Why is Half Life 2 so loved?

After 45 Game of the Year wins, Valve's Half Life 2 hears a voice of decent.

[Rikitatsu]

it might be a great FPS .. but waaay to overrated

[The_Firestarter]

You're entitled to your opinion, but at least Half-Life 2 wasn't OVERHYPED like Halo 3.

BTW, just remember Half-Life and Half-Life 2 won TONS of GotY awards.

[Xi]

the first thing you do is bash halo 3. Halo 3 is the whipping boy of all fps games now.

Half life isn't overrated, It revolutionized the fps genre on pc (just like halo did for consoles), and it created one of the largest mod communities on the planet.

But I'd like to say, halo 3 wasn't overrated either or overhyped, which you clearly demonstrated. It wouldn't constantly be the first resource to compare fps games with if it were. Games that are overrated fade away after they've been released, not constantly compared too or constantly have gameplay mechanics copied.

Both half life and halo are great franchises, but they're very different shooters, like the difference between PGR and Forza/gt or civ4 and sim city.

[VirusE]

I know i am walking into a ton of disagrees and maybe a bubble down but my opinion is my opinion so here goes. I agree that halflife 2 is highly overrated. Don’t get me wrong its an amazing game but not god like in my opinion. I know this will get me even more disagrees but hey; after I played halo 1 I fell in love with the much more realistic combat mechanics it offered and since that day i have not been a big fan of doom clones like half life. AND YES half life is a direct progression of doom and uses 90% of the game frame work it laid down. Quake was an extension of doom and half life was born out of quake. It has all of the same mechanics of those games. You can care up to 10 guns, your jump is worthless, enemies don’t fight as squads or use weapon classes like a real military unit would, you have to switch melee weapons or nades (in real life you are just going to smash them with the butt of your riffle, thank you halo for bring reality into combat), melee does no damage, you pick up health pack and i could go on forever. Again i think it’s a great game but it never brought anything new to the table other than physics and the story is just down right boring. The vehicle section are horrible and EXTREMELY drawn out.

I think FPS gamers divided when halo 1 came out. Its mechanics where so different than doom philosophy and now we have two sects, the halo bread fps games and the doom bread fps games. I played doom, doom 2, final doom, rise of the triad, duke nukem, heretic, hexen, hexen 2, Quake, unreal, UT, turok, turok 2 and half life all before playing halo. To me halo was and still is a breath of fresh air from the very tired doom formula that half life follows. I honestly have gotten to the point where i prefer console FPS games over pc fps games and i love pc gaming. I am just sick of every pc fps following the doom formula. For personal enjoyment i'll take halo and resistance over UT and crysis any day. I love pc gaming and have a bad arse rig so PC guys don’t even try to call me a console fanboy.

"According to one of the game's designers, Harry Teasley, Doom was a huge influence on most of the team working on Half-Life. Subsequently, according to Teasley, they wanted Half-Life to "scare you like Doom did"."

[niall77]

but its starting showing its age now. but for a 4 year old game its held up pretty well.

at the time it had the best graphics and physics out there but that was back then and for the gamer of today who only cares about graphics and gore it wont catch there eye.

it is up there as one of the best FPS's of all time but IMO not as grown breaking as the first.

I just hope for HL2-E3 they give you a portal gun for the hole game and blow your mind with more crazy puzzles and new ideas of how the game can be played like the gravity gun did all them years ago.

portal was a good start but that idea could be one of the best things to happen to FPS in a long time once they break it out of the lab

[The_Firestarter]

The WHOLE Half-Life franchise is simply AWESOME!!! I don't think it's overrated. I fell in love with Half-Life 2 the very first time I played through it and still admire it along with Ep.1 and especially Ep.2

[miked808]

They can make 10 more Half Life's with the Engine they are using now and I seriously think I would be fine with it.

[LinuxGuru]

Half-Life 2 and its associated mods are probably the games that have occupied me the most over the past 4 years.

I've probably logged at LEAST several thousand hours in counterstrike source ALONE.

To reiterate, HL2 has an incredible story that really had me wanting more after I finished it. The characters are fantastic....the weapons work well and are FUN TO USE, and the combat is always dynamic and physics-based.

I love swirling a rocket around in the air, just to have it come from behind and smack a combine soldier right in the ASS and send him BLASTING towards me, limp limbs flailing every which way....*sigh*

good times....good times.

[PumPum]

Its a good game. The canal part is too long and boring IMO.

[bumnut]

i liked the canal part, but ravenhome was my favourite, it was great throwing circular saw blades and chopping 5 people in half.

[Theo1130]

If you want to deepen your narrative you can look for it, just because it is not forced on you with a cutscene doesn't mean there is no story.

[GETPWNT]

The entire HL series is simply amazing. All who oppose it must be put to death.

[arakouftaian]

is one of my favorite games from ps2 and know ps3 i hope they keep making good games for me... :)

[DARK WITNESS]

its one of the best games ever....

It’s the overall package, i think some people just don’t get the fact that there are gamers who do care about good story and more importantly, how that story is told...

For me, its one of the best told stories i have experienced, ever...
My girlfriend (who does not play games at all) watched me play bits of the orange box, i told her how great the story was and she just wanted to watch me play. It just so happened i was at the end of episode 2, when she saw the last scene she was almost crying...

how many game stories, not to me mention fps game stories have that sort of involvement ? unreal, doom, Quake....you must be joking.
They are all good fun, but for the most part it’s just run and gun.

Of all these new so called next gen fps games, how many of them stand this sort of test of time, considering Half life came out on the old xbox as well.

It is showing a bit of age graphically, but do you think that will be the case with episode 3? i don't think so.

[solar]

the HL series is the best FPS and if not the best game of all time. 2 times in episode 2 where i thought i was gonna have to crazy...when the hunter almost killed Alyx and the end when Eli died. my jaw was on the floor. HL got you so envolved and emotionally attached with the characters....instead of letting you "lone wolf" the story like the other FPS's before it. Episode 2 was an emotional rollercoaster or me...and i loved every minute of it.

the game was revloutionary with its physics engine, the gravity gun, and the ability to connect with gamers on an emotional level. hurling a toilet is quite fun! HL:2 changed FPS's. thats why its such a great game. oh...and even i got a lil teary eyed when eli died. hearing Alyx crying and a black screen....absolutely powerful.

bring on Episode 3!!

[mariusmal]

thx for spoiler jackass

[solar]

hey no problem :D i do apologize for not warning the spoiler. that i cant justify :(

the game has been out for 4 years and Episode 2 for 6 months now. not my fault u didnt play it.

[mariusmal]

apologies accepted

[marcellizot]

I think the poster meant to write "dissent" meaning to differ in sentiment or opinion, esp. from the majority not 'decent' which means something else entirely.

Oh, and HL2 is the best FPS ever created.

[tab553]

This bloke is absolutely correct. As he says when it was released it was great playing one of the first next gen games. Now however going back it feels like a joyless experience. I couldnt even be bothered finishing episode 2 as it was so boring. Which is why it is annoying when people bang on about it being one of the best games ever, I disagree.

[ElfShotTheFood]

It's good, but very overrated. If it wasn't made by Valve and wasn't called "Half-Life 2" people wouldn't have been nearly as kind to it.

[PumPum]

Its one of the greatest series out there for sure but the "cliffhangers" are starting to get annoying.
I really hope they reveal everything in Ep.3 because i have been waiting to find out who GMAN is and what does he really want and what are his motives since HL1 came out!
GF Probably discovers the portal gun and triggers a blackhole (or something similar) in the combines universe....
I want Gordons journey to end with Ep.3. if its just another cliffhanger then ill give up.

[actas123]

I don't understand why ppl in 2008 call a 4 year old game, game of the year!!! The game is good, but c'mon get over it. There are many games that are better then HL2.

[DethWish]

I liked HL1 way more than the sequel

[KyonoRocks]

I don't think it's the best shooting game about but it's definitely one of the best full packages around. I hadn't played HL2 until Orange Box and played HL2, Ep1 and Ep2 back to back and it was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences of my life. That and Deus Ex, two games which are always through the players eyes and don't tell you more than YOU know personally. Complete immersion

People saying HL2 has a crap story are missing the point, there's a reason why not much appears to happen... because there's so much happening that hasn't been explained. The fact you know there must be other stuff going on which hasn't been explained (A bit like Cloverfield, I liked the fact you didn't know where the monster came from or why it was there) and you hope that whenever you get into a discussion with an NPC he/she might put another piece in the puzzle.

Yeah the shooting wasn't that great IMO but this game is a superb First Person EXPERIENCE.. a 'genre' which I definitely would appreciate more games in. Reminds me, I was meaning to play System Shock 2...

[NiteWarrior]

U seriously cannot talk bad about half-life. I still play Half-life 1 there is no better pc game for me.

[Erdrick]

halo didn't revolutionize console fps games, goldeneye 007 did. and the half life series is considered great because its better than just about every fps out there.

[Xi]

regenerating shield
dual analog control scheme
perfect inventory and weapon system
open and large maps
perfect matchmaking system

to revolutionize an fps on a console you need to have previous games to compare to. Goldeneye was the first console FPS that actually worked, halo took the concept and made it a step further, making it probably the single most copied game with regards to game mechanics. Don't talk sh!t like halo didn't revolutionize console fps because it clearly did.

[Dark General]

Half-Life 2 is simply (to me) the most over rated game i've ever played. I finally got a chance to play it by picking up the Orange and while Portal and TF2 was great i can't say the same for HL2. The Level design was horrible, the vehicle sections was too long and the plot is non existent. Now i know some people will say "Well it's pretty old now so *insert excuse here*" but i played Deus Ex: The Conspiracy back in 2005 and it was and still is the greatest game i ever played. The storyline is superb and deep, so is the combat and different ways you can complete things. Since many people that i know that praised HL2 also love Deus Ex i thought HL2 would be as great as Deus Ex was but i was wrong.

The level the design is bad, the plot is paper thin, the physics puzzles seems to tacted on and doesn't feel sublime with the overall game design. Though i'll say at least the npc's do have life in them and have some charm to them. But other than that i can't say that Half-Life 2 feels anything other than mundane and over hyped. Just my opinion.