,000 user-made maps and total conversions for Halo 2 and I'll concede the point.

I'm not sure what games you're specifically referencing when you say "Unreal clone" (remember that Halo ITSELF would likely fall into this category, seeing as how it did in fact come out long after Unreal and Unreal Tournament were both huge successes), but I can say that, having played Halo (on PC and on Xbox) and Halo 2, I can't think of anything either of those games do that I've not seen elsewhere. All that stuff you talk about like "you can invite your friends to play in your own games, with your own rules, or to take on the world" are staples of the multiplayer genre, not somehting that's unique to Halo. Can you make "your own game" of Halo that set in the Old West? Or that looks like a top-down scroller/shooter? Or that uses the Halo engine to tell a survival horry story? Or that turns Halo into a modern-day SWAT simulator? Or that lets you use cats, rabbits and hamsters as weapons? I've seen all that (and more) in "Unreal clones" and in Unreal mods... Perhaps you're talking about setting victory conditions, game type (CTF, Deathmatch, etc.), match times, frag limits and the like- if so, that's a SETTING and not a real ADVANCE in the genre, but perhaps you mean something else... :cookiemon
 
Halo is Halo. Half Life is Half Life. Half Life is not an old west gunfight, a SWAT simulation, a WWII shooter, or anything else. It's a semi-futuristic sci-fi shoot em up. And really, no matter what ya download, it is still just a new coat of paint over the same decent-but-overrated game. I mean, would Halo suddenly become any better if it suddenly put the Master Chief in a saloon with a cowboy hat and made it pistols only? No, because it's still just Halo...but with a painfully anachronistic level that probably has numerous spawn, weapon placement or camping issues because it was made by some random shmoe. Same goes for the 2d shoot 'em up mods, or even that Max Payne Street Fighter 2 mod, because really, no matter which way you look at the mods, in all likelihood, they're not gonna be that good. It's a one-in-a-million shot that the mods you get aren't going to suck. And a one-in-four shot they're going to be a virus.
 
Ah, I see that you've not actually PLAYED any Total Conversions (TCs) for Unreal or any other game. My bad.

But what you say is true... no matter what you do to Halo (and there's not much you CAN do to it from what I've seen), it's still... just Halo. I assure you that customizations of FPS games are much, much more than "a new coat of paint"- if you don't believe me, look up a little game called "Counter Strike", which was originally a user made "paint job" for Half Life.

This is why it's hard to have this discussion with a console guy... Unless you've really had your eyes opened to the vast possibilities offered in a good convertable and customizable game like Unreal Tournament or Morrowind, and are stuck with the limited experienced offereed up by a console title, it's hard to know what you're missing. Playing only on consoles is like having your entire experience with video games being having an Asteroids cabinet in your basement... If that's all you ever played then you literally can't imagine how far the tech has come, and the things it could do. Everything you see after that point is informed by the limitations and expectations you have from playing endless games of Asteroids. I mean, how would you explain what makes a good game of Capture the Flag or Domination work to someone who's entire experience is shooting vector-graphic rocks and bleeting UFOs? Such a person literally would not have the vocabulary to understand the concepts you're attempting to illustrate.
 
Well, IMO Morrowind and GTA are different from a game like Half Life and Unreal, because the prospect of adding in new quests or new vehicles or weapons is cool. But I know of the prospects of PC modding. I've screwed around with my Half Life, my roommate did some light Counter Strike and Quake tweeking and way back when, a bunch of my friends made a big UT2001 mod called Final Dawn which was a tactical RPG type card game thing, so I'm not ignorant of the potential of modding. And don't hate on Asteroids. That's my favorite old-school game remade on my calculator.
 
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