The Gamer's Quarter

[Ketch]

[extreme sarcasm mode on]
Half-Life 2, is the most overpolished piece of rubbish that I have ever seen, I cannot believe that they would build such a cheesy appalling game, that smears rubbish on the face of everything that Half-Life stood for.
It is now a series where they now feel the need to make cheesy jokes out of everything from crowbars, to headcrabs, to Freeman's inability to speak.
Half-Life 2 is in itself a series of set pieces with no overarching theme, punctuated by tedious physics puzzles (ooh look a see-saw!) and with extra-long rs oad-trip sections wherre the exploration is merely rewarded with ammo.
Furthermore, the weapon system is bloated and unnecessary. The mass of weapons detracts from the "real-world" feeling that the original HL set up by only having ammo where you would expect to find it. Now it is just lying around everywhere, they should have done something daring like copy Halo (lol) and have recharging weapons and a limited arsenal. ie. only carrying 2 guns at once.
It lays down some intriguing situations, and enemies but withholds any real information about what is going on. There is no information as to where the Antlions come from in (Half-Life 2 or Episode 1 ---haven't played enough Ep2 to judge yet.
i also lovethe George Lucas aspirations. Ie. this is Half Life 2: Episode 1, what next a series of prequels set a hundred years before the events of Black-Mesa?

Run out of vaguely amusing points so I will stop now.

[Harveyjames]

This is too meta for me. I can't tell what your actual opinion is!

[Max Cola]

Same here!

I just played Half-Life 2 for the first time recently and man, it was like a revelation. I love the constant "oh shit!" moments it throws at you. Like, you'll run to one place, and catch a breath for a second, and step forward. And then - "oh shit! - and you're running again. Or even better, the "aww fuck" moments, when you realize the only way out is the most dangerous route.

What made this all even better is when I played Half-Life after I beat Half-Life 2 and realized that it did the SAME THING! I hope the Episodes do that sort of thing too! I want games to surprise me more!
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[dessgeega]

post-journalism games journalism
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[extrabastardformula]

Man, I feel bad for not being able to get into Half Life 2 now. Sadly, I get the same vibe from fans that I got from Zelda fans telling me to just keep playing TP a little bit more to get to where it's good. Every time I've tried picking it up again I just wish it was a platformer instead of a first person shooter.
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[dessgeega]

i want it to be an adventure game. because the high concept of half-life 2 is not shooting people.
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[Dracko]

You can always play it like one. It's what I endeavour to do.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Harveyjames]

I want it to be like Portal but with a gravity gun.

Half Life 1's story is so much more compelling than Half Life 2! WHAT! I can't be the only person who doesn't care about this Alyx bird. And Kleiner, Vance, and Barney, they merge together! I understand this game was seen as something of a leap forward for characterization in FPS games, but they're all so boring! Someone do something!

Story-wise the best thing it does is describe this race, The Combine. They're so well concieved. Just looking at a Combine train makes you wonder where it's going, where it was built, who's on it. But, maybe it's too good! I get the impression all the truly fascinating stuff is happening in other places. Maybe I'm just playing through it too slowly, since I can only snatch a couple of hours every few days. But still, (o_ _ )p

[Cycle]

I always wanted a game that is just that first section of the game where you don't even have any guns.
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[Scratchmonkey]

[Ketch]

I really enjoyed it when I first played it, but it was over too quick ?. Also I felt it wasn't intense enough at times, the horror element was diminished realative to HL1. Basically it was a game I didn't want to replay. I also felt it should have been a bit less linear, I wanted more interaction with the environment ./ reactions from characters.

Even now, playing HL1 again I still feel that they missed (or at least didn't repeat some of the awesome stuff HL1 did). I love the feeling of B lack Mesa as a 'real' place, where you've walked in and stuff is going on. From scientists walking past you, to signs advertising the benefits of working there, to drinks machines, to "I hate these ties". It made an awesome sense of place. Which while HL2 looks the part it doesn;t to me feel it. Hl1 had you come into battles between aliens . soldiers. scientists etc. whereas in HL2 + episodes, I never got the feeling that the battles had already started. More that they were all waiting for Gordon to turn up to really get it cracking.

Overall, what I think this adds up to is REALLY being interested by the sound of Left 4 Dead. Sure I don't think it will play like an adventure (and if you go investigating you will die anyway), but I reckon that the speedy zombies will give it an amazing coherence, a bit like Portal. and Manhunt Ie. you are in this situation, understand, play by, maybe even take advantage of the rule set, or you are f*c*d.

[Max Cola]

The best parts about HL2 (other than the surprises!) were the ones where you were alone and desperate.

There's a weird sort of wavy flow to HL2; at times you feel empowered and able to take on the world, but then that feeling of power is ripped away and you're left feeling desperate and weak. Then you get an even greater power. Then you lose it and end up in even more dire circumstances. This pattern repeats as the game goes on, with each feeling becoming more pronounced until the finale, which makes you feel almost Godlike and then plummets you into despair at the very end.

It's kind of cool.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Harveyjames]

Apparently they pencilled in a huge train journey into City 17, but it didn't make the cut. It's a shame because I think the train journey is a huge part of what gives Black Mesa its epic sense of scale.

It was going to be amazing, all the passengers in your carriage would change every time you came out of a tunnel, to give the impression that Gordon is divorced from time, space and reality.

[D-A-I-S]

Has somebody modded the source engine to allow for enemy possession yet?

Because, you know, Geist (and Messiah and I guess Omikron and others) wasn't entirely a bad idea.

Imagine Half-life 2 if Gordon had become a cyberspritual memepresencevirus. Instead of playing alongside Alyx and Grigori, play as the voice whispering in their ear, telling them what to do. Be the movement among the masses as they rebel. Be the Holy Ghost instead of the Son and Savior. Tell the Combine soldier to put the can in the trash himself.

I originally tinkered with this idea as a Beyond Good and Evil sequel/spin-off where a sentient program is sent to a technologically advanced world in order to redeem it's cybernetically-enhanced but morally- and emotionally-dead inhabitants. Which is kind of like Messiah only with less hookers.

I'm a bit tired right now, that's why there is this post.

[boojiboy7]

[Harveyjames]

My least favorite parts of this are when I feel like I'm playing Half Life 1. At least Xen Aliens were fun to shoot!

[Ketch]

ICO meets Half-Life 2 via Another World.
Ie, gordon freeman with just a crowbar and modified gravity gun freeing prisoners of the combine. I reckon with enough hacking something really clever could be done with the gravity gun. Ie. Alternate fire modes that create gravity glue to stick items to the ceiling etc.
And having it so that it plays like a series of interactive vignettes.

Oh heck yeah! I know what the real adventure game would be.
Half-Life 2: Subversive
Starting off as a resistance Grafitti artist, where you sneak into places to put up subversive grafitti to boost morale. Making leaflet drops, swapping secret messages, all leading up to stuff like hacking the combine grid, and planting ID4 viruses etc.
Each mission would progress the mood and show the effect on the city. Part Thief, part Half-Life 2.

[dhex]

i am definitely in the minority; not only do i think hl2 is a tremendous leap over the first in pretty much every way possible, but i even enjoyed the boat section. each setpiece is very memorable and the pacing was perfect. i never got lost or even died that often, really, beyond my first few run-ins with striders and that whole step on you thing.

and ravenholm, of course. those rattling drainpipes...

if i can digress on the issue of genre for a moment, i would say it belongs in the segment "FPS+" in that while it is a first person shooter, it is not as much of a shooter as other shooters - there's no lean, even. but this doesn't mean the shooting is truly secondary, or even weak, really - helicopter battles maintain that sort of back-and-forth pitch, the wind-up of the gun telling you to take cover now and wait for your turn to toss a rocket back at them. but the story is so key, the set of experiences you need to go through are so central, that i think it warrants a "+."

the world of hl2 is well-realized despite being a collection of setpieces, a manic reiteration of deus ex machina with gordon as the deus or the machina, depending on your point of view, and that is why even after six or seven playthroughs i still find it quite engaging and more or less perfect. episode 1, in comparison, was far weaker in some areas, but i think the second installment brought it back.

this maybe merely my unhealthy fascination with the first-person perspective, but i do think that there is a lingering taint about the whole concept of the fps that leads many to want to see more than there is, be it hl2 or crysis or what have you, that something like a shooter or platformer doesn't (comparatively?). i've pushed crysis on a few people and gotten the "but i'ts just a shooter" response, which strikes me as a sign that at least one person in ths particular dyad is missing the point by a fair country mile. perhaps there are folks who say "i wish this platformer had more rpg elements" or perhaps hoping to graft RTS or interactive fiction elements onto a shmmmmmmup, and i am missing their input because i do not pay attention to if or rts or platformer platforms. or maybe you don't see a lot of that perhaps because pc games are (generally) incredibly moddable and can actually be taken apart and stabs at realizing alternate visions can be expressed, something that non-pc genres don't often offer.

alternately, i may just be very easily satisfied - and i say this in all seriousness. i don't want games to wash my dishes or read me a bedtime story - it's very bad at those things, breaking my flatware and totally mangling "of the jews and their lies." games are far more likely to be insipid and trivialize when they move away from their core competency, providing engaging interactive experiences, and try to become some kind of grand exploration of the human experience. (passage comes to mind immediately as the most egregious recent offender in the insipid category; the witcher would be another example of this disorder expressed in the exact opposite direction - taking coherent human themes through the meat grinder of "gaming culture" or whatever you want to call it, and ultimately missing the point.)
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[Max Cola]

I liked the boat section; it was the jeep section that I hated. And that chapter (Highway 17) was otherwise amazing - climbing across the girders under the railway bridge was one of those big awesome game moments.

I loved the entire game, but the first half had the most impact on me - perhaps because it's, um, the first half of the game. I think it's the fact that you're being chased, though - you don't have time to linger and so it flows by in this rush of images and experiences. The second half is enjoyable in a different sense: now you're the aggressor, fighting back against the enemy. I guess I just like being chased around in games?
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Shapermc]

I agree with Dhex on almost everything. The boat section is shit. My wife thought I was crazy for saying it was shit until she got the gun.

With that said, I find it truly bizarre that my wife actually agrees with me that HL2 is one of the best games ever made.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Scratchmonkey]

I just played through the boat section and it really isn't that bad.

That's probably because I didn't try and do anything except put the pedal to the metal and if I managed to hit something in the process, fine.

I have to say that the engine does feel pretty wonky after you go back from something like Crysis or even Stalker, there's a chunkiness to it, a floatiness to the jumps and the fact that you're always getting caught on things that makes it feel a little chintzy.

[Max Cola]

Oh right, the gun. I have to wonder why Valve thought it was a good idea to make us steer and shoot at the same time. I kept crashing into things because I was trying to shoot at targets on the left or right side of the screen.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Scratchmonkey]

I'm pretty sure I killed more people by driving over them/driving through the supports of whatever they were standing on than I did by firing the gun.

[Max Cola]

Yeah, but the helicopter isn't sitting on top of a pier! :(
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Scratchmonkey]

You can kill him pretty easily though, what I generally do is reverse away from him as fast as I can while plugging him with the gun, then when he passes over you, you flip a 180 and repeat -- since you're never really turning, just going back and forth in straight lines, it minimizes the crappy control and having to think about driving and aiming at the same time.

[sediment]

I've been playing HL2 on my XB360, and I actually felt the airboat section was vastly improved after I got the gun.

I can see how it'd be a real pain on PC - but steering and shooting using the xbox controller was really organic and not that bad overall.

it was actually the part before the gun that irked me. I kind of have this Marty McFly aversion to fleeing, especially in a game constructed like this - where I'm not peeping over someone else's shoulder, and I've got the means at my disposal, my imminent reaction is to fight back against my aggressor. Especially if it's a helicopter.
Post-gun, the helicopter battle was pretty short but sweet, since I was able to speed along backwards at a pretty good tilt and aim upwards enough to fill it with killer death bullets while it was, say, dropping mines or flaming barrels or whatever.

Running over combine soldiers was pretty gratifying, too.
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[simplicio]

I've been playing it through again, this time on a PS3. I kinda miss the sniper pistol, but other than that controls translate pretty well, and auto-aim seems well balanced.

I just played most of the boat section last night, and had a blast! Having guys rappelling off the bridges is like a game of mobile whack-a-mole, and I love the part where you get up to the tower with the turrets and find turrets to fight back at the helicopter that's been hounding you through the yards and waterways. Shortly after that you get one installed and it's a great moment of release than kinda duplicates the thrill of the opening, from going unarmed and just running to driving a damn gunboat.

I love the part too where you get up to the tower with the turrets and find turrets to fight back at the helicopter that's been hounding you through the yards and waterways.

I realized while playing Ep. 2 a few weeks back how pointless the ammo dumps are; you typically waste nearly as much ammo and life stopping and fighting what's there as you end up getting back, but for some reason that episode chose to highlight them with the whole beacon thing. I don't know if that's just part of some "Sequel=MORE!" syndrome, but HL2's approach is much better. Here's a resistance sign, some little spraypainted inconsequential thing without much to offer, but if you're really low on life it might be worth a detour.

I love the mileage the early game gets from the crowbar too; crates galore, those hanging mouths, the flying buzzsaws, the give and take battle between an unarmed Gordon and a hovering camera bot. You don't just put it away for good as soon as you get guns.

There's a lot to love here, and it does what it does so well; I'm with dhex on this.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[bleak]

I liked the boat part, though I liked it less on the 360. And, I really liked playing through episode 1 doing the one bullet achievement. The main thing about Half Life 2 that makes me enjoy it so much is that it ties action together with setpieces and characters to tell a story so well. Usually it's just some lame narrative or hamhanded plot device. It doesn't really seem that hard to avoid these storytelling pitfalls, but good storytelling in games is kind of hard to come by, so I'm probably wrong.
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[Ketch]

I loved the antlion battle in ep2 even if it reminds me of space invaders... this is the intensity that it should have.

I think it would be funny if they acknowledged what a rail shooter it really is and had a pokemon snap type section stuck in a tram with just an upgraded gravity gun for company lol.

[B coma]

I was playing this game again and I noticed how deliberate the placement of certain world Items were. I was on my way out of Nova Prospekt and I hit the corridor where the Combine shut off the lights and toss flares out before ambushing you. There is no apparent cover unless you dart forward into gunfire or retreat to the previous hall, but this time I noticed the metal desk placed neatly against the wall amongst some other more fragile items. So I sucked that over with the gravity gun to create a barricade to fight from.

This kind of stuff actually happens a lot more frequently than I realized, though this is particular to the indoor gunfights later on. Another technique I used this time was to pick up a metal barrels/objects and use them as shields when ambushing computer turrets. I also successfully barricaded myself in a room with a grenade cache and a broken window to toss them from and repelled an attack.

All this probably wouldn't be as fun if the combat wasn't forgiving compared to other FPS games.



(RE: boat annoyances, I really liked the whole sequence design-wise but felt the biggest issue was really just with the engine limitations. Load times are much easier to work into the pacing when you are moving on foot because you can place them in doorways, but there wasn't a single load time that felt acceptable driving on the boat**.

Beyond that, yeah, the boat stuff was thrilling because (as others have touched on) the optimal path was almost always to plunge bow-first into the most dangerous looking area/object/path/solider. And, I never had any issue steering and shooting the boat on a PC? I don't think the game demands much perfection at it anyway!)



* in some kind of strange attempt to save money by forcing myself to replay it and Ep. 1 before buying the Orange Box.

** Perhaps I'll be able to play HL2 someday on a computer that makes loading virtually non-existent?

[Harveyjames]

I haven't played HL2 for a few days. I'm probably not going to pick it up again :(

[Lackey]

An HL2 adventure game would probably be a lot like Penumbra without the survival horror aspect and strong artistic direction.

There's always possibility of a mod for HL2 that never gives you a weapon, instead focusing on the sort of dystopian mise-en-scene and just trying to survive in the city. Actually there is that adventure-game mod for HL2 but it makes it third person and from an over-head perspective which seems an odd choice, why try to replicate the features of another engine in one that clearly has a different focus?

One problem is that you just don't have the verbs to interact with the world in that first part of the game. Sure you could make an entire game just about walking around looking at things and pushing stuff but I think Valve actually got as much mileage out of it as they could in that opening segment. A few vignettes, a demonstration of your basic abilities (climb, pick up/toss, push) and then on to the rest of the game.

To be fair Penumbra goes pretty far with simply pushing/grabbing stuff and it is pretty satisfying to do so. Certainly better than the inventory USE ITEM ON puzzles which seem to take place in abstract menuspace.

This is a bit of a tangent and not about the qualities of HL2.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[Cycle]

Hey guys, I finally bought the orange box! Now I can join this party and hate on half-life 2!
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[Cycle]

THOUGHTS SO FAR

* there sure are lots of empty wooden crates hanging around!

* intro still my favourite part of the game so far!

* I already had a moment where I thought i knew how to progress but valve were all like LOL THAT'S NOT RIGHT and threw an invisible wall in my way and wasted ten minutes of my life trying to find the "right" way

* combat isn't terribly interesting.

* fantastic use of scripted events.

* pacing is very inconsistent!

* loading, loading everywhere!

I'm up to the AIRBOAT bit now and it's quite fun! I haven't found it hard to control.
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[helicopterp]

cycle, let's set a time for you to dominate us at team fortress 2. it'll be just like marathon, except that more than 2 people will play it!
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Cycle]

i should note that i have the PC edition of orange box!
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[digi]

Man, I really got finish up Episode 2. I think it really improves on a lot of the lame bits of HL2, and fixes up all the shitty parts of Episode 1. And it even looks prettier!
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[The Great Unwashed]

[The Great Unwashed]

Also I think it's worth nothing that by the time you get to HL2:ep2 they've really tweaked a lot of the shitty things nobody liked about the previous two games. Car steering is really great by Ep2, and the flashlight and sprint no longer share the same energy bar. Which is excellent! That's what I've always liked about Valve, is their constant iteration and improvements, and I suspect as you play through the Orange Box you'll notice the same.
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[Cycle]

Probably! I'm having fun with the game so far, but something about it feels so archaic... like they don't know how far FPS games have come since the first half-life. I mean, the physics are neat at all, but by this time I’ve seen it all in other games and the way they show it off at some points sure make the game feel contrived and forced.

Still, it’s early days. I should point out that I didn’t care for the original Half-Life and many of the problems I had with that game seem to be here too, but fortunately most have been refined enough that I actually don’t mind most of them (or even enjoy them!)

I also like how everyone is wearing blue outfits, except when they have a headcrab on them, so you can see the blood. Now that’s attention to detail!

I'd be down for some TF2.
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[Harveyjames]

[Cycle]

I know it's not! I'm saying it may not have stood the test of time!

I don't know why people complain about the airboat so much, I had a blast with that thing and didn't have a problem controlling it. The segement DID drag on a bit, and it was rather gamey... jumps everywhere, running over boxes like they're powerups, and that helicopter battle... man, where the hell did it store all those mines! Crazy.

I'm glad it's over, things look like they might be picking up. The last hour or so has been really ugly... sewers and canals. Starting to get to some areas with some actual ambience and atmosphere now.

Also, people sure walk awkwardly when looking at you while walking another way. This and buggy twitching during conversations sure makes the game jarring. Also, lots of long pauses as new dailouge gets loaded.

also gordorn freeman is a jerk. i heard people calling on a radio, asking what's going on but gordon is all like NO TIME FOR CHIT CHAT BITCHES, I HAVE CONTRIVED PUZZLES TO SOLVE.

Also Alyx seems like a brat so far.

Oh, I'm about to get the gravity gun. THINGS LOOKING UP, I GUESS

ok alyx is cool and so is dog. I'm up to RAVENHOLM now which i already played to death in the demo, so no surprises here.

Ok, finished RAVENHOLM which was still a barrel of laughs. The gravity gun is fun... but I'm interested in seeing if they can keep it fun and interesting for the rest of the game. WHAT TRICKS WILL THEY PULL, I WONDER?

Off to the mines.

And out of the mines! That was quick, thank goodness. I hate mines almost as much as I hate sewers. And yeah, it would be cooler if it was a sunrise. Man, this game would have been so boring without the gravity gun. It's making things much more entertaining. But how long will it last??

Anyway, enough for tonight!
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[Harveyjames]

Pretty much my sentiments exactly!

There was a whole Gamer's Quarter podcast on HL2, wasn't there? Amazing how much general opinion has changed since then!

I sort of wish I'd played it when it came out so I could get sucked into the freshness and newness of it, because I do think the production design and setting is superb. It's almost a shame my critical faculties are so honed when it comes to this sort of thing.

[Dracko]

You people are all insane.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Max Cola]

I love how the first half of Ravenholm basically loses its scariness after about five minutes once you get the hang of the Gravity Gun, and you feel really awesome and godlike.... and then you step out of a doorway and see the fast zombies in the distance. And suddenly you are very, very afraid.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[helicopterp]

Burning the zombies in Ravenholm for the first time--the ones in the cage that you sort of discover I mean--was one of the more affecting moments I've ever had in a game.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[parkbench]

I don't think the problems with the airboat come from 'controlling it' per se, rather, it just feels tacked on. I recognise the setpiece argument but at the moment I definitely felt a kind of rupture in the flow, like some programmer saying, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we stuck a vehicle section in this.'

I know that people say it's a nice respite from everything else, but it just seems like a cheap one. Suddenly I'm playing a (practically) on-rails shooter? That's not what I signed up for. What if you were playing and there was a DDR minigame, suddenly? Because I think that's what it is, it's basically a very lite-minigame.

I think I should beat half-life 2 already.
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ich bin aber eine mensch maschine

[Harveyjames]

Yeah the noises they make are horiffic. You're reminded they're still human, deep down.

Did anyone find the headcrab humping the man's face early on in the game?

[Swimmy]

[Scratchmonkey]

The airboat may be contrived; so is pretty much the rest of the game though.

I mean, physics puzzles. Loads of them! I'd take another airboat over them any day of the week.