“sociocidal” lol. Again some cool implications here: they abolished homicide and genocide as concepts in favor of this new crime
Also “divisive”. Echoes there of don’t-rock-the-boat, comity-above-justice civility ethics.
All the good sci-fi argot has an elaborate linguistic development rationale behind it – in fact, working through this type of reasoning process is the only way to even come up with phrases this weird and consistent in tone. (E.g. the Russian historical mixing and ethical system behind Clockwork Orange’s prose)
I can only believe that the HL2 -> Portal writing is so good exclusively because of the Old Man Murray guys. I will not be disabused of this notion with evidence.
The Team Fortress 2 models are some of the best ever made and the “meet the x” videos are perfect experiments in short film.
I guess it’s true that they seemed to know what they were doing in that trans-2010 span, both with partnering with other promising developers and then adding that trademark Valve thoroughgoing aesthetic lift (cf. Left 4 Dead). They just seemed obviously to stop caring all of a sudden in a way that I cannot explain, probably at least partially due to their amorphous non-hierarchical-but-actually-of-course-it-is structure. I mean it is perfectly clear that Newell only has ever cared about money. But who in there made all these games so damn good and what happened to them? We’ll probably never know.
It probably wasn’t sudden. Working on Half-Life 3 team must’ve been a nightmarish soulsucking grind – every year of delay raised the bar for how fantastic Half-Life 3 must be if it isn’t to underwhelm. It would’ve felt more and more and more important every year to actually release the thing, and also more and more impossible.
Next to this hopeless passion project, a growing team of store and free-to-play game developers printing money hand over fist, making the potential profits of the labor of love appear increasingly insignificant. Also a new hotness of VR development that all the enthusiasm moves to. Eventually, you either sacrifice your love of single-player games and join them, or you quit.
I seriously considered at one point applying to work at Valve, and I’m so, so glad I didn’t.
Funny how I barely have posted in this thread and still people get on my case. I’ve posted like five sentences here about HL2, but people still so fragile about this sucky game.
it’s so crazy how you can’t quite make out what they are saying in game but reading these you can immediately hear the voice sample in your head for each one.
my intuition about this matter is the growth of steam sucked the life out of valve. they don’t need to focus on making games anymore so why should they?
half life 2 is a decent game (mostly because of great visual design) but halo totally leapfrogs it as far as GameFeel™️ goes imo. the vehicle segments are awful and the shooting is nothing spectacular :\
i really liked half-life when i played it around it’s time but i agree with other folks here that it really doesn’t hold up. it did some neat things with scripting that influenced a lot of folks who all did a much better job
yeah, see, for me half life 2 is much more about an “escapist experience” than a fun shoot man game. it really excels in terms of atmosphere and immersion and storytelling (despite the body weirdness and I totally get that that is an obstacle for people and that’s fine too!) everything else is just barely as good as it has to be. movement feels so stiff and janky compared to any fps made in the past decade. a lot of the level geometry is weird and blocky and there are texture and geometric seams visible everywhere. I think it kind of worked (and still kind of works) because the game’s atmosphere is dystopian and brutalist and so having lots of ugly plain geometry and awkward object models and weirdly over harsh lighting just kind of fits with that?
I feel like these are the expectations that divide people’s reaction to it. the halo games are much more technical, videogamey experiences. they also have neat stories and world-building, too! those just are not as much in focus and are a lot more based on standard existing tropes. there is nothing wrong with that! I just feel like it’s not the most apt comparison because half life 2 is focused on a different kind of experience. like the two games could not be further apart in my mind.
I don’t feel like anyone needs to accept half life 2 as some kind of masterpiece but I still love it a lot and I think it still holds a lot of merit.
yeah both episodes 1 and 2 are great if played using only the gravity gun, grenades, and rockets. part of what I’m trying to say about it not really being a fps series.
the portal games are great because they are a distillation of what I feel like half life had been fumbling towards
Source may be an old decaying beast but after doing level design I’ve come to respect Valve’s adherence to BSP. The environments they pulled off in Portal 2 and CSGO look fantastic and you’ve got to respect the technical wizardry getting these to work. Same with when you learn that Call of Duty had huge amounts of id Tech 3 code in its engine.
half life 1 i respect a lot for its austerity. i feel like that gets lost in translation in the sequel. everyone is your bud in hl2. in hl1 you’re just some guy, the player barely even understands what the main character’s background or title is. you’re just an experiment guy when suddenly, shit’s fucked.
half life 2 highlights:
enemy dialogue (detailed previously)
gunfeel for crossbow, magnum, gravity gun, RPG, and razor blades
ant command
the one bit where you’re walking on the underside of the bridge
i just beat halo reach, halo 1 and halo 2 for the first time a couple months ago. i had to take MONTHS LONG BREAKS during halo 2 because there are a million invincible vehicles flying at you at all times! THE GONDOLAS MADE ME WANT TO CRY. the coolness of dual-wielding can never outweigh 394893 vehicles and instakilling floods and OH GOD THOSE DUDES THAT CHARGE AND JUMP YOU AND CAN LITERALLY CHANGE THEIR PATH IN MID-AIR TO DESTROY YOU IN ONE HIT I HATED IT im never going to play halo 2 again!!!
oh wait halo 1
up until i beat it recently i thought the game STARTED with the flood because thats the way my gamestop manager would start the game when we smoked at his house
this is the same dude that would show everyone his overdubbing of the matrix with that uh… system of a down album… uh… OH, TOXICITY? WHATEVER. he thought it was ‘better than dark side of the moon and wizard of oz’
it doesnt start with the flood, the flood is the worst part of the game!! what was my manager thinking
but i will
never not play halo co-op. never. fuck that.
never listen to anyone who overdubs the matrix with system of a down’s opinion on videogames ever again
continue playing the halo series, im excited for 3 i hear its the marathon one
i liked halo 1. i would like it less if i didnt play halo 2
someone on twitter tried to tell me halo 2 is like durandal and the only fucking similarity is that they’re both the second in a series
like did he think my FAVORITE DEFININING THING ABOUT MARATHON 2 WAS THE DUAL WIELDING BECAUSE YOU CANT EVEN DUAL WIELD SHOTGUNS IN HALO 2 AND THAT WAS THE BEST THING ABOUT DUAL WIELDING
ah, i see this is a half life 2 thread
i dont like how everything looks like paper
You probably know this but originally Episode 1 wasn’t going to give you any guns, and you HAD to beat it this way. Conceding to tester’s demands here was some weak ass shit
Someone told me a probably false rumor that Episode/HL3 was going to take place aboard the abandoned Borealis and the only tools would be gravity gun, portal gun and crowbar and I still sometimes cry at night thinking about what could have been
As for HL2, my biggest protip is never use the SMG unless you absolutely have to. It sucks and all the other guns are 1000% better. The HL2 SMG is the Doom pistol