Holy Shit.
HL1 was a groundbreaking marriage inbetween gameplay and story, but you can still tell there was a Doom/Quake influence. Lots of guns that felt punchy as hell, Lots of enemies from the low level fodder to the threatening grunts that all had their clear and distinct purposes in the combat puzzle, with many diverse ways to take them out.
It's primitive, but it still holds up insanely well.
It has that primary gameplay loop that made those shooters so damn good.
But... instead of expanding on what made the gameplay so great, HL2 has a greater focus on the story, there is more downtime and a greater priority on setpieces instead of perfecting HL1's combat loop, making the gameplay take a backseat, there are less enemies, WAY less guns, and overall the game has an honestly pretty boring cast of threats (gameplay-wise) that should make this game worse than the original, hell, half of the game is just shooting the same low-level combines without any real challenge, (Ravenholm being an excellent exception) but it absolutely makes up for LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.
The artstyle, the story, the characters, the atmosphere, the level design, it's all so damn GOOD.
I don't know how they did it, but GOD DAMN.
HL1 was a groundbreaking marriage inbetween gameplay and story, but you can still tell there was a Doom/Quake influence. Lots of guns that felt punchy as hell, Lots of enemies from the low level fodder to the threatening grunts that all had their clear and distinct purposes in the combat puzzle, with many diverse ways to take them out.
It's primitive, but it still holds up insanely well.
It has that primary gameplay loop that made those shooters so damn good.
But... instead of expanding on what made the gameplay so great, HL2 has a greater focus on the story, there is more downtime and a greater priority on setpieces instead of perfecting HL1's combat loop, making the gameplay take a backseat, there are less enemies, WAY less guns, and overall the game has an honestly pretty boring cast of threats (gameplay-wise) that should make this game worse than the original, hell, half of the game is just shooting the same low-level combines without any real challenge, (Ravenholm being an excellent exception) but it absolutely makes up for LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE.
The artstyle, the story, the characters, the atmosphere, the level design, it's all so damn GOOD.
I don't know how they did it, but GOD DAMN.