Half Life 2 is easily the best shooter ever made. No way is the original Half Life superior to the second. Sure it was more revolutionary, but not better. Half Life 2 does something most FPS games can't, it stays entertaining and engaging right through to the end, while also offering many twists to the gameplay as the game goes on. The story is entertaining, and the way it is presented through the eyes of Gordan Freeman is still the best use of that style to date. The game is also fairly long, and for it's time, did introduce use some really ground breaking technology. The most overated game of all time is Halo 3 or perhaps CoD4 (Come on! It was 5 hours long!), no way is it Half Life 2.
Valve is easily one of the influential developers of all time. They completely changed the way FPS shooters are seen today when they released the original Half Life, and then went on to influence the genre further with the release of the second. Companies like Infinity Ward have done very little in comparison, infact they have made 3 war games that wern't exactly immensly original. MoH:AA had already been out before CoD hit the shelves, and I still consider that superior. Also we had seen modern combat shooters long before CoD 4, they just imported the same gameplay they used in their WW2 games, and made them just a bit more popular. Then you have Bungie that made the Halo series. They brought out Halo, and that changed the way console FPS games were designed because of it's smart control. Then they released two sequels that didn't really have much impact at all, and having played the third one, I was not very impressed.
Of course Half Life wasn't the first FPS ever made, and for that reason I would probably have to give the award of "greatest developer os shooters EVER" to whoever created the genre, and I think it was id software that did that properly.
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