I'm the exact opposite. I think Highway 17 is the best level in the game. I love the atmosphere, the setting, how much you can explore, and how you can skip entire fights if you just want to drive along to the next obstacle. The crane part was great, and you can do that whole part backwards if you find the right way.
Thank you for quoting my enormous page 2 post that I feared would get lost.
Also, I completely 100% agree about Highway 17. It's my one of my most memorable sections of any game for precisely the reasons I said in my previous post -- it's all about pacing. HL2 gives you moments of action, but then gives you the right break when you need it. Highway 17 is an excellent set of levels, and one that shows you that there is a lot more to this world than you would perceive from the first few levels... It isn't just industrial city scape or zombie land, there is a relatively peaceful -- but still affected -- world outside of the city gates.
Highway 17 is where I took most of my screenshots... Screenshots of the cliffs and driving, and obviously of that ominous luming bridge in the distance.
Which leads me to my next points:
Great games show you where you want to go, and you don't need directions telling you how to get there. There are a few games that do this very well -- GTA: San Andreas, Fallout 3, and best of all, Half-Life 2.
When you first step out into City 17, you see one enormous structure that dominates the city scape, the Citadel. At nearly every important moment of the game, you can look in one direction or another, and see the Citadel (Except in the sections that you purposely cannot see it: like Ravenholm... This is done on purpose to show that the city guard's reach does not get there). The Citadel looms over almost all of your game, and that's ultimately where you're headed. Most regions in the game do something similar, by showing you where you ultimately want to end up, and then it's your mission to get there. The Bridge on Highway 17 is a good example as well, but the Citadel is
the focus of the entire game. You begin the game at the feet of the citadel, and then you work your way through a journey, and end up at the top of it, to ultimately bring it all down.
(In my other two examples, SA and Fallout 3... In SA, you begin in the ghetto, you get a view of the world, and that's ultimately the world you return to and dominate. In Fallout 3, you emerge from the Vault and see the Washington Monument, the only perfectly clear view of it in that area, and you know -- that's where I need to go. FWIW Fallout 3 makes some key mistakes with getting to your goal by having a ridiculous waypointing system that doesn't work)
