Topic: Half-Life series thread

@swiket-gotcha, thanks for tip.
@mickeymac-yes it has puzzles and some fo them are annoying...but not that many. (at least in HL2, episode 1 has more, episode 2 has less) It IS mostly a "intense firefight" FPS but mixed with more Adventure than most include (besides Metroid Prime if we're even going down that road.)

Aye, but every time there is a puzzle, the action screeches to a halt, and it's so jarring. I dislike puzzles in most non-adventure games, and in Half-Life 2, not only are they there, but they rarely seem to "mesh" well with the pacing or the action. Honestly, if they were trying to make it an Adventure game, why of all things would they include puzzles? Why no introduce larger environments with collectible hidden items? You know, like what a lot of other FPSes do. Those things actually mesh with the frenetic action of the rest of the game, instead of being annoying, gimmicky stopgaps in the action that otherwise hold little relevance to the rest of the gameplay, aside from the gravity gun also being used in combat, of course. Really, HL2 could've been great in my opinion, if it weren't for a few nuances that ruin the experience.

Ruin the experience for you. I happen to love the puzzles.

Yeah, really. I'd say the puzzles are far better integrated into the Half-Life universe and experience than hidden collectible whatever-the-hecks would be.

The puzzles tend to make a good deal of sense not only logically, but within their specific environments within the game, and within the story that the games are passively telling. Whether they're due to a lack of resourced in City 17, the treacherous decay they've let the surrounding areas fall into, or the cold mechanical Hell of the Citadel, the puzzles you need to solve in order to progress are totally organic to the situation, and almost never seem incongruous with something that somebody actually in that situation would have to do in order to progress.

I will admit, this game blends the puzzle solving elements with the action better than any Zelda game I've played. IN my opinion, of course

I agree that the puzzles themselves are organic, but sometimes they are done in a way that, like mickeymac is likely trying to get at, disrupts the pacing. For example, that stupid part in HL2 where you have to GG a bunch of bricks onto a teeter-totter so you can run across it to the next area. It took forever and was frustrating.They repeat the puzzle in Episode 1 and it only take like 3 objects and is overall done much smoother. But I can kinda see what he means in regards to stuff like this.

Examples of puzzles in games like Zelda arent quite the same. Zelda never tries to be a world, it is a game and I never forget that. (TP was the closest to being a world IMO but thats another story.)

Are you referring to that part on the sand traps? That's the only teeter totter I remember having to use the GG for, but I could be forgetting.

If it IS the sand traps section though, I love it. The pacing is totally different there, but that's what makes it so tense. The game gives you all the time you need in the world to get things right...but one wrong move, and you get swarmed with antlions, and suddenly it's the most intense moment of the game.

I'm not going to say that the puzzles didn't disrupt the pace the first time through, but that's more my fault than the game's. In fact, I think that most of the time people say that episodes one and two did a certain puzzle better, what they're really saying is that by the time they encountered that puzzle in episode one or two, they were more equipped to deal with it having already surmounted a similar obstacle in HL2.

There's not much that HL2 did wrong...in fact, I'd argue that it's one of the least-flawed games I've ever played. If the puzzles are interrupting the flow of the game for you, then I can understand why that would rub you the wrong way. But typically, they don't bog you down unless the game is already expecting you to move at a slower pace anyway (as in the sand traps section), and subsequent runs have definitely convinced me that I was at fault for more of the jarring cases of pace disruption than the game was.

It wasn't the sandtraps one...can't remember where though, but I know what he's talking about. It was like...in the sewage or something...?

Yeah it was towards the beginning, in between tunnels and bouts of shooting Combine

Are you sure? You don't have the Gravity Gun then...

Not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to figure out what sequence you're referring to.

I remember, don't think you have the GG at that point, but you still pick up bricks or whatever to weigh the thing down.

The point is, you have to pick up rocks and its annoying. lol. its my least favorite puzzle in the whole series (HL2 through Episode 2; Ive yet to beat HL1, which is a frustrating POS compared to HL2 IMO.)

lol, only parts I hated were the electrified water places. Think there was only two of them out of the 3 games...but yeah, hated how you die almost instantly when you make a slight mistake. >_>

I know what you're talking about. Actually, there were two near the beginning that were incredibly annoying. With that said, none of it compares to Ravenholm. It was simply excrutiating parts in the entire game, and it terrified me in ways that I never want to experience from a game ever again. There isn't a physics puzzle out there that could've kept me from finishing that game, but Ravelholm made me swear never to play it ever again.

Anywho, just wanna apologize for the rant earlier, I just had to vent my frustration. I'd actually agree with Chicken Brutus, it is a well-polished game, but that's what makes what few flaws it has so annoying, especially since it hits pretty much every pet peeve I have when playing a First Person shooter.

So you pretty much stopped playing because it was too intense?

I can understand that, it takes me a while to beat horror games because I get intimidated just enough to be like "hahaha i think i'll play this other game instead"

...So, what was wrong with Ravenholm? Only thing I didn't like about it was that it was dark and had zombies everywhere...and hated those "Super Zombies" or whatever they're called. (the fast ones)

It was dark and had zombies. The beginning was also too slow and had to many stupid puzzles that I had to look up videos to solve, but honestly, I would've preferred it if the whole chapter was like that rather than what it became. Once I got to the part where there's a flood of zombies, coupled with fast zombies, all of which respawned, I was done. I seriously got sick of running out of ammo while getting lost in a confusing labyrinth, not to mention falling off of platforms back into the zombie pit, and I got sick of getting chased and killed by those stupid fast zombies. After the 50th time I died I simply couldn't take it anymore. It broke my spirit faster than Castlevania III.

You must have just had an unlucky run or something, I had none of those problems and I was new to PC FPS-ing when I played it.

Whatever not everyone likes good games lol Super Robot Wars.

I will admit Ravenholm was terrible compared to the rest of the game though. Even the equally long levels like the swamp/boat level a bit before it had an infinitely better pace thanks to awesome variety and stuff.

Maybe. Oddly enough, in the video walkthrough I was using, the guy wasn't having much more luck than I did, and it seriously wasn't helping.

Knowing you, I can only assume that's supposed to be derivative in some way. Luckily I have enough imagination to spin that in a more appropriate manner.

Yeah, if nothing else, I've never met anyone who was a fan of that section, and I even know a few who hate nearly as much as I do. Luckily they never put in another section like that in the later Episodes, and I'll be damned if they put one in Episode Three.