>sequel has less weapons and enemiesMake it make sense.
Sorry but we were to busy creating self-masturbatory development books about our game to add more weapons.
>sequel has fewer weapons and enemiesYou’re welcome.
>>12392720>sequel has less weapons and enemiesis incorrect but>sequel has more weapons and enemieswould be correct?Why should “more” get a pass
>>12392698Everyone is afraid of Gordon Freemon, so they are very reluctant to cross paths with him. Even guns.
It's a tech demo for the physics engine, you're supposed to use the gravity gun as much as possible.
>>12392751it's just a third-party physics engine and not even the first game to use it
>>12392698That's the nature of a tech demo.
>>12392751I will say going GG only last time through was fun. Never made it past the part in anticitizen where you're going up some rickety cargo elevator at an inch per minute. Damn handrails made it almost impossible to kill the guys above shooting at you.
>>12392810isn't it super tedious to pick up new shit to throw all the time the whole game through?
>>12392698they cut what was superflous or didn't work, all the xenos that put up no resistance and you slaughter immediately for instance.
>>12393225they cut the most fun enemies in HL1, the soldiers. combine aren't fun to fight, their AI is too simple and if you fight a group only 2 will shoot at the same time
>>12393236Combine AI isn't much worse than HECU, but the places you fight them in are less interesting compared to HL1. An example of realism constraining level design
>>12392698It's called "raising the bar."
>>12393459>Combine AI isn't much worse than HECUUh, no.
>>12393459>>12393486most of the times where the combine seem like they're coordinating are scripted and work out the same when you replay that part. they really gimped the AI in that game.
>>12392698it's really something. HL2 lost so much charm from the original.>>12392726english is a vibe language, you pick up on what naturally sounds right and wrong as you grow up using it. this is what makes it so challenging for ESLs to blend in.
>less weaponsThe game is pretty much primarily designed around using the gravity gun once you get it, they wanted you to play with the physics engine. The guns are nerfed in general because of it. The tau cannon was planned to be obtained as a permanent weapon when you ditch the car at some point during development which would have been nice but it got cut for the same reason I guess.>less enemiesValve put pretty much all the focus on designing the Combine and Rebel AI at the cost of enemy variety. It's pretty cool watching them fight I guess but they really neglected the player vs combine aspect, the combine is very tactical but you're basically a fucking space marine that can just barge in and facetank everything while you hunt them down one by one, so you don't really appreciate anything the AI is trying to do and eventually you feel like there's little variety (because there isn't). There are a lot of encounters where you could just like swap out the combine for some houndeyes or something and the fight really wouldn't go any different but at least it would be a new enemy. It took them until Ep2 to realize that HL2 needed a tanky enemy that's aggressive as fuck and we got the hunters out of that, which are pretty fun until you discover that they made them weak to physics objects so you can just like gravity gun a brick at they and they just fall over
>>12392698Who cares? This game sucks anyways.
>>12392698>but da physics broYea, I'll take back my no physics simulator with 20 gorillion more guns please
>>12393537>the combine is very tactical but you're basically a fucking space marine that can just barge in and facetank everything while you hunt them down one by one, so you don't really appreciate anything the AI is trying to doYah. The combine combat AI is actually really good. But pretty quick you're bunny hopping at 60mph shotgunning them in the face before they have a chance to show it off. Really the game just needs a mod to make them have a little more health, make shotgunners more tanky, and that's kinda it. Give them a chance. You might have to raise ammo pickups a little, but you're usually drowning in ammo anyway.
>>12392726If you wanted to be super accurate you would say ,"a greater number of", not "more"But you're right, people use "more" far more interchangeably for continuous/discrete measures, than less/fewer
>>12392698This is still the best game ever made.
>>12393679*If your favorite food is white bread and your favorite drink is tap water
>>12392698HL2 still has too many weapons though. It was released just when fps games were starting to embrace smaller weaponsets with more distinct situational pros and cons. Being a walking armoury was going out of vogue, same as making the player backtrack for med kits and ammo. You can feel the design philosophy shift noticeably from HL2 > ep1 > ep2
>>12393690>HL2 still has too many weapons though. It was released just when fps games were starting to embrace smaller weaponsets with more distinct situational pros and cons.You're retarded. It was just a regression, because RAGE 1 has a weapon set that goes from 1 to - and its gameplay brutally mogs Dog Life 2.
>>12392698wtf is this shopped image? The Xbox was the only sixth gen console HL2 came out on.
>>12393704What? You didn't play the PS2 port?
>>12393704PS2 version ran like shit but it's impressive they even pulled it off at all.
>>12393486There are times where they stand still and stare straight at you while you take tour sweet time to plug a crossbow bolt in their faces. The HL1 grunts seemed more manic and like they would run around more even if they were more retarded.
>>12394061https://youtu.be/amHTp-YB6Oo?t=4630Even just this random bit of footage captures why the soldiers are better. It's why I like the Black Mesa remake as well, because the soldiers aren't just a shitty reskin of the Combine which most modders would've been fine with doing.
>>12392698Not retro
>>12392816I enjoyed actually struggling with some parts again like the Antlion guard, and just the general lunatic feeling of chasing props around or frantically looking for a piece of trash to throw was amusing to me.
>>12392717They were really raising the bar, alright. The ego bar.
>>12394318it is retro
>>12393225that's stupid. they focus-tested their game with non-gamers who have negative iq for doing the most basic video game shit. so they "streamlined" everything (ie. made it boring shit) and made tons of money. no one on a video game enthusiast board should applaud valve for optimizing their sell-out.
>>12392698They couldn't put as many weapons in HL2 as HL1 because they had to reserve that development time to rig all the ZANY reaction faces that Alyx, Barney, Kleiner make when they stare at Gordon like Dora-the-Ex-Fucking-Plorer in the so-called "cutscenes."
>>12392698EasyFiltered
>>12392698During the development they had A LOT OF weaponsSome returning from from HL1 like Gauss Gun and tripmines, and some new ones like LMG and various combine gunsBut a lot of those guns had the same or simular purpose (SMG1, SMG2, AK, AR2, LMG) so they removed most of them leaving the bare minimum behind
>>12394325It's not
>>12393689>food analogy
>>12394413proof?
>>12394417It's too modern
>>123944182004 is not modern
>>12394420It is
>>12394423time to let go, grandpa
>>123944252007 is modern. 2004 is still retro.
>>12394061Yea, I think the only reason people say HL2's AI is good is because they probably watched a youtube video about how their squad functions work, and think that's some groundbreaking engineering like every game's AI isn't designed like that or something. Combine are a joke along with all of HL2's supposed "edgy" and "eerie" atmosphere that the game tries to impose upon you. I seriously don't understand how anyone above the age of 7 found Ravenholm scary. Looking at the beta images of HL2 makes me yearn for what could've been.
>>12394720>like every game's AI isn't designed like that or somethingIt isn't.
>>12394329>they focus-tested their game with non-gamers who have negative iq for doing the most basic video game shitrelevant
>>12394803Tons of games have AI squad mechanics. Even for its time, it's nothing new if you've actually played any games (you haven't).
>>12394720>I seriously don't understand how anyone above the age of 7 found Ravenholm scaryWhat games do you find scary?
>>12394329if this were true they wouldn't have kept in headcrab enemies that are 10 times more annoying and deadly than stuff life force field dog and the squid lion.
>>12394835Almost nothing. I've yet to see a movie or a game that makes me scared. The closest a piece of fiction has come to scaring me is when there was some legend behind it, like obey the walrus and I feel fantastic, but that was when I was 12.
>>12394835Not him but I basically can't get scared by horror in games, I enjoy survival horror for the tension and atmosphere but actually getting scared is rare for me, which is frustrating because I'd like to get scared.To me, Ravenholm is a spooky Halloween haunted house. It's fun and goofy horror, it's got comedic saw traps and an insane laughing priest with a shotgun and it ends with a romp through a Halloween graveyard under the full moon, this shit is impossible to take seriously.
>>12394870If you don't ever feel scared by games then your claim that "Ravenholm only scares 7 year olds" holds literally zero weight. That's like a blind person saying no image scares them.
>>12394835Ravenholme's atmosphere is at odds with the fact that it's explicitly designed to be a gravity gun playground and all the enemies are just the same zombies you've already been fighting. I think to be scared of Ravenholme you'd have to also be scared of pretty much any other dark area that might have zombies and headcrabs in it because there's really not much more to it than that until the fast zombies show up.
>>12394835do you find ravenholm scary? it's one of the more interesting locations of the game, if only because so much of it up to that point is drab, but i certainly wouldn't call it scary. as >>12395463 notes it's pretty clearly designed to be an area where you can fuck around and kill zombies with buzzsaws and stuff for fun. you're not restricted in any way and you even get the shotgun to blast through the fuckers there.
>>12394831>you haven'tI have though.
>>12393225dont bother convincing tech demo schizos
>>12392698The beginning of boring and dumb expansion packs. Make new games, don't call them "episodes"!
>>12392816It lost its novelty for me but it was still fun to screw around with it or give the controller to the Mrs and let watch her mess around with the gravity gun
>>12394856That dog looked like a butthole Vienna sausage. Ravenholm just felt weird, like a hard shift from sci fi to horror out of nowhere. It stands out like a sore thumb and it would be the only part of the game I'd consider a 'tech demo' since it just struck me as random even though they explain it all with the narrative of the game. I'd almost say that FEAR had better squad and individual ai than hl2 but I'm just going off of my memory since I haven't played either game in at least 7 years. If PS2 can handle half life 2 then I want a switch port. Gabe, see to it.
>>12395463>>12395665Yes I definitely found Ravenholm scary and disturbing when I first played it. The zombies' tortured screams, the blood and dismembered corpses in the shed, the electrocuted charred corpse on the fence, the fast zombie climbing up the pipe, the poison headcrab, the poison zombie etc.It's all heightened because you don't expect the game to take a horror turn.
>>12398518I thought it's exactly what made it unscary. it's so over the top and separate from the rest of the game it feels like a haunted house ride. sometimes more is less.
