Potentialy great game ruined by ever-shrinking brains of today's kids.
I just finished this game for the second time. The motivation for the second play trough was developer comentary in EP1 which i finished just before starting the original HL2 again. I first played HL2 some weeks after the game went retail, and like many other FPS games, just moments after starting the game i got an all-familiar Deja-Vu feeling which momentarily put me into "ok well just finish it and make your money worth" mode. But after hearing the dev comentary in EP1, i must admit that my "older" opinion on the game has changed somewhat. Good or bad, i hope to find out by the time i finish pouring out this review.
I'll start with the sound since it's the best part of the game. Firstly, the voice acting. To keep it short i'm just gonna say 4/5. The choice of actors could have been better. There are a number of great Hollywood actors these days that don't get the roles they deserve (guess why) and are more than happy to make some money on the side. They are professionals and the work they do sounds equaly good.
What really stands out in the sound department is the technical side of it. The enviroments get another layer of art with the sound. Instead of using a Reverb effect which is primarily used to create a spacial image of the sound, Valve uses a simple Delay effect. It's used brilliantly and implemented flawlesly. The sound bounces of the walls like it should and the times of the sound delay are just right. Equalization is spotless too. Weapon sounds are great. They "pack a punch" like they should. Same goes for explosions. Overall, the (presumably) simple sound engine implemented in the Source engine can go right up there with Creative's proprietary software solutions by the merit of impression it leaves. Good job on that. The music is rare but comes up in the right places. I'm an electronic music fan so the experimantal noise in HL2 almost fits my taste. Almost. And it's a healthy change from the generic orchestral music delivered from names which are lifted to heaven by the people that know very little or nothing at all about the roots and inspirations of that kind of music.
Next, i'll go with the gameplay. Now it is obvious that Valve really tried to make a difference, but i must say, that the game just doesn't deliver. This HAS to do with the Source engine. I do believe they went out their way to create an engine that will smooth out to perfection things that are used in game design for years and years. But what they left out was innovation. We still have our AI which is less and less scripted, Material Systems and Shaders with more and more and more instruction slots, BSP trees more and more optimized...things like that. And all this technology uses the current hardware just to deliver more of the same, while it should really innovate and deliver at least just a bit of the "something new". And the possibilities are really endless. To sum it up, i'll say that i give 10 to Valve for the effort, but an 8 to an end result which is, IMHO, impaled by the limiting old fashioned game engine built for new architectures. There are a few gameplay elements in the game which are primarily based on the physics engine, and not much else there. So no point in getting into details. The puzzles are few and far inbetween. Placed masterfully intersected with borring cutscenes just to leave an impression of diversity.
Listening to the developer's commentary on how the gametsters got confused in situations with such obvious solutions, and developers then having to "just cut that part out from the game" really made me something inbetween sad and angry. The marketing just manages to ruin everything it touches. The horror.
And then, what is up with the graphics? It's 2006 and the textures in Half Life 2 on medium look on par with Quake 3 on same settings, and Quake 3 (although an ID product) is an 8 year old game. What's wrong here? Again, Source engine's material system. The textures in Source engine want just too much graphics memory therefore limiting the possibilities of texturing. This is the first thing i'd overhaul in the Source engine. The polycount is awfull too. I guess they went for the lower detail in order for more people to be able to play the game, but i'd expect much more scalability from an engine so much talked about. Must be that old Quake1 code left over in the Source.
There's much more to say but i think i pointed out the most important parts. To sum it all up i'm gonna give Valve the credits for the really good effort, but still say that the game just doesn't deliver. The enf result is limited by the technology which powers it which was developed with the wrong masterplan. And let's not forget the credits for the retarded playtesters which' brains are an obvious victims to this todays culture mutated with marketing businesses.
note to self: hmm so 7.6. I think i'm gonna re-grade all the games i graded so far on GS. Thanks for the push Jeff. I preume you were in a bit of a bad mood when you dropped 7.2 on Prey, but man you dropped it right there where it belongs. More of that kind of grading could really make a difference.
(P.S. English is not my language and no i'm not gonna spell check, and no i'm not sorry)