Half Life 1 is like a masterclass in pacing, as it moves from set-piece to set-piece with such confidence and intelligence that the game just breezes past you, on my most recent replay of it with my partner, it was basically just 6 perfect hours of one of the best games of all time.

Half Life 2, on the other hand, has so many bits that go on for fucking ever, and feel like they are NEVER going to end. It took multiple days of playing it where I just outright told them, "I am so sick of fighting the same 10 combine soldiers for today." This comes to a head near the end of the game in Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman, where you are fighting combine soldiers for what feels like 30000 hours. The combat is never engaging enough to carry the game on its own yet in some pivotal chapters it is being asked to carry hours worth of game. The game, ironically, excels when it is doing everything in its power to avoid gunfights. The explosive entrance to Nova Prospekt, the physics platforming of Sandtraps, the incredible finale of Our Benefactors, and of course the standout Ravenholm chapter.

When the game is clicking it reminds you why Half Life is such an incredible series, designed to almost perfection, and to be frank, back when I first played Half Life 2 around 2006, I did not share my current exhaustion with the combat, I found it thrilling and couldn't believe my computer was rendering such a lifelike experience. Nowadays? God why is Highway 17 so long?? Route Kanal and Water Hazard both feel like they are deliberately padded out!! Half Life 2 may have more variety than a game like F.E.A.R, but it is never as fun to play as F.E.A.R for an extended period of time.

But what it does better than other games, it does at a level of perfection few games could ever hope to match. Art direction, sound design, writing, animations, atmosphere, it is all typical Half Life brilliance. For the time, characters had never been this lifelike and well-realized, the main cast are such a lovable bunch with their own quirks and inner worlds, which thanks to the still really impressive facial animations, you can actually read them thinking and making decisions in their heads! It sounds a little odd, but watch Dr. Mossman in the Dark Energy chapter, and you can see her making the decision to betray Dr. Breen by her expression, it makes it feel more real in a way few games ever wore in 2004.

For what it far exceeds its predecessor on in terms of characterization, it really brutally lacks the precision pacing that makes Half Life 1 still one of the few games that could be described as "perfect." It feels desperate to deliver on being Half-Life 2, which in 2004 meant having way too much of everything, so after you shoot some combine overwatch and think, "damn this is kind of bland," I hope you are ready for 10 more hours of exactly that!!

It’s got set pieces, forward momentum, ten varieties of escalation. Man is it exhausting.

Half-Life 2 tries to do so many things, but none of them well. Here, have some stiff guns, some stiffer men, some antlions. Want to drive one clunker? Drive two. Each element is both underdeveloped and overused, making every level feel twice too long. Even its best idea – the gravity gun – fails to develop much beyond furniture-mover-slash-zombie-cleaver.

Perhaps the longing for Half-Life 3 is a desire to experience such breadth and ambition again. Portal, though, suggested we go the other way. Focus tends to age better.

Since i’m not very inspired to do some proper writing, and considering there’s hardly anything that haven’t been said already about HL2, this review will be mostly a list of random incoherent thoughts

- Half-life 2 is even more linear than HL1. HL1 was more puzzle oriented, therefore involving lots of backtracking.
- All in all HL1 was a more cerebral game, while HL2 is a lot more focused on action, even with the incorporation of the new physics
- HL2 has almost no flaws
- HL2 shows how to properly design levels around a gimmick: Whether it’s based on a vehicle, a particular weapon, or a special use of NPCs, HL2 proves that there is nothing wrong in gimmicks as a design choice (Take that you Barrel O’Fun haters), specially when they add more variety to the gameplay. In a very reductionist way, you could even describe HL2 as a succesion of gimmicks.
- Gameplay in HL2 is absolutely perfect
- Despite sharing a common story, showing similar design and aesthetical choices, HL1 and HL2 seems to me like completely different beasts. It would be like comparing Doom to CoD: MW2, which would be a pretty silly thing to do. I do have to recognize that i had more fun playing HL2, even if, up until this day, HL1 was one of my all time favourite games ever. I feel like i could replay HL2 next week already, while replaying HL1, instead, feels like a harder thing to do.
- One point where i think HL1 does slightly better is in it’s storytelling. While both stick to this idea of leaving many things unexplained and relying on the environment (which i really enjoy, it’s basically deviating from the Netflix norm of explaining everything way too much), i think they somehow handled things differently. In HL1, things unfold at a very slow pace, there aren’t many characters, and all in all little really happened, like the whole narrative was a lot more minimalistic. HL2 instead introduces many characters, the whole Combine vs Rebels conflict, and actually there’s tones of action going on all the time. HL1 felt like Ridley Scott’s first Alien movie, while HL2 is more like a Michael Bay movie. And don’t get me wrong, HL2 is great at doing that. But probably, if i ever had to write a script for a videogame, i would probably do something more in the vein of HL1 than HL2.
- A little nitpicK: The latter NPC’s. Alyx, Barney, Dog, the Priest, and specially the Antlions (they fucking rock), every NPC here is just fantastic. But the Citizens in the latter levels were just too clumsy, at times they felt more like an obstacle and even kinda ruined those episodes for me, specially in the tighter areas. Of course, those episodes were a lot better in the wide open areas, specially those were you were fighting gunships and sentries.

In conclusion, this is simply one of the games of all time. I think the only questionable thing about HL2 is it’s influence on the FPS genre, which is, of course, not really HL2’s fault, but mostly a problem of how the industry misinterpreted it. Thank god for the boomer shooter revival.

Half-Life 2 is what people THINK Tears of the Kingdom is. An innovative physics based action/puzzle game set in a post apocalyptic world that changed the gaming industry - done near 20 years earlier and executed in a much more fun way. The amazing sound design and world building make it stand out from the rest. I do wish they had leaned into the horror more as that one level in Ravenholm was fantastic, and I was honestly expecting something a bit more plot heavy, but I loved every moment of this campaign and felt embarassed that it's been sitting on my computer for so long unplayed.

Half-Life 2 is everything modern FPS games wish they were; keeping people coming back after almost 20 years is a feat most can't attain. The beginning of the game starts with being introduced to City 17, and you get to see all the oppression and hopelessness, and within those first few moments, the game instills a sense of both fear and rebelliousness, making you want to fight.

Each subsequent chapter gets better and larger. Ravenholm and the Citidel are some of my favorite areas. Gameplay is still fun, and the gravity gun is still one of the greatest weapons in any game. Alyx Vance is one of the best supporting characters. I love each interaction with her, which is helped by the phenomenal animation. Dog is everyone's favorite pet and having the Vortigaunts now on the players side was a great decision. I feel bad for killing so many of them now, poor guys.

The world is beautifully crafted, from the way the gunships move, the daddy longleg-like striders, the mysterious combine, and never really seeing the true powers that be. The way the game made me feel is indescribable; it makes you feel proud to be human, and they really instilled this level of protection you feel towards your own race on this godforsaken Earth.

Half Life 2 is in my top 20 games of all time, and although I prefer the first game, the second really pushed the limits on what a first-person shooter could be and that they can tell incredible stories along with addictive and fun gameplay.

i get mad harsh on this game because it makes me think of two types of people: those who say this is "the thinking man's fps" and those who think alyx vance is "a good female character"

i think the marine grunts in half-life 1 are overrated but they still run rings around the combine in this game, if only for the fact that them marines are built absolutely truck-tough and therefore get to do a few cool things before they die.

tons of very nice visual design in this game, i'll concede that, but ultimately for me the game is simply a fairly long string of gimmicks and none of the gimmicks are things i actually enjoy.

Seven years after my initial playthrough and a few years since my previous replay, which was formerly a twice annual occurrence for me, Half-Life 2 remains one of the best sequels and one of the absolute coolest games I've ever experienced. I suppose I got a bit burnt out after a number of replays in the span just a few years, but despite having this game committed mostly to memory, I was so captivated this time around that it felt as though I was experiencing it for the first time again.

Although the manner in which the original Half-Life was built around the uninterrupted perspective of an ordinary scientist navigating a single disaster-stricken facility stands out when compared to the structure of its sequel, Half-Life 2 is simply more refined in every way. Games that make a point of flaunting their technical prowess tend not to age gracefully, but this game's decision to wear the newfound power of the Source Engine on its sleeve is an essential part of its identity that sets it apart from its predecessor's brand of naturalism. The art direction has held up wonderfully - although the outskirts of the nonspecific eastern European setting are a bit barren, the scale of the environments draws attention away from the lacking texture detail, and the contrast of the Combine architecture and technology effectively communicates the extent to which they've conquered the Earth and the desolation of the citizens who live under their rule. Perhaps the most defining feature of Half-Life 2 is its emphasis on physics, the design decision that posed by far the biggest risk to the game's longevity. Puzzles such as one that showcases the physics engine's capability to emulate a makeshift seesaw are more of a flex than they are clever game design, but I find them charming in a way that most boundary-pushing games from this point onwards aren't, and the abundance of interactive props and objects is something that I've seldom seen in other titles, giving it a distinctly immersive touch. The Gravity Gun epitomizes this physics-based gameplay, allowing you to literally weaponize your surroundings in a manner that remains somewhat novel to this day. The other combat maneuvers it enables, such as picking up a Combine-thrown grenade and hurling it back at them, never lose their luster.

In addition to its cutting-edge visuals standing the test of time, Half-Life 2 arguably excels even further in the sound department. The voice performances remain some of the best in the medium to date, doing wonders to endear me to cast of characters that wouldn't be particularly memorable otherwise. Robert Culp does an especially great job as Breen, a spineless puppet of an antagonist who leaves far more of an impression than a dictator one might expect from the setting would have. Kelly Bailey's sparingly-used soundtrack consisting of unsettling ambience to establish the atmosphere and pulse-pounding techno to complement the most thrilling fights is even stronger than before - nearly every appearance of music throughout the game is a highlight. The sound design might just be my favorite of any video game - from the anguished cries of the zombies to the ear-piercing whirs and scratching of the Manhacks to the flattening lifelines of the Metrocops, the soundscape is ingrained into my memory and breathes so much more life into an already distinct aesthetic.

The first two thirds of Half-Life 2 are a near-perfect experience, featuring striking environmental storytelling, an engrossing atmosphere, and consistently creative encounter design delivered at a pace that had me completely enamored. Insertion Point is nearly unmatched in its effectiveness at introducing its setting; We Don't Go to Ravenholm is an unforgettable shift to survival horror that maintains everything that makes the game work in a vastly different setting; Highway 17 takes the formula of the previous game's infamous On a Rail and executes it with finesse; every chapter has something exciting to bring to the table. Not even the occasional mechanical shortcomings such as the perplexing inaccuracy of the pistol could hinder my enjoyment, and the occasional frustration I've been met with in previous runs in chapters such as Water Hazard was nowhere to be found this time around. Unfortunately, like its predecessor, Half-Life 2 abandons some it strongest design principles in the final act, although in more subtle ways than before. The sudden shift to radically different circumstances starts off a lot more exciting - Anticitizen One is a tightly design series of setpieces that, while rendering the Gravity Gun more situational than it had been, is still really damn fun. Follow Freeman, however, is too long for its own good and is more rigid with its encounter design. Nothing but its high stakes can justify the presence of half-baked squad mechanics, lots of narrow hallways, an all but explicit insistence on making heavy use of the shotgun and pulse rifle (which are perhaps too universally useful compared to the rest of Gordon's arsenal), and a volume of obnoxiously resilient Striders that makes save scumming downright necessary on the highest difficulty. I'm making all of this sound worse than it is in execution, but it's nonetheless a noticeable step down from the amazing chapters that precede it. Our Benefactors and Dark Energy serve as a gimmicky finale, but the gimmick in question is an absolute blast, and the one sequence of the game in which you're robbed of full control is one of its most memorable.

Overall, this replay is probably the most fun I've ever had with Half-Life 2. It's not entirely free of missteps, but I can't overstate just how great it is for the vast majority of its duration. It's an absolute must play for shooter fans, and well deserving of its reputation as one of the all time greats.

The people calling this game a tech demo aren't necessarily wrong. Half-life 2 runs on a (at the time) brand new proprietary engine, one that Valve is 1000% confident in. The Source Engine would, in fact, come to define the aestethic and brand of most of Valve's titles. Technology-wise, Half-life 2 is one of the greatest successes a single company could hope for, one that partly built the Valve we know today.

It would be dismissive to call the game just a tech demo, when it is a complete experience; one that is propelled forward by the new tech. The gravity gun is the perfect example. One can play the game entirely by only busting it out during puzzles (Citadel aside, even Ravenholm could be beaten without using it to throw a single sawblade against a zombie) but the fact that it can become one of Freeman's most lethal weapons makes it incredibly fun to use.

That said, it may be a bit puzzling as a sequel to 1998's Half-Life. That game was very action-focused, putting the player in situations where thinking fast and applying the right tool to the right situation was necessary for survival. In that game human enemies were bloodthirsty, cunning and lethal, which coupled with their robotic patterns of speech, made them somehow more terrifying than 2's Combine. The latter are scary at first, when they chase you around City 17 while you are unarmed; but as soon as you pick up a weapon they are revealed to basically be meat puppets, losing all sense of presence as soon as their health drops to zero, their bodies flopping to the ground in an unintended comical way. 2 must know this, as it relies mostly on (very strong and memorable) setpieces that take center stage and where the enemies are just a part of it. Half-Life 1 had plenty of setpieces (the fights against black ops assassins, the bridge and cliff sections in Surface Tension spring to mind) but in 2 they are more varied, thanks in great part to the inclusion of drivable vehicles.

Story and characters change drastically in the sequel. Where 1s plot and characters were in large part flat and one-dimensional, 2 fleshes out its supportive cast, flexing its impressive facial expressions of the Source Engine.
The character who instead loses the most from this exchange is Gordon Freeman. Where in the first game he had complete freedom to act in the structure he's given (the messiah that saves scientists and guards alike, the psychopath who murders his peers with glee, the opportunist who will kill a guard in cold blood for ammo or a gun) is now flattened into an infallable saviour of humanity. I won't argue it is bad for the story, but for ceratin players it may hurt their immersion, which is bad in itself.

There is also a throughline between the two games, the hallmark of a good series: the iconography. It's no accident that something as simple as a black and red crowbar has become an iconic symbol; not simply because it's an unorthpdox fps melee weapon, but as a tool that both games give you plenty of targets for, whether they be boxes, planks or headcrabs. It also smartly maintains the amazng sounds of the first game: the medic and HEV stations and the original voice actors for Kleiner, Barney and G-man.

I want to conclude this by talking about the latter figure. He (they? It?) is the only character that has a consistent and consistently compelling writing in both titles. The first game's blockiness and voice performance made him even more alien than the rest of the cast and the game's quirks only amplified that. Half-Life 2, despite its marked improvements in the graphics and fidelity department, continues the tradition by finding even more visual tricks to maintain the mystery of his character, shedding just enough light in his plans while not revealing all of its hand regarding the big monster and puppeteer of the franchise.

Half-Life 2 is a triumph. One that Valve is still scared to follow up properly. Hopefully Alyx is a sign of things to come. Hopefully we can all one day play Half-Life 3.

Perhaps I was too harsh on you.

I’ve long stood by the opinion that Half-Life 2 is a bad game. Upon revisiting it, it’s become clear to me that Half-Life 2 is not actually a bad game. Half-Life 2 isn’t a good game, and that’s an important distinction to make.

Half-Life 2 is a game defined by moments, by set pieces; the City 17 escape, piloting the airboat, driving down Highway 17, attacking the prison, rushing through the Citadel. What’s unfortunate, then, is largely how uninteresting most of these moments are. While it’s borderline impossible to downplay genuinely fun moments like sprinting along the rooftops while fleeing from the Combine or fighting off waves of zombies in Ravenholm, these moments don’t make up the bulk of the game. If you took a playthrough of Half-Life 2, exported every single frame, and averaged it out into a single screenshot, you’d wind up a photo of a dune buggy steering around runoff canals.

An inordinate amount of time is spent driving on empty roads, steering through identical-looking pipes and basins, walking along the world’s worst beach with nothing but miles of sand and an ocean you can’t swim in. It’s clear with the frequent stop-and-pop sections that interrupt these driving segments that Valve was trying — crunching, after the beta build leaked — to keep players engaged, but I don’t think they succeeded. To their credit, I suppose that this all feels more like the product of poor decision-making rather than them being forced to throw out their old work and start over from scratch, but that’s some faint fucking praise.

A few conversations with some friends of mine have revealed that, universally, we agree that the strongest thing Half-Life 2 has going for it is its aesthetic. Consider how you personally feel about Half-Life 2’s look and feel to determine whether this is a point of celebration or condemnation. Further, we all agreed that something about this particular aesthetic has been lost over the years since release; Garry’s Mod has diluted it heavily into something more funny than oppressive, whether that be through a variety of wacky game modes where Dr. Kleiner goes sledding and Barney sets up an illegal money printer, or through comedic, face-warping machinima like The Gmod Idiot Box and Half-Life: Full-Life Consequences. All of these are, in a way, Half-Life 2. And it’s no fault of Half-Life 2 that it’s difficult to take seriously in the year 2024 simply because of how its legacy has been warped by fans, but it’s borderline undeniable that these have all had an impact on lessening Half-Life 2’s, uh, impact.

Maybe that’s not entirely fair to Half-Life 2, but I’d counter that, apart from City 17 and the interior of the Citadel, the game is pretty generic. The incredibly long canal, highway, antlion cave, and prison assault sections are all as boring to look at as they are to play through, and they really don’t do a good job of delivering on the Combine-occupied hellscape that was promised when you got off of the tram.

As harsh as I’m being, though, I really don’t think all that poorly of Half-Life 2. It’s definitely a game that keeps souring on me the more time I spend away from it, giving me a chance to actually step back and reflect on the parts I didn’t mind in the moment but don’t care for at all in retrospect. I like the narrative they’ve got going on here. Dropping Gordon into the middle of City 17 without a fucking clue in the world why he’s there or what’s going on is an inspired choice, and it plays nicely into G-Man’s little tease about his employers looking for a soldier they can dump into the middle of an active warzone who’ll start blasting away without asking any questions. Similarly, the Combine that you square off against are stupid fodder who exist purely to get merked en masse, but they’re also a token occupation force comprised primarily of conscripted or traitorous humans wearing alien armor. Spinning blades and cars on winches in Ravenholm can be activated at will either to kill zombies or use the moving parts as platforms to reach other areas. There are quite a few moments where the gameplay exists in complete harmony with the world as it is established, and there are quite a few moments where Gordon Freeman has to stop what he's doing to jump up and down on a seesaw. Truly it is a land of contrasts.

What's here is neither particularly good nor particularly bad, and is in a way remarkable for having such a strong legacy despite standing on such weak legs. People say that you needed to be there when this came out to truly appreciate it, but I think that if something is actually good, then it remains good. There are a lot of games out there that are both far older and far better than Half-Life 2, so I don't adhere to the "poorly aged" argument when it seems significantly more likely that people were just so awed by the tech that they didn't notice the emaciated muscles hanging off of the Source Engine skeleton.

The greatest sin Half-Life 2 commits is making a sequel to Half-Life that's boring.

I don’t want to fold my laundry right now, so here’s a review of Half-Life 2.

I kinda miss those opening moments when the only discrepancy I cared about was my ability to huck physics objects halfway across a given room without being regarded as a psychopath by anxious bystanders. The state of the world is conveyed instantly, and we’re forced to live under the squalor of this totalitarian regime alongside everyone else. A lot of us probably stood there and listened to Breen’s entire self-serving speech before advancing past the first area, his face filling those massive screens and lording over the train station. It’s chilling. And then, the game remembers that it’s a sequel to a New York Times Bestseller, and it’s time for a family reunion. What’s that? The Combine are beating people in their homes? They’re rounding up the humans? Nonsense, we have headcrab merchandise to sell! Remember the HEV suit? Remember Barney from Blue Shift? Oh, don’t forget your trusty crowbar! We love you, Gordon Freeman!

THE LONG VERSION:

Half-Life was all about making the player feel like this horribly outmatched scientist hurled into an unmitigated disaster, to the point where I called the player’s success tantamount to a non-canon “what-if” scenario. The Gordon Freeman of Half-Life 2 is a monster. You know that dinky crowbar from the first game, the one you found lying around on the floor? It might as well be Excalibur. Stormtroopers fall by the dozen. I never found myself without a surplus of bullets. Why does everyone know who we are? Why does everyone have intimate knowledge of what we did in that top-secret government facility? Why are we suddenly so nostalgic for the alleged greatness of Black Mesa? Weren’t they up to some extremely questionable stuff back there, or was that just my imagination? Why do we suddenly have a fawning girlfriend, and why are we playing fetch with her robot dog? Aren’t we just some guy? Why aren’t we just some guy?

The game’s at it’s best when it’s treating you like just some guy. We enter Ravenholm, and it might as well have nothing to do with anything going on in the rest of the game. There’s a man facing off against a horde of zombified villagers, and there’s intrigue surrounding his identity, his sanity. Eventually, he tosses us a shotgun at an opportune moment, and we work together to drive back the beasts. We snake through the winding architecture of this ruined town, we activate physics traps which feel naturally integrated into the situation, we panic when a poisonous freak knocks us down to a single hit point. This was more “Half-Life” than anything we’d been doing, iconography be damned. I cared more about this one guy than any of the returning characters for his direct involvement and cooperation. I knew Valve had it in ‘em. Everyone else made me feel like I was in the Truman Show.

Characters act more like tour guides than residents of this world, even walking backwards to gently usher the player from place to place (and show off that facial animation, I guess). The push toward “realism” was only natural, but I didn’t anticipate just how far Valve would go in removing them from the context of the gameplay. Half-Life’s NPCs weren’t compelling because they were “believable,” but because they were as vulnerable as the player. Some of them could fend for themselves (somewhat), while others needed the player’s assistance. If you weren’t careful (and sometimes if you were), you might’ve found yourself responsible for the death of a fellow scientist. They wanted key characters and development this time, so that’s not gonna happen. Can’t jeopardize our award-winning plot. Not our precious Alyx. I know they were striving for emotional range here, and that’s a worthy cause, but I might’ve cared a whole lot more about these people if I was worried something might happen to them. Heck, I’d have cared more about them if I had to personally press the “interact” button while facing them to receive their dialogue.

Maybe it’s worth sifting through some thoughts about narrative design. This is sort of tangential, but why not — The best games in the JRPG genre use its gameplay conventions, its mechanical language, in ways which feel congruent with the story. “Talking” is a major verb, it’s only natural that some of that talking would be dramatic. Combat takes place in a separate mode of play, so there’s no expectation that everyone will be involved with it (and in many games, we don’t directly initiate fights in the first place). In that way, Dragon Quest’s mechanics feel congruent with its storytelling. I’d describe Half-Life 1 similarly. Its mechanics are mostly congruent with its story and characterization. The “plot” is happening all around the player in real-time, and all of that stuff has direct ramifications on their forward progress. Why give games like Zelda and Sekiro a pass? Maybe it’s simply that we choose to talk to NPCs, that’s our method of agency in that situation. The characters can respond to us, just not in every possible way (because Link and Wolf wouldn’t kill those people, but they would talk to them). In Half-Life 2, characters talk at us, and don’t acknowledge our agency in the setting. It pains me to say it, but many of Half-Life 2’s character interactions would work better as cutscenes. The benefit of the persistent game state is that the core mechanics are always or could always be relevant, but that’s rarely the case here. If I’m not in a mode of play where interactivity is expected, I suppose I don’t groan as hard when I have to sit through it. Something to consider.

Oy, talking about this game makes me feel like a petulant child (there’s so much attention to detail, but you can still look around when you’re dead). I can’t think of too many games which have outright disappointed me. I mean, if I don’t like it, I can just…do something else. Maybe refund the game. Who cares? Still, I can’t help feeling that Half-Life 2 represented such a fascinating opportunity. That first game is right on the cusp of something incredible. A bit sloppy, a bit janky, but with a clear vision for the future of experiential game narratives. I was hoping to see its Super Mario Bros. 3, a deeper and richer iteration on that original idea. This one doubles down on the first game’s contrivance-filled pathfinding. Half-Life wasn’t lacking in realistic physics puzzles or jet-ski sequences or monologuing holograms, but interesting risks and alternate paths and weightier character interactions. I’m glad that so many people found what they were looking for in Half-Life 2, though maybe I’m better off checking out Deus Ex than waiting another decade for that third installment. Something tells me Valve won’t be looking back.

I praised Half Life for having near flawless pacing. Aside from the opening train ride and ending cutscene, it never took away control. Half Life 2 for some reason felt the need to do the exact opposite and lock the player inside rooms with characters endlessly talking.

Luckly when the chakels come off, the game does let you just play, having seriously improved gunplay with an impressive Physiques engine. I admire the attempt to have vehicles segments, seriously clunky though, but the varity in weapons has been exhanged in favor of them. I do still think how technicaly impressive Half Life 2 is can be described as the best part. That inturn does come with with the downside of less varity in the enviroment again.

I like the idea of having the nondescript eastern european City 17 be the backdrop to the Combins alien reign over earth, but nobody can tell me that the grey block buildings and dirt roads dont get seriously repetitive. I do wish their was more Alien architecture and technology, expanding what was hinted at in Half Life 1.

In the end it does lead up to a exciting finale that gives a great cliffhanger, with the question of how the Combine managed to take over Earrth in 7 hours when they are this fucking incompetent.

in nuclear physics, a half-life is a unit of measurement that describes the rate at which atoms undergo radioactive decay. fitting, because "decay" is the one word i would use to describe half-life 2's world - one of the most understatedly rich that gaming has to offer. desolation drips off of every single facet of half-life 2's level design, atmosphere and aesthetic, each minute detail purpose built to reinforce the fact that mankind is either in its twilight years, or are sure to inherit a dying earth should they shake off the oppressive clamp of the combine (who are very, very good at what they do, the fact that liberation promises only that mankind might eventually die out on its own terms almost imparting spite into the combine's calculative, hyper-efficient approach to survival). with there being so much dialogue about the eeriness of the source engine since the turn of the 20s, i'm surprised so few people seem to recognize the fact that it was purpose built to serve a game about mankind's nigh-futile struggle against an omnipresent and omnipotent threat beyond mortal comprehension. the textures, models and level brushes are soaked with grime and rot because they belong to a world literally being sucked dry by an intergalactic parasite.

fitting that you play as a physicist in a series named after a nuclear physics concept, because half-life 2 in turn lives and dies by its physics. i'd go as far as to wager half-life 2 is its physics: it's the way a headcrab goes limp in mid-air when you shoot down an attempted coupling, it's the snap of a metrocop's corpse as you gun him down from across a banister and watch him fall to the depths below, it's the motherfucking gravity gun. there's a reason that people always talk about ravenholm so specifically: it's the one moment that half-life 2 harnesses all of its strong suits at once, combining the dour and dark atmosphere with a veritable playground for the player to let loose and take advantage of what half-life 2 does best. the game is lacking in enemy variety and the "sit in one place and fend off combine soldiers while alyx does shit" arenas get tiring at absolute best, and the shooting gameplay isn't varied or tight enough to warrant the vast majority of encounters being getting merked by squads of armored grunts with machine guns... and while in theory this can be made up for by the sheer number of possibilities the player has in their hands with the gravity gun and the physics props, it's neutered by how infrequently the gravity gun is practical in gunfights. i walked away from this replay with a greater appreciation of episode 1, if only because of how much more it emphasizes the gravity gun and de-emphasizes combine grunts as the main enemy.

the final rampage through the citadel is empowering beyond belief as you're finally given free reign to use the gravity gun and only the gravity gun to absolutely decimate the squads that had once rendered the gravity gun inert, but it also feels like salt in the wounds: this is a taste of what the entire game could have been like, had priorities been re-arranged and the "guns and grenades" aspect of the gameplay been de-emphasized for more than just puzzles and ravenholm.

but i suppose not even the best ideas are immune to decay.

Half-Life 2 gave me one mesmerizing playthrough, but every time I return to it I feel like I could be doing something else. There are impressive setpieces and environments, but the world overall feels much less coherent than that of the first Half-Life. In that game, the setting was as much of an antagonist as the game's enemies, throwing all kinds of environmental hazards at the player, forcing them to contort their bodies to fit into tricky places, etc. This kind of interesting movement has largely been replaced by puzzles which show off Source engine tech, but are uninteresting in their own right. AI and enemy variety are clearly worse here as well—not that they were necessarily exceptional in the first game, but it made more effective use of what it had. But the worst change Half-Life 2 brings is its particular emphasis on exposition and dialogue. Half-Life 1's technique of placing talkative NPCs alongside a silent protagonist worked well because Gordon Freeman's characterization is very abstract: he is defined by his immediate situation and little else. Half-Life 2 gives him a backstory, relationships, attempts to shoehorn him into a stupid and uninteresting mythology: in short, it puts us the awkward position of being party to social interactions in which our silence is extraordinarily unnatural and off-putting. I'm far from the biggest fan of the videogame-spliced-with-prestige-TV-serial trend that Naughty Dog helped popularize, but there's a reason no one does it like Half-Life 2 anymore and that's because it sucks.

Some people have said that this is the Citizen Kane of videogames. In reality, its enigmatic nature makes it closer to the Lighthouse of videogames. That is, if The Lighthouse had blade saws and zombies and gunboats and building an antlion army and a trashcan and a soda can. Needless to say, this is awesome. The only times I got frustrated were when I was stuck in the mentality of "kill every enemy you face," which obviously won't work in some chapters. Every chapter is uniquely brilliant, and the story is very compelling. Overall, a fine addition to my collection of favorite games.

But minus half a star for not having any music during the final fight.

Far exceeds its predecessor in pacing and gameplay variety. Each chapter is distinct in aesthetic, gameplay motifs, weapon usage, and enemy patterns. No section overstays its welcome, unlike some of the parts of Half Life (and even Black Mesa). Truly a pinnacle of FPS design.

Also, shouts out to the sound design! Love that the Combine enemies have a flatline sound when they die. Really great non-visual kill confirmation that reminds me of the original DOOM's use of sound, though with a more minimal style.

Incrível o quão único Half-Life 2 é. Desde as armas, inimigos, mecânicas até a história, tudo é tão próprio e autoral que mesmo sem jogar por 10 anos tu ainda se lembra quando vê.

Eu gosto muito da variação de cenários e gameplay, uma hora o jogo parece ser de terror, com espaços fechados, munição limitada e os inimigos chegando bem perto de você, tendo até sustos em algumas partes. Em outra hora, o jogo é de ação desenfreada, um exército de inimigos pra você matar, explode helicóptero, munição praticamente infinita, etc. E não importa qual gênero o jogo encarna, ele faz tudo muito bem.

Apesar de ter gostado de alguns personagens, como a Alyx, eu admito não ter prestado muito atenção na história, muito por causa do ritmo do jogo. É bem difícil prestar atenção a um diálogo mais longo depois de ter horas de ação desenfreada. Mas eu ainda vou atrás de entender a narrativa.

O jogo apresentando novas armas é incrível, logo de cara você tem várias possibilidades, porém ele faz isso rápido demais e da metade pra frente do jogo ele não tem muita coisa nova, e isso deixa ele meio repetitivo e deixa um pouco chato. E pessoalmente eu me emputeci com algumas escolhas de game design, fiquei algumas vezes perdido sem nenhuma razão.

Mas sem dúvidas recomendo demais, é um daqueles jogos "obrigatórios" de tão clássico que é.