june gloom on 7/1/2009 at 18:22
Nice analogue there. Mind if I steal it?
Thirith on 7/1/2009 at 18:26
No prob.
inselaffe on 7/1/2009 at 23:38
Yes I know but the gameplay arcadey blockbuster style of half life 2 (which in terms of gameplay is basically the same as hl1 but with pyhsics).
Due to the nature of half life and it's on rails feel, for me at least you can't get immersed in it. It's just much to apparent that you are playing a game and you don't really grow to care about the characters because of this.
Another reason not to grow to care about them is the whole plot evasion that the game takes on. I'm not saying they have to give away plot point early but they basically haven't bothered to write any really character rounding depth to many of the characters at all. You discover very little of interest and the characters are not padded out to give you a nice feel for them to make you care for them. Due to the plot evasion it also makes the player lose interest in the plot. This is also not helped by the fact that when you do get "reveals" they are not of anything particularly interesting in the first place and so it just makes you care about what's going on even less. Not that much is going on in the first place. Everything is so predictable and it just springs up a "here we go again" when the game throws up yet another "something bad happened and the way just got blocked, find another way around".
I guess i just meant the whole action movie blockbuster feel of it all rather than genuine depth. It tries to pretend there is depth with the whole "work it out for yourself" approach to story telling but to be honest this is very much wanky especially when the story drags on with nothing happening for so long making it utterly dull. It feels like they are just trying to get the community to come up with crazier and crazier explanations and reading into of things - I bet they have a right old laugh at some of them. In some ways the fan community is writing the backstory for them through all of this. There is a lot of the fan sites of "apparent fact" about what happened in between hl1 and 2 and also other details that is in no way confirmed in the game - not even strong hinting. It's just people's suspicions turned into "fact" so that the company can go along with it and then the fans can be made to feel clever by "getting" it. That's probably too cynical and i don't necessarily mean all of it but still some applies.
The gameplay is sometimes fun but mostly average. The game isn't deep at all but it is very polished and graphically very nice.
I haven't played episode 2 mind you so that could change things.
june gloom on 8/1/2009 at 00:07
I hope to Christ English isn't actually your first language.
Muzman on 8/1/2009 at 07:16
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I agree. The gratuitious gams stuck out like a sore thumb
'gams' used to refer to legs last I heard. Or has it come to refer generally to ...sticky out things?
/gramps
june gloom on 8/1/2009 at 07:49
Huh. You're right. My amusing attempt at alliteration has gone awry.
ZylonBane on 8/1/2009 at 14:10
"Gratuitous gazongas".
gunsmoke on 8/1/2009 at 16:20
Mountainous mammaries.
ZylonBane on 8/1/2009 at 18:35
Brobdingnagian bazooms.
Zaftig zeppelins.
