I know this is an uninspired troll thread so I should just wait for the reactions, but **** it.
Absolutely overrated, and not because of some metascore; that's whatever to me. Not because someone called it the game of the gen, who fucking cares? It's more so this wild disgusting notion that if you didn't think Half Life 2 was anything short of great, that you're the crazy one. It's the unjustified absolutely it must be great and you must think it's great or you are wrong mentality; that surrounds this game that gets completely ridiculous. It's a first person shooter where the act of shooting things in the face is a lame aspect of the game, from an era when games were actually awesome about shooting things in the face. **** the multiplayer that came with it has fantastic gunplay (Counterstrike Source). In any other genre where the core mechanic is the short coming, usually said game gets rightfully ripped a new one. In Half Life 2's case? Every excuse in the book is made for it.
Half Life 2 is a lot of things: well presented, well animated (those facial animations), a land mark achievement on the physics front, a variety of sequences, some really well done environmental story telling, fantastic at teaching the player through gameplay, and all around I'd even say it's a good game. But a great one? Why? The core mechanics are weak, the enemy AI is dull and unsatisfying, and there are entire stretches of gameplay that are a mother fucking slog to play through between the sewers, the boat level, any section where you are fighting antilions (controlling them was rad), or the fucking umpteenth time the game threw a see-saw puzzle my way just so Valve can go "look guys we made a physics engine". None of which was clever, because the Gravity Gun got that across significantly better and levels like Ravenholm are an absolute delight because of it. Nevermind, that it feels like obvious artificial lengthening because it's the same type of puzzle all over again, so it can't really use the God of War defense of the 'puzzles are meant to be a pacing mechanism'.
And the story besides the poor man's 1984 routine and my usual round of LOLVIDEOGAMESTORIES, the shitty ending, the ridiculous Jesus like Status that Gordon Freeman has all the while being responsible for the invading Aliens, the games biggest sin is that bullshit that Alyx Vance is a fantastic character. She is terrible. Yes she's well designed visually, well acted, and everyone loves pointing out how she's not slutty. Except her entire purpose in the game and motivation is two fold
-Jerk the player off by telling them how rad Gordon is and how basically she wants to **** him without saying she wants to **** him
-Be there to say everything is okay, only for shit around her to explode.
Her personality is nonexistent, because it's manufactured just to gas up the players ego. For all the slut shaming Bayonetta gets, at least she's a character. One with sass, whose funny, actually eloquent with her dialogue, and she's written by Japanese dudes, so what was Alyx's excuse? Valve can't write worth a shit? Because even that's not true, because they were pretty legit when it came to Portal.
And the whole "you had to play it then" mantra. **** you. First I played it in 2004, second I can still go back to Metroid Prime and Super Metroid and they are fucking excellent. If I throw Resident Evil 4 in the disc tray that game will still kick all kinds of ass in the pacing, atmosphere, and variety department. Games like System Shock 2, Planescape's writing, Super Mario World don't need me to be in that era to actually see what is fantastic about them. When I go back to Half Life 2, I see a well produced and well presented game, that has so many short comings that make me wonder was everyone blinded by the technical achievement to see what they actually got was a good game, but not a great one?
Because in an era with better written games Silent Hill 2, Max Payne, Dreamfall, KoToR games, Mask of the Betrayer, better shooters: Unreal 2k4, Battlefield 2142 Escape from Butcher Bay, Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Far Cry, No One Lives Forever 2, Resident Evil 4, both Max Payne games, and other would be classics like Shadow of the Colossus, Civilization 3, Ico, Ninja Gaiden Black, Warcraft 3, Chaos Theory, Snake Eater, and under the radar gems like Arcanum and Viewtiful Joe, and what have you. I'm not seeing one of the best games ever.
I'm seeing a game that wasn't even the best game of its respective year on its own platform of its own genre, and frankly not even the best Half Life game, I'd still roll with the original on this one. It's good it's not great, plus it gave us Wasdie's avatar. That's terrorism if anything.
Frankly the only reason it has maintained this absurd status is because the FPS genre didn't build off the more progressive ideas that Crysis and Stalker presented, but instead became more consolized as it went the route of Halo and Call of Duty, and yes I'd rather play Half Life 2 than either of their recent campaigns. But that's being great when measured against lesser competition when you compare it the other great games ever, of its own era, and that came after, at no point am I sweating Half Life 2.
And how a game where the go to defense is "you had to play it back then" is one of the greatest ever, when a lot of the greatest games ever actually hold up fantastic and can be played today and you would recognize how brilliant the game design. But apparently expecting your game to have great gameplay is a crazy thought, sue me.
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