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How many FPS campaigns have surpassed HL2 in the last 13 years?
- Thread starter oni-link
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HL2 is probably the most overrated tech demos ever, and Valve knows it very well that's why there's still no HL3, if Valve isn't done with the series then we'll probably see HL3 when Valve will think to have a marketable gimmick/innovation like the physics in HL2(maybe something VR related imo).
CitizenCope
Member
For me all of them. I think it's the only FPS in the last 13 yrs that makes me want to vomit.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Syndicate 2012's level design style was extremely similar, as was its AI design, and its liberal use of slow motion, and it's arguably a better version of FEAR in most areas. But ultimately, it's a deeply problematic tradeoff because everything is so tight and constrained. The level design doesn't really feel organic because everything looks like a combat zone waiting to happen.
Like FEAR, Crysis 2's AI is much better than Crysis 1's precisely because the level design is more linear and structured and this allows for much better flanking behavior, but that's a complex tradeoff.
Games should only be as long as their story can justify them being. Far too many FPS games from years past were just too long for their own good. (The Metro games are a good example of this in recent years. Metro: Last Light would benefit from having 2 hours or so shaved from it to tighten up the story.)
FEAR is a game that drags its narrative out for far too long. It should have been shaved down by 3 or so hours, or else the story should have been restructured to flow better. There are long stretches where you're fighting dudes and dudes and more dudes for upwards of an hour and the story isn't being advanced one iota.
It is repetitive, though. The KPA don't put up much of a fight, their AI is easily exploited, and half the objectives are just following waypoints as you run through empty jungle and more empty jungle. When the Ceph turn up, you end up running in circles shooting at bullet sponge flying squid for a few hours.
I was playing Just Cause 3 recently, and it offers so much freedom and mobility and it's boring at times. You leap around blowing up enemy bases and blowing up trees and there's so much freedom but it's all painfully repetitive. Blow up one hut, you've blown them all up. Sandbox rampage gets repetitive fast. Although some people do find endless joy from such things, I'm not one of them.
Crysis 1 is a sandbox to the detriment of its overall game design. Goofing off with the nanosuit gets boring very fast. Crysis 1 lacks the kind of tight encounter design and story pacing seen in Crysis 2. In Crysis 1, there are flashes of greatness at some points in the game, but most of it is extremely stodgy. Like this weird power fantasy where you rampage through the jungle massacring AI that can't navigate around outhouses.
I like Crysis 1, but as a game it is extremely uneven, wheras Crysis 2 is an extremely polished, mechanically cohesive game with tight pacing and encounter design. Fighting in a carpark in Crysis 2 is TIGHT. FEAR-grade tight.
FEAR 1 was ported to consoles with almost no changes made to its UI and design. I think that would indicate that the changes made for FEAR 2 were motivated by other factors.
As for Crysis 2, its design changes were overall positive, except for tying sprint to suit energy, which Crysis 3 rectified. One of the big problems in Crysis 1 was that the nanosuit movement was much too fast, and this badly hurt the AI's ability to follow the player, as well as the designer's ability to dictate some kind of coherent story pacing. Players could just sprint through huge stretches of a level, past all the enemies.
edit:
All that said, I think an in-depth discussion of the differences between Crysis 1, 2, and 3, and their relative strengths and weaknesses is beyond the scope of this particular thread. Very complex subject.
bee
Member
none, a few have equalled it like episode 2, crysis and stalker modded(chernobyl and pripyat)
can't agree with many of the suggestions here, i've played doom 2016, bioshocks, cod 4, metros's etc and none of them are even in the same league for me
prey looks interesting but i've not managed to play that yet
can't agree with many of the suggestions here, i've played doom 2016, bioshocks, cod 4, metros's etc and none of them are even in the same league for me
prey looks interesting but i've not managed to play that yet
boneyjangles
Member
I would say many, many games FPS, or third person have surpassed it. I agree with others that it had a bit of a 'tech demo' feel to it, and HL1 stands out more in my memory.
Why? What's so difficult to comprehend about some preferring the dynamism of AI duels in Halo over the rather by-the-numbers encounters and straightforward puzzles of HL2? Given your only argument is resulting to broad insults and personal character assumptions, you aren't convincing anyone. I like both Halo and HL, but the worst part may be the fans.
Conciliator
Banned
Bioshock is not better than HL2
bioshock 2 is, however
bioshock 2 is, however
Dr. Carroll
Banned
I feel like trying to compare games simply based on the fact they're first person and feature firearms does them a disservice. Half-Life 2 arguably belongs in a different subgenre to something like Halo. It's sort of a "journey-driven" FPS. There are a lot of disparate FPS games that get lumped together even though they're conceptually extremely different. I don't think you can reasonably compare something like HL2 and something like Doom 2016 and determine which is "better". They're chalk and cheese. Their design priorities are completely different. To use an extreme example, it's like arguing whether Schindler's List or Terminator 2 are "better" because "they both have guns".
Conciliator
Banned
Half-life 2 I think you really had to play at the time. True with a lot of tech showpiece shooters, I guess. But it was mad cool at the time.
Glass Rebel
Member
Half-Life 2 definitely has some design quirks that don't gel with me anymore and that one could argue are a failure in design. If you take, for example, the "gunplay", (weapon handling, audiovisual feedback etc.) it goes in many cases against modern sensibilities about what makes a good FPS. The guns don't feel like "real" guns the way developers like DICE or Respawn try to make them but act more like abstractions of shooting mechanics. It's what leads to this "peashooter" feel many criticize about HL2 and while I do agree that it doesn't feel as satisfying as shooting a gun in Battlefield, it's absolutely in service of the design. There's a certain meticulousness in its mechanics and level design and I see it in many regards as a predecessor to the Uncharted school of design but time has not been kind to some of its aspects.
Outside of genre hybrids (which I consider a seperate genre to the "pure" FPS HL2 is), Very few since, and even those would be pretty subjective. If we include episode 2 as part of the whole then none. This is from someone who thought HL2 was a disappointment at the time and was making many of the complaints in this thread when it came out (we totally needed 10+ years of the genre mostly being stagnant shit to work out these enlightened critisms though!).
There are better FPS than HL2, it's just that most of them came out before it.
There are better FPS than HL2, it's just that most of them came out before it.
I didn't play HL2 when it came out, I played it way too late and found it nothing special. It was okayish campaign overall with some cool levels, and a confusing ass story. I didn't even bother with Episode 1 and 2.
Most FPS campaigns I've played have been way better, stuff like Bioshock and Far Cry have been more fun and replayable than HL2 was for me.
I'm actually playing Wolfenstien The Next Order now and it reminds me a lot of HL2. Expect the story actually makes sense. I did like the level design better in HL2 though. Overall, I would say they're about the same level of good.
I'm sure HL2 was a big advancement when it came out, but without nostalgia its easy to see it's been surpassed and matched many times since it came out.
Most FPS campaigns I've played have been way better, stuff like Bioshock and Far Cry have been more fun and replayable than HL2 was for me.
I'm actually playing Wolfenstien The Next Order now and it reminds me a lot of HL2. Expect the story actually makes sense. I did like the level design better in HL2 though. Overall, I would say they're about the same level of good.
I'm sure HL2 was a big advancement when it came out, but without nostalgia its easy to see it's been surpassed and matched many times since it came out.
Discotheque
Banned
I liked FEAR, Doom and Titanfall 2 a lot
but I think Wolfenstein The New Order has gotta be the one that really felt like it took the scripted sequences and storytelling presentation of Half Life 2 and ran with it.
can't wait for the sequel in a few months.
but I think Wolfenstein The New Order has gotta be the one that really felt like it took the scripted sequences and storytelling presentation of Half Life 2 and ran with it.
can't wait for the sequel in a few months.
AzureFlame
Member
I thought TF2 was avarage, Halo and Bioshock games were really really good.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Did you at research HL1's backstory? The plot of HL2 isn't particularly complicated.
That's a shame, because HL2: Episode 2 was extremely good. (Ep 1 was pretty solid, too.) And Ep 2 features that one speech that really defines HL2 as enigma-driven. There are forces at work beyond your understanding, and the fact we never got HL3 made the sudden deluge of hints and knowing smirks in Episode 2 all the more a slap in the face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wtqfAHFEg8
"Doctor Freeeeeeeeeman," is easily the best line in the series. It perfectly captures that sense of being a naughty little puppy getting a bit too enthusiastic about pulling on its leash. Narratively, G-Man drives Half-Life. All the other characters are just puppets he's manipulating. I guess the risk with HL3 is that whatever grand twist was waiting wouldn't live up to the fantasy in our heads.
TheRedSnifit
Member
They absolutely should not have made the game shorter - sacrificing the gameplay - for the sake of the story, what kind of a suggestion is that? If anything, they should've put the story in the instruction manual where it belongs and added a few more hours to the game.
Crysis 2 shootouts are generally boring popamole affairs and the story is borderline incomprehensible. The AI is ported straight from Crysis 1 and thinks it's in a jungle, and as such has no idea how to navigate the environment. I think I've seen exactly one instance where an enemy throws a grenade without having it bounce off whatever his cover is and blow him up.
Elfotografoalocado
Banned
Half Life 2 amazed me when I played it a few months ago. So many brilliant ideas, weapons, levels, characters... It also mixes up its enemy types beautifully.
It feels kinda old at times mind you, and the seams are noticeable in movement, in asset reuse... But the experience is very, very good.
Like some movies, it doesn't age.
It feels kinda old at times mind you, and the seams are noticeable in movement, in asset reuse... But the experience is very, very good.
Like some movies, it doesn't age.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this topic. More is not necessarily better when it comes to linear game narratives. It's better to have a tightly paced 6 hour game than a sloppily paced 12 hour game where your extraction helicopter keeps crashing conveniently, or the elevator gets stuck, or you get knocked out -- again, or some similarly arbitrary thing happens to keep the game wheezing along for another few hours.
Combat for the sake of combat is not particularly interesting. Singleplayer FPS games operate by very different rules to multiplayer FPS games. Particularly story-driven ones. (Open world ones can bypass this a bit by having heaps of environmental storytelling scattered about to keep players occupied.)
FEAR should have been shorter, because it didn't have enough story material to keep the game going for that long. It spins its wheels for hours. This extends to the expansions. Extraction Point shamelessly asspulls reasons why you keep having to take detours, including resurrecting Fettel which "Doesn't make sense" in Fettel's own words.
On the flipside, Syndicate 2012 should have been longer by 2-3 hours at least, because the game had a really deep world building narrative going on. It rushed over heaps of major story beats, and that hurt the game. There should have been more exploration sections. More downtime between the shooting. Shooting, shooting, and more shooting is dull. You need room to breath, time to soak in the atmosphere. The safe house sections in Wolfenstein: The New Order, which is kind of a successor to Syndicate 2012 in a lot of ways, is a good example of this. Variety is the spice of life.
It sounds to me like you don't put much value on story in FPS games. But in games like these, the story IS the game. It's the flesh on the mechanical bones. It drives the engine.
Leak
Member
I think there's a big misunderstanding about how to consider Half-Life 2.
Half-Life 2 isn't just a "FPS", it's more a kind of adventures games, like Metroid Prime but not so "non shooter sided". HL2 and its episodes have a good rythm, overwhelming graphics, originality, a good universe and setting, etc, but it definitely has some no-perfect zones, an improvable gunplay that in fact wasn't improved in the episodes, a limited AI, a not too good multiplayer, etc. It simply has a really good campaign and the effector and unended history that made players to keep up, creating an hard to overcome legend.
When it comes to show later FPSs "better" than HL2 you're not really being fair with the other games because you're just searching for an adventure's game that also has to be a FPS. In the FPS side, about shootings and that stuff, there are SEVERAL games better than HL2. In the adventure side, there are games that definitely face HL2. The sad part is that there aren't really much games that try to be innovative or to evolve games.
You're limiting this too to the campaign. It's a fact that HL2 development brought all the efforts and ideas into the campaign, and it's hard to be fair with other masterpieces like Halo 3, which had a brilliant campaign but too had a great amount of work to keep multiplayer great and also create the first big community faced content creator (forge).
SO we can assume HL2 campaign is the biggest campaign production and a brilliant campaign which additionally has the possibility of be how their developers wished, and that's not a possibility that a sequel like Halo 3 has. If we reduce the comparison to "that relatively good campagins" we can go all straight to Halo 3. But the truth is that there are no more (or no much more) that good FPSs, and not many more adventure games.
Changing the subject, I can't understand why Titanfall 2 campaign's is atributed to be that good. The first 2/3 of the campaign have a really good rythm in it's normal difficulty that is just broken in the (absurdly) hard difficulty, but the game hasn't nothing more to say, it's just a fun mix of Singularity - Mirror's Edge - Quantum Break - Call of Duty plot, ideas and scenes but that's all, not a really good level design, awful AI, the last two levels are much worse than the others... And it lasts like 4 hours in normal difficulty.
And I'm too a big detractor of Wolfenstein TNO and DOOM [2016], the first one is just a Call of Duty style game with cool old-fashioned esthetic, but hasn't too a good AI, a surprising gunplay, a really hard difficulty or a good level design. DOOM is just an abuse of edgy-badass moments with an innuendo of a good level design with that colour keys that just keeps you in the good-linear travel between repetitive horde moments where the only thing you have to do is run away from the enemies and don't use that weird alternate shots that make you slower or even to stay static.
Bioshock was good because of it's satting and history but that's all. Crysis saga is a big miss: All started really good with Crysis but Crysis 2 and 3 brought new good ideas into overall worse games. And then there are Call of Duty games... Really good rythm in it's bets titles but... Again, that's all.
The bigger FPSs that I still have to play in this period are STALKERs and the new Prey, and about what I've heard, I think they won't be at HL2/H3 level but really good games.
Half-Life 2 isn't just a "FPS", it's more a kind of adventures games, like Metroid Prime but not so "non shooter sided". HL2 and its episodes have a good rythm, overwhelming graphics, originality, a good universe and setting, etc, but it definitely has some no-perfect zones, an improvable gunplay that in fact wasn't improved in the episodes, a limited AI, a not too good multiplayer, etc. It simply has a really good campaign and the effector and unended history that made players to keep up, creating an hard to overcome legend.
When it comes to show later FPSs "better" than HL2 you're not really being fair with the other games because you're just searching for an adventure's game that also has to be a FPS. In the FPS side, about shootings and that stuff, there are SEVERAL games better than HL2. In the adventure side, there are games that definitely face HL2. The sad part is that there aren't really much games that try to be innovative or to evolve games.
You're limiting this too to the campaign. It's a fact that HL2 development brought all the efforts and ideas into the campaign, and it's hard to be fair with other masterpieces like Halo 3, which had a brilliant campaign but too had a great amount of work to keep multiplayer great and also create the first big community faced content creator (forge).
SO we can assume HL2 campaign is the biggest campaign production and a brilliant campaign which additionally has the possibility of be how their developers wished, and that's not a possibility that a sequel like Halo 3 has. If we reduce the comparison to "that relatively good campagins" we can go all straight to Halo 3. But the truth is that there are no more (or no much more) that good FPSs, and not many more adventure games.
Changing the subject, I can't understand why Titanfall 2 campaign's is atributed to be that good. The first 2/3 of the campaign have a really good rythm in it's normal difficulty that is just broken in the (absurdly) hard difficulty, but the game hasn't nothing more to say, it's just a fun mix of Singularity - Mirror's Edge - Quantum Break - Call of Duty plot, ideas and scenes but that's all, not a really good level design, awful AI, the last two levels are much worse than the others... And it lasts like 4 hours in normal difficulty.
And I'm too a big detractor of Wolfenstein TNO and DOOM [2016], the first one is just a Call of Duty style game with cool old-fashioned esthetic, but hasn't too a good AI, a surprising gunplay, a really hard difficulty or a good level design. DOOM is just an abuse of edgy-badass moments with an innuendo of a good level design with that colour keys that just keeps you in the good-linear travel between repetitive horde moments where the only thing you have to do is run away from the enemies and don't use that weird alternate shots that make you slower or even to stay static.
Bioshock was good because of it's satting and history but that's all. Crysis saga is a big miss: All started really good with Crysis but Crysis 2 and 3 brought new good ideas into overall worse games. And then there are Call of Duty games... Really good rythm in it's bets titles but... Again, that's all.
The bigger FPSs that I still have to play in this period are STALKERs and the new Prey, and about what I've heard, I think they won't be at HL2/H3 level but really good games.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Calling FEAR a story-driven game is a huge reach when the plot is mostly just there to contextualize the action or provide excuses for spoopy cutscenes (which I could've done without). There is no attempt at deep world building, or emotional beats, or anything. This is a good thing! System Shock, Doom, Resident Evil 4, and FEAR are still the greatest shooters because they only attempt to justify what's going on in the loosest sense possible, which is what allows the devs to create a wide variety of interesting level design. Doom's designers didn't have to worry about whether the length of their game ruined the story's pacing. System Shock's devs didn't concern themselves with whether or not a change would make Citadel look more or less like a space station. Resident Evil 4's devs didn't care whether a rudimentary village could support the thousands of people you kill over the course of the game.
Cinematic design is extremely bad for shooters as a genre, and story-focused games have been shutting out shooters with more traditional design for years. Shooter devs have dumped scenario designers, level designers, and the like for more writers, more directors, more animation professionals etc. This is why the quality of shooters has absolutely plummeted over the last decade.
Soulblighter31
Banned
Those fragmentations are one of the many faults of Wolfenstein which isnt that amazing shooter this forum and literally nobody else insinuates. Breakes the pacing of the game constantly and ruins the flow of the action. Variety and pace braking is done, as HL 1 and 2 do, amazingly. Allied Assault or the earlier COD games also as examples. You're driving a jeep, a turret on an airplane, a tank. You're breaking the shooting sequences a bit to spice up the game. The way Wolf does it is the worst way possible, especially in the kind of game it tries to be.
Jesus Christ almighty, NO. Gameplay and design is king. FPS is a genre defined by action, by adrenaline. Its a game. Story is a crutch for the gameplay, a secondary thing that supports and enhances the gameplay, not the other way around.
hendersonhank
Member
I never understood the "revolutionary" claims for Half-Life 2.
Psi-Ops came out five months earlier and did physics-based gameplay far better (and much more fun) than HL2 did. Add in the other powers like possession, and Psi-Ops just had far more varied and impressive mechanics and gameplay, while being way more fun.
Psi-Ops came out five months earlier and did physics-based gameplay far better (and much more fun) than HL2 did. Add in the other powers like possession, and Psi-Ops just had far more varied and impressive mechanics and gameplay, while being way more fun.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
You're still engaging in action. Relentless action of any form is... not great. The early CoD games are relentless, mindless shooting for the most part, but this is kind of justified by the way they depict these large scale battles that drag on and on. This doesn't gel with other subgenres. Black Ops III has relentless action against waves of enemies and it is not good.
I would contrast this with something like Black Ops II, where one of the best sections of the game is walking through the futuristic floating city. No guns. No action. Just walking and storytelling. Seeing advertising tailor itself to you. It's extremely similar to a section in Syndicate 2012, released the same year, where you infiltrate a floating city and have the opportunity to screw with holographic kiosks to make them blab extremely damaging facts about the syndicates.
Perfect Dark is the greatest FPS game of all time -- IMHO -- and one facet of its genius is how little the game relies on shooting. Shooting people is a means to an end. You shoot people because they try to shoot you. You are here to complete objectives, not to shoot people. You shoot people because you CHOOSE to. You could also choose to disarm them. Or run away.
Action for the sake of action is not a good thing in story-driven singleplayer games. Forcing the player to engage in action is especially bad. (Looking at you, Doom 2016: Door Locking Simulator)
Soulblighter31
Banned
Thats not how FPS games work :-( All being said, seems to me you dont like FPS games, but more something like adventure games. You take pleasure when you're not having action in a genre defined and created for action. You dont like FPS games
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Genre purism is a dead end. The arguably unsurpassed Mario 64 is a "platformer" that isn't about "platforming" at all. It's about completing objectives in a semi-sandbox. (GoldenEye was directly influenced by Mario 64, and this trickled down into Perfect Dark.)
Perfect Dark is an objective-driven FPS game. You are presented with objectives, and you complete them. This involves a lot of discovery and intuition. Sometimes problems have multiple solutions. Extremely similar gameplay loop to the Hitman games. The Hitman games are third person shooters that are not specifically about shooting. Nor are they about stealth in the traditional sense.
For its own part, Half-Life 2 is a story-driven FPS game which frames itself around a journey through a variety of locales. You shoot people because they are preventing you from reaching your destination. Shooting is not really your primary means of interaction with the world, but rather traversal, puzzle solving, and even driving.
FPS games where all you do is shoot are a genre of their own, to some extent, and that style of game is arguably better suited to multiplayer than singleplayer.
This is not a new disagreement. Doom was supposed to be story-driven with multiple male and female protagonists and a storyline that gave the player reasons to go from A to B. (Honestly, Tom Hall's design document paints a picture more akin to Prey than the Doom we got. Complete with interactive computer terminals and male/female lead choices.) Tom Hall, the original lead designer of Doom, strongly disagreed with the direction John Romero took the project, where the player spent most of the game engaged in shooting with no point. No character motivations. Not to say Doom is by any means a bad game, but the "no plot, shoot lots of stuff" design template is one of those things that suits a particular style of game. Half-Life 2 would completely collapse without its narrative structure. It simply wouldn't work as a game. Same goes for almost every modern FPS games.
Monocle
Member
Too many to list? At the time, the Halo series was giving it a run for its money.
HL2's story driven campaign is a good experience, but it's highly linear in many areas. Oppressively linear if you're used to less scripted games. The gunplay is solid but not genre defining. Quite honestly, on my list of fun FPS experiences it ranks near the bottom.
I like the dynamic, unpredictable, highly replayable encounters and intuitively satisfying controls and mechanics of Halo much much more.
HL2's story driven campaign is a good experience, but it's highly linear in many areas. Oppressively linear if you're used to less scripted games. The gunplay is solid but not genre defining. Quite honestly, on my list of fun FPS experiences it ranks near the bottom.
I like the dynamic, unpredictable, highly replayable encounters and intuitively satisfying controls and mechanics of Halo much much more.
Psi-Ops was awesome and very much overlooked. It did lack Valve's meticulous scene setting and visuals though.
hendersonhank
Member
I agree, but Valve already did that with the first Half Life. That's why I don't think Half Life 2 was at all revolutionary. It did the same thing HL did with atmosphere and setting and graphics -- so, not revolutionary in that way -- and had physics-based gameplay that Psi-Ops already did more creatively and more fun.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
I dunno. Psi-Ops was positively famous compared to poor Second Sight, which had the misfortune to be developed in complete isolation yet resembled Psi-Ops enough that they ended up eating each other's lunch.
Speaking of Psi-Ops, though: While I haven't checked the credits for exact details, a number of Midway employees went on to form Phosphor Games, and they made Gemini: Heroes Reborn, the time-jumping first person adventure game with game mechanics extremely similar (identical in Dishonored 2's case) to Titanfall 2 and Dishonored 2, but released almost a year earlier.
You have some strange opinions.
What about AI and companion stuff?
Psi-Ops and Second Sight were pretty much one blob of a game in my memory up to now as well.
Dr. Carroll
Banned
Alyx from HL2 is really a well implemented version of various AI partners prior. Natalya in GoldenEye is a fairly early example. She followed you, sometimes fought, and there was realtime text dialogue between her and Bond as you proceeded through the handful of levels she existed in.
Even Valerie from Far Cry, released the same year as HL2, accompanied you on a mission and did "action girl" stuff.
In some sense, HL2 was a well executed version of what Romero was attempting with Daikatana back in the day.
Where HL2 excelled was using animation and voice acting to really "sell" the companion character. Alyx is introduced via a full screen close-up showing off her facial animation. And a lot of work went into making Alyx seem less "NPC-ish" than previous implementations of the idea. (There's a great section in Ep 1 where you have to light zombies with a flashlight so she can shoot them.) That she was working with Gordon, rather than following him around. Also, HL2 tried to prevent the partner AI frustrating the player.
Most of the Halo games since
BioShock 1, 2, and Infinite
Wolfenstein
A lot more.
I don't think HL2 has aged well. It has some very good elements to itthe world building, and the slow progression back to where you started/the visible element of your progress, and NPCs that stay out of your waybut it is a letdown in a lot of ways. The uninspired guns which lack bite, the terribly uninteresting platforming and puzzles, the lack of an interesting main character. Whole stretches of the game are straight-up boring to me (vehicles in Half-Life are just not fun to drive around in.)
I appreciate it for what it was, but that's about all I give it credit for. Not going back to replay it ever again since I got all the HL-related achievements in The Orange Box.
BioShock 1, 2, and Infinite
Wolfenstein
A lot more.
I don't think HL2 has aged well. It has some very good elements to itthe world building, and the slow progression back to where you started/the visible element of your progress, and NPCs that stay out of your waybut it is a letdown in a lot of ways. The uninspired guns which lack bite, the terribly uninteresting platforming and puzzles, the lack of an interesting main character. Whole stretches of the game are straight-up boring to me (vehicles in Half-Life are just not fun to drive around in.)
I appreciate it for what it was, but that's about all I give it credit for. Not going back to replay it ever again since I got all the HL-related achievements in The Orange Box.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
Black Mesa.
visiblemode
Member
Wolfenstein: TNO, for sure.
Deadpool_X
Banned
HL2 really isn't as good as the narrative around it pretends it is. It was cool for its time, but it didn't even best the original Half-Life, let alone be the end-all, be-all most claim it is. It's just that people are so scared to admit a Gaben game isn't GOAT they they keep up the false narrative.
Fata1moose
Banned
Half-Life 2 feels completely sterile to me, there's little personality there, I thought the episodes were an improvement. Half-Life 1 is amazing.
Campaigns I found better
Bioshock
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo 3 ODST
Wolfenstein TNO
Doom 2016
Campaigns I found better
Bioshock
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo 3 ODST
Wolfenstein TNO
Doom 2016
The thing is this is the wrong way around; the HL2 way is how the genre mostly used to be. Even so-called "brainless" FPS like Doom had environmental interactions like traps and puzzles, with exploration in downtime being a major part of the game. It's only after everyone took the wrong lessons from COD4 (which itself took the basis of HL design to an extreme) that it was decided FPS games (and action games in general) should be a railroad to non-stop combat and set-pieces with no other gameplay of substance.