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I’d like to see how everyone answers Rutskarn’s question, “What’s the WORST section of Half-Life 2?” Try to give your answer before you read everyone else’s.
In contrast to Rutskarn, I kind of think the whole sand traps (“The Floor is Lava”) section of Half-Life 2 is fun… ONCE. It’s basically a really long puzzle with lots of fiddly physics busywork, and puzzles lose their appeal once you know the solution.
That said, I usually cheat past the mines, but sprint through the sand traps. It’s actually pretty easy once you realize it won’t spawn more that four antlions at once, and once you get ahead of them they’re a small threat.
Do It Again, Stupid
One of the highest-rated games of all time has some of the least interesting gameplay.
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
Mass Effect Retrospective
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
Final Fantasy X
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
Okay, worst section of HL2: Mine is the bit in Episode 2 where you’re running around fighting those things that shoot the exploding darts, and something about a magnusson device, and … it suddenly felt videogamey. Odd, I know. Left a bad taste in my mouth.
Ok, I wrote my answer without reading other comments, but this. So much this.
Yeah that last fight was way too much running back and forth.
That was my favorite part of EP2
Me too. I have a save point just to replay this section whenever I like.
The worst thing in the game for me — that stupid flashlight!
Are video games not supposed to feel like video games? Surely, being “video gamey” would be the highest of compliments and not a criticism?
Its a deceptive name.It means that a sequence is there without rhyme or reason.It doesnt give you meaningful gameplay,it doesnt give you meaningful story,its there just to pad out time.So its definitely a bad thing,even though its name taken literally doesnt suggest that.
The part where you get the buggy and the antlions on sand rule is in effect, and then you flip it over and must knock it back upright with the gravity gun while antlions are gnawing you to death.
“What's the WORST section of Half-Life 2?”
The battle in the ruined buildings,where you run to fight the two striders and there are infinitely spawning combine.Not fun.
i second this, and also add that i hated the first strider fight, i never found the infinite rockets on the ground until the end, and so i had a running battle with infinite combine and a strider making my life hell.
is the second one partially my fault, yes but its still the bit i hate.
I hadn’t been thinking of this, but now that you mention it, I’ve got to third this. Died so many times at this segment – although, it does feel quite cathartic when you FINALLY do finish those striders off and you get to breathe again.
(… but probably my least favourite part, if we’re considering the episodes also, was the large glass elevator ride where large chunks of debris are falling on you that you have to punt away with your gravity gun. Die constantly, need to repeat constantly, the physics aren’t 100% reliably going to tell you when you shoot one piece that it’s not just going to wing the debris and set it right into the elevator, or bounce off a wall and come back… and the range of the gravity gun isn’t remarkable, so I sit there shooting and shooting and STILL often managed not to hit at the right time)
Until I saw Josh do it, it never occured to me to punt the freefalling debris. I always caught it first (RMB), which works nearly 100% of the time (I mean, you could still fuck up the subsequent punt, but probably not).
It works,but it leaves you less time to deal with other debris.
Whats the worst about that sequence it that it doesnt convey well which pieces of debris will break the glass and which wont,thus you can end up dealing with something inconsequential when another piece zooms right next to you and kills you.
And I… forth it?
Like I said all the way down there, this part is the worst. Bad cover coupled with difficult rocket-firing angles coupled with a rocket box difficult to access coupled with platforming through narrow steel girdles…
The developer that thought that up really needed to get through some issues. Or at least I hope he was properly disciplined afterwards.
The sandtraps section is actually pretty short.Its long only the first time,where you dont know where to go,and are hunting for goodies.But once you know whats there,and all the easter eggs,you can just dash to the end no problem.No need to prolong it.In contrast to my worst,where you simply have to go through that section every time.You can reduce the difficulty to make it more bearable though.
There’s this one room in the segment where you’ve got Barney to follow, and you’re punting energy balls out of containers to… shut down a thing. I dunno. Basically, you’re fighting through City Hall, and then there’s one room where Barney looks in and says “Nope.”, you walk in and the door locks behind you and you’re stuck in a room with a bunch of instant-death lasers, expected to do first-person jumping puzzles with Half-Life’s trademark rocket-powered ice skates movement. I spent a solid hour beating my head against that room, ragequit, and didn’t pick the game up again for SEVEN YEARS.
Ohhhh yeah I remember that part! It was actually pretty cool and a nice change of pace, imo. You’re right about HL2’s jumping mechanics being finicky though.
The first time I went through that section, one of the doors stayed locked shut and I couldn’t progress. I spent ages wandering around and couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong (it was just a bug, thankfully I had an earlier save from before that building, I think the autosave point was inside the building after the bug had done it’s damage).
The strider fight near the end of the city fight, where there are several of them in front of a huge building. I died a lot and had no fun. Might have helped if there was a bit of music, I’m pretty sure that battle was a dramatic boss fight in dead silence.
I only played through it one time, so I don’t know how well the slower parts hold up for me, but I liked them the first time. The parts where you can’t skip people talking at you for several minutes probably won’t be fun.
For me the worst part of the game are the huge street battles at the end between the resistance and the Combine.
Don’t get me wrong, they are very fun an appropriately epic, but in any game where you have nameless mortal followers, I horribly, painfully, compulsively, time-consumingly MUST SAVE THEM ALL. Which in Half Life 2 is difficult in some parts and utterly impossible in others.
In retrospect this may be a problem with me rather than the game….
Edit: This is even worse when playing the final battle of Episode 2.
How long has gordon been awake anyway?Can we count his time in void space as sleeping?Because you go through half life 1 in a day and a half,end up being stasised for a while,then you go another day and a half through half life 2,through void space once more,then you go on for about another day and a half through the episodes.So almost 5 days without sleep,unless void space somehow involves rejuvenating his body.
Half life 2 isn’t a day and a half long. I think. IIRC You go through Ravenholm the first night, then by the next night you’re charging Nova Prospect, and after some time travel you’re climbing the citadel at sunset of the 3rd day. For the episodes it’s harder to tell but judging from how the lighting doesn’t change too much I’d say both of them happen in the same day. Or you spend the night(s) underground.
Oh yeah,forgot that ravenholm is at night as well.Thats even worse for poor sleepless freeman.
It’s ok, he’s getting his rest now. After blacking out at the end of episode 2. And there was after the train crash. It just takes a good sized concussion for him to get to sleep.
He was also asleep for a long time after the citadel teleporter explosion :P (Alyx had been looking for him for days I believe)
I thought there was a more explicit “you’ve been stuck in a time loop for a week!” dialogue after the teleport accident leaving Nova Prospekt (which is why there are suddenly armed rebels in the streets for “Follow Freeman” who weren’t there before.)
There’s definitely a gap in “real time” (though not Gordon’s time) between Nova Prospekt and the Citidel.
Yes,but gordon was already running awake for 2 days by then.The slow teleport didnt affect his sleep,even though it displaced them in time.
The only thing I really miss that was lost through constant patching and face lifting of the game is the original look of the headcrab zombies.Back when half life 1 first came out,you could actually see the outlines of a human skull through the headcrab,and it was creepy as hell.Check it out.
As for the special zombines,I seem to remember there were soldier zombies in opposing force.Though they were not suicide ones,like these,they were tougher than the regular ones.I think.
Gotta agree with the mines. Highway 17 stretched on a bit long, but I actually liked the antlions, and having to outsmart (or outshoot) a bunch of Combine outposts. The mines, though, are just headcrab city, and honestly I don’t really like fighting headcrabs. The zombies are great, but just a million headcrabs? I’ll pass.
Also, I hate to be that guy, but … it seems like as time goes on you guys are getting worse and worse at not talking over each other. There were several points in this episode where I just have no idea what was being said because there were so many voices going.
You have to remember that Sometimes vent lags out. So from their perspective they are not talking over each other, but when vent records it they are.
After going all the way through Ravenholm, and having a climactic last stand in the cemetery, fighting more headcrabs in the mine just feels like stretching things too far.
So I’m going to own up to being an idiot here…. My fist time through episode 1 I never got the cover antlion holes with cars mechanic. So I spent most of the game wondering why the Devs thought it was fun to fight infinite antlions who bite your butt while you fiddle with cranks……so on the whole Shamus was wrong…you can actually get out…after many many tries.
Yeah I felt like an idiot on my second playthrough when I finally got it.
Non-serious answer: any time I pull out the RPG when the situation doesn’t call for it.
Serious answer: the mines always felt like a huge drudge to me. I was never really interested in the whole setup of “fight off waves of headcrabs after taking more fall damage than you meant to”.
My least favorite part of HL2?
In my first playthrough, either the bridge (afraid of heights) or Ravenholm (afraid of dark and zombies.) Now, I’d probably say Sand Traps. Like Shamus says, it’s either tedious (if you do it “right”) or completely trivial (if you sprint past everything.)
Honorable mention: jumping down the shaft into the mine right after Ravenholm. Every time I play through there, I fall to my death at least once.
For me it’s just zombies in general, every time. Halo had this problem as well — a generally excellent shooter where you’d spend most of your time fighting intelligent enemies spoiled by long stretches of dumb bullet-sponges to mow through.
I just had a conversation with my brother this morning about that. We agreed that after the sophisticated AI of the Covenant, it was disappointing to face dudes that just rush straight at you every time.
I only played Halo 1, but I liked it untill I encountered the flood in that Library or what not and then I simply downloaded a trainer and cheated for the rest of the game. Fighting covenant was fun but Flood was pointles and stupid.
Not to mention that the Library is one of the longest, most annoying levels in video game history.
It almost felt like it was meant to be done co-op. I remember being incredibly frustrated at how hard that level was in single player, but then having a lot less trouble in co-op, even though they upped the number of enemies when there are two of you. Somehow having an extra body helped with managing the waves of enemies.
Really any area with the buggy was the worst area in HL2 for me. I hated driving that thing, and those sequences lasted waaaay too long.
Worst part of HL2 is a toss-up between the airboat and the buggy (without the cannon). Unless we’re including the episodes, in which case it’s the Strider fight at the end of Episode 2, which is terrible.
I think the airboat is just slightly worse. long sections of nothing, uninspiring physics puzzles and a helicopter “boss” at the end.
Mind you, I also found the big prison fight with the sentry guns to be particularly frustrating. There are certainly a few difficulty spikes like that, most of the game is relatively easy.
Ravenholm. I don’t like gory horror games. Runner up: The pitch-black areas you have to navigate during Highway 17. Again, horror games, combined with a darker-than-normal monitor making them very difficult to play.
Worst part of Half Life 2?
Vehicle sections. They’re ok on a first playthrough, albeit they do drag a bit. On the second playthrough though they have no appeal to me.
For me, the worst part of HL2 is the underground section that Gordon has to fight through after Alyx gets kidnapped by the Combine. At this point in the game the player has been doing nothing BUT combat for the past few hours so the devs thought that it would be a good idea to make you do yet another combat section right after you finished the last one.
Agree strongly. I feel like any of the parts that people love/hate like the airboat or the sandtraps would take something unique out of the game, even if they do get on your nerves, especially the second time around.
But the end of Half-Life 2 has a lot of fighting, and that isn’t something the player hasn’t done a lot of everywhere else. As I recall, even the Spoiler Warning crew went through that section in Spoiler Warning basically saying they didn’t even remember it because there’s nothing there that sticks out among all the fighting at the end of the game.
The airboat, buggy and sandtrap bits aren’t even that long. The airboat is used for an entire chapter but you can just speed past all the optional Combine fights while in the buggy and run past the sandtrap!
I feel like Chris is just boiling and complimenting the game through his teeth, and whenever anyone else dumps on the game he gets this extreme satisfaction from jumping in.
I know it’s not true. It’s just funnier that way.
Final fight of Ep 2 was miserable. Whoever thought that the Magnusson Device was a good mechanic to force on you was an idiot. I’d have been fine if you could use rockets there, or if your goal was to get past the army of Striders, but nope, you get an entirely new weapon with terrible accuracy and a ridic reload method while you fight a massive number of boss monsters. Not fun at all.
Ep 1, the pitch-black parts were annoying, with a particular mention of the unpatched version of this battle. I’d have been fine if they’d fixed the flashlight and given the flares a bit larger radius, but it’s really just too hard to see for that length of time.
HL2, I don’t remember really hating any individual parts of it that much. Sand is lava could have been handled a bit better, and there were some annoying fights, but overall, nothing too bad.
Its not even hard to use the Magnussons and I’d rather have them then the typical infinite rocket box
Due respect to Isaac, but I found them awkward to use as well, and really dislike this segment. For me, a rather bad way to finish off an otherwise quite good episode.
Ok,Ive brought this up earlier,but I think it needs closer inspection by more people:
Those of you that find the magnuson device fine,are you skilled with grenades in half life?Have you been using them a lot?
Those of you that find the magnuson device too clunky and hard to use,have you used grenades only occasionally?Do you find tricky shoots (throwing them behind corners,inside windows,at moving targets,…)to be hard?
I didn’t have a problem with the Magnuson Device, but basically the only times I used grenades were when they were required (snipers!) or when the enemy threw them at me (when I’d pull the gravity gun, grab the grenade, and punt it into the biggest group of enemies).
I just learned to quickly fire the Magnusson device anywhere near the Strider’s faceplate. If you hesitate then either the Strider or its Hunter escorts will blow up the device. You just have to fire it at the general area of the Strider’s face and blow it up. The challenge comes in dealing with the Hunters, rotating between very vulnerable Magnusson safehouses and having to quickly prioritize multiple Striders at once.
I used grenades fairly frequently, though I don’t think my aim was particularly great with them.
I didn’t tend to miss with the Magnusons, mostly had trouble with the escorts shooting them.
I can use HL2 grenades for windows etc, and I’m fine with grenades in other games, but I never used the HL2 grenades unless I had to. They had too much of an arc, were too much of a pain to equip, and were too easy to dodge.
(I was trained by console shooters, switching to a whole other weapon to throw grenades feels like it’s not worth the trouble. Grenades, like melee attacks, should be a supplement to your primary weapon loadout, not your primary way of killing something.)
The end of episode 2, with the Magnusson devices. I hate forced weapon-use sections; I disliked the Citadel in HL2, I disliked the beginning of episode 1, and I hated having to use the gravity gun to toss bombs so I can switch to another gun to shoot them so I can instantly kill Striders. You couldn’t put the bomb on a rocket, or something?
I actually liked the fight against Striders in HL2, when you’re in the ruins. Seeing the striders raise and lower their bodies to shoot you as you moved through the level was really cool; tossing soccer balls at them while they mindlessly trudge forwards, and Hunters shoot you (and your soccer balls) was not.
Any parts with stealth barnacles or ones that you can’t kill directly. Which is namely the early parts of the canals with the goddamn slippery slopes and rows of them blocking the path. It’s the one game mob that has always really creeped me out for whatever reasons. There’s also the one section in Episode 1 where you’re separated from Alyx and have to navigate a damaged building filled with them while having to solve physics puzzles and avoid enviromental hazards.
Even so, I don’t think I’d even really call them the “objectively worst”. They don’t really ruin the gaming experience and they’re relatively short sequences. And in the end it’s all really about just taking control of the situation and dealing with it, like any other part of the game. They’re parts where I’ll feel some discomfort, but it’s never really that long and when I’m done, it’s the change of pace and scenery afterwards where it pays off.
There’s not really other stuff that really stands out, with maybe the exception of the one last fight against Striders before going to the Citadel. Last time I played it, it did feel like the whole sequence went on way longer than it should have.
I just noticed that Alyx comments about getting Kleiner to “fix the flashlight” on the suit here in the dark sequence. I bet they added that in the patched version, hanging a lampshade on the change to Aux Power made for Episode 2.
Not that that helps any, since the first people you meet in Episode 2 aren’t until the tower defense thing with the antlions, where Vortal Combat is the soundtrack.
There’s a dev commentary node in EP2 that (IIRC) says the best justification they could think of is that (no bullshit) the train crash caused the flashlight upgrade. That probably explains why they don’t address it at all in-game.
Mechanical agitation sometimes fixes things.
Fix it sure, but upgrade? That’s like dropping your cellphone accidentally and doubling its RAM.
Well, if your phone had two RAM chips and one of them was misaligned and the fall knocked it back into position…
If it had two RAM chips and one of them was loose before you dropped it…
It’s like lightsticks: They get brighter the more you break them.
Thats fantastic. Makes no sense but I cant think of any other explanation that could be used to handwave it.
Clearly, the energy from the portal storm that caused the train crash agitated space-time and overwrote the present with a reality in which they hadn’t bound flashlight power to parameters regarding physical endurance like a bunch of stooges.
The mines were probably my least favorite part altogether… Though I could offer specific criticisms on most parts of the game. Many, for instance, simply dragged on too long. But I feel dirty for saying these things simply because ‘least favorite’ doesn’t mean ‘bad’ in this case and because having too much of something given to us seems like a first-world problem, if you take my meaning.
There are some occupations where becoming a Stalker might be the best thing to happen to those involved.
I’d say the section right after the mine is actually the worst. I didn’t think the mine was great, and I was very glad to finally see daylight again since going into ravenholm (and if that didn’t happen at night then it sure was very cloudy). But running down those train tracks was actually really boring for me. There just didn’t seem to be anything interesting going on in that segment. I think you were introduced to the sniper right then but that was the only memorable encounter and I found it frustrating with a super linear path and no way to approach the sniper except for head on.
GREAT MOMENTS IN VIDEO GAME LEANING:
– Alyx Vance: Half-Life 2, Episode 1.
– Dad: Fallout 3, “Project Purity” quest.
Sooo,why do video games constantly try to limit flashlight duration?Not only does it make no sense in real world,its never been implemented in a fun way in any of the games,nor does it add anything other than pointless scavenger hunt here and there or frustration everywhere.
To heighten tension.
But what stinks is that unless you just find the flashlight somewhere, where it could be on its last flickering legs (now THAT might be fun to have as a mechanic.”Press X to bang the flashlight. Press Y to open the flashlight and fiddle with the batteries”), not even the crappy Pipboy Clock I got for Fallout 3 eats batteries at the rate that video games consume them.
I’ve never seen a game have an uber-powerful smartphone that needs charging the more you use its functions. If that hasn’t been done, it’d be hilarious to have a gun-totin’ hero crouching down, not to dodge incoming fire, but to find a power outlet.
Josh mentioned in the last of us that you can shake the controller when its flickering to shake it.Though it makes no sense since the flashlight is in your shoulder pocket,he said it was an ok mechanic.
FEAR 2 did it the logical way – have it be infinite but whenever spooky shit happens have it flicker.
The most realistic flashlight in video games: Receiver. It isn’t infinite, but it lasts for several hours.
Which is funny, since the player doesn’t. :)
I like the way Arma handles it, there is no limit to how long you can use your flashlight, but the useful range is pretty limited and you stick out to everyone else like… someone waving around a flashlight in pitch black night…
Interstellar Marines has a mode for this, where the lights go out in the level and you have to choose between not running into walls or showing everyone where you are.
Insurgency does it too, where throughout the level you’d want to switch from flashlight to NVGs to nothing depending on the situation. I haven’t tested the AIs reaction to the light in coop.
I think Alien Isolation does it the same way? Haven’t played that one myself.
I guess the real question is whether you consider the “scavenger hunt” nature of the thing is pointless. The general concepts of “resource conservation” and exploratory scavenging is a widely used gameplay trope. The degree of sense it makes certainly varies with the item (Ammo? Probably much, much more scarce in the real world than it is in videogames. Batteries? Probably much more plentiful than games make it seem, and more useful). The mechanics of looting a shelf of crates (all of which shatter with a single bullet or whack, immediately releasing the immediately useful goodies instantly and nothing else) isn’t exactly “how that would work.” It’s a meta-game puzzle that’s “real-ish” in its effect without being actually “real world” appropriate. The scale of scarcity and tension can be ratcheted up and down to meet the mood the devs are after.
I wonder if game designers aren’t selling themselves short on this – I think there’s a lot that could be done to make this “more realistic” without breaking real-world physics. Sure, a flashlight could easily last all night without running out of juice. But carrying a flashlight while shooting a pistol is hard. Taping a flashlight to a pistol makes shooting awkward. In either case, aim suffers. Sewing a flashlight to your sleeve works until a monster rips it off mid-fight, so you’d have to protect it. (It also makes a hell of a good target). You could have a flashlight you either need to put back in your belt to shoot, or drop on the ground (with the associated risk of it being smashed or lost). Light carries a long distance in darkness, so rather than have the flashlight keep going out, make it more that using a flashlight makes it such that the guys up ahead are in cover and ready for you.
For a flashlight it is pointless.With ammo,if you run out,you can switch to a different gun for a bit.For health,it doesnt slowly drain away so you can be low on it for a while if you take extra care.But for a flashlight,if the game makes it necessary(its too dark to see without it),the designers will have to make sure that theres plenty of juice for it,even without searching through every nook and cranny.If its not necessary(you can still see without it),its practically useless,and you wont be running around collecting batteries at all.
The only place where scavenging for light makes sense is in fantasy worlds where you have to crawl through dungeons,and you have to carry multiple torches or other light sources.
I’d probably say the mines, although I do like the cart with a whirling blade portion of them, the rest of them is just trying to potshot as many headcrabs as I can before running out of ammo. That said until Shamus mentioned the mines I had forgotten about them and would instead have said the early fights against manhacks, I just don’t like fighting them, they’re small and annoying and almost always make me feel like I’m wasting ammo. Once I have the gravity gun and shotgun they aren’t so bad but before then they’re just not fun enemies to fight.
Worst HL2 section: When you have to hit the snipers with grenades.
Because everything else can be solved in arbitrary ways, but that one thing has to be done that one way, and you either hide where you can’t be hit and try to bounce one in, or you just take unpreventable damage until you win.
I could’ve sworn that you can use SMG grenades vs the snipers
Yes,but those are less abundant than regular grenades,and while you have grenade pickups in that area,you dont have pickups for special ammo(unless you get a lucky drop).You can also use a rocket,if you have a spare.
This is the area I was thinking of for my least favorite. I hated trying to get those grenades in just the right way. A close tie is the one where you’re at the top of the ruined building trying to take out the striders circling around while also being shot at by Combine from the nearby buildings.
Yep, this is the worst. To take the striders you have to use rockets. To get to the rocket supply you have to climb the building through narrow steel girdles that you can be thrown off at any time by incoming fire, and you can’t stay at the rocket supply because it is open by all sides to enemy fire.
I almost gave up on the game several times going through that. It is purposefully unfair on several levels and prevents you from using any life-preserving tricks you could resort to in other areas. You’re scripted to be fired at from all sides and every bit of cover is only useful against one side of the building. It was madness. And worst of all, you have to shoot rockets off-target at very close ranges because if you shoot them straight at the striders they’ll be shot down, overall resulting in a lot of wasted rockets and every time you want to resupply you have to expose yourself again…
You absolutely can stay near the rockets. The respawning Combine do not respawn immediately, so you can keep one side clear. You have infinite rockets, after all; they don’t only have to be used on Striders.
I’ll participate!
My least favourite section of Half Life 2 was that bit in the dark tunnels (underground?) with the zombies that seemed to go on forever. Every few minutes I thought “OK, one more corner and this little bit of variety is over and I get to have my nice situational awareness back”, but it ended up taking much, much longer to get to the end of it than I expected it to.
Later when you go through the road tunnel in the car and you get stopped I actually got worried it was going to happen again.
You can play the “original/ unimproved” version of half life 2 on the original xbox.
So an emulator for an old console port, then?
Expanding on what Rutskarn was saying about the irritation of things being almost but not quite possible – the most frustrating example of that for me is when a fight’s supposed to be unwinnable for plot reasons. I don’t mind intentionally unwinnable fights in general, but if it’s not clear that it’s unwinnable, I’ll spend a ton of time trying and failing to get past it before figuring out that there’s nothing I can do. Especially frustrating in RPGs when I might waste consumables to no avail.
Unwinnable fights are completely stupid in video games but at the same time kinda fun in a meta way. It’s at least fun when you can play really well to the point where the game has to cutscene you into failure anyway.
Like how in the opening sequence of Metal Gear Rising you are supposed to lose against Sam but the player can basically trash him, then the game goes ‘Oh No stop him!’ and activates the cutscene where you lose the fight. It’s a really stupid contrivance but it’s fun to force the game to push you back onto the plot rails.
Similarly the fight in Assassins Creed 2 where your pappy is executed and you are supposed to run away. I prefer to turn around, disarm one of the hulking axe guys and use his axe to kill all the guards.
Basically supposed to lose fights are terrible design but easy to subvert because a skilled player knows they can win and would have won anyway. Gives a sense of smug player superiority.
There is a fight in Chrono Trigger that you’re supposed to louse for plot reasons, looks clearly unwinnable from the start, but is actually winnable. I forget how I found out how to beat it, and it’s been so long since I played that I would have trouble describing where exactly you fought it (but I think it was in a city in the clouds). Anyway the boss had a gimmic where if you hit it at the wrong time, or with the wrong type of attack, it would hit you back REALLY hard. It was really cool finding out that you could beat that boss though. I think there was a single alternate scene if you beat the boss but I guess that’s a lot harder to do in AAA games when a single cutsceen is like 5% of your budget or whatever ridiculous amount they spend on them.
Chrono Trigger has multiple endings based on when you defeat Lavos – some fights are impossible until a New Game+ because you simply won’t be sufficient level to win.
Transistor has two “unwinnable” fights in it,which tell you that you should avoid them and just run.BUT,there best thing is that the second unwinnable fight lets you fight it,and you can actually win in.And if you do,you get complimented for it.
Yeah, those can be really annoying. I’m all right with them when they’re just blatantly and obviously not going to be winnable, but it’s infuriating when it seems like you really should be able to pull it off.
RE: Worst section of Half Life 2
This is a tricky question. Joke answer would be “waiting for the sequels” but my real opinion is not so clear. Assuming the question means just HL2 and not the episodes, I would say that Highway 17 took too long. Not that I could point out any poorly designed subsections of it, but in total it just dragged on a little bit too long. The second problem of that section wast that there were very little going on story wise. Of course there were a metric ton of environmental storytelling but between the beginning of Highway 17 and meeting Alyx in Nova Prospect the main plot mainly at background. I don’t think that is entirely a bad thing but somewhere in the middle, let’s say at light house, i.e. at the place you finally let the highway behind, or at the caves you get the bugbait there could have been a little bit more story content. Although I wonder if I would give this same answer if Buggy was more interesting to drive…
If we take the episodes in to account the Episode 1 in whole would be a contestant. Again, not that I could point out any single weak part but the whole content was more or less seen before. Half Life 2 already performed almost every headcrab – Civil Protection – Zombies et al. combinations leaving little new for EP1 to play with. Therefore the whole game felt like I was playing a mod, a very well executed one, but still like a mod. However, if name of the Episode 1 would have been Half Life 2: Aftermath, as originally planned by Valve, I would most likely be much more positive about it. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know the original plan was to create one short expansion between Half Life 2 and Half Life 3 in order to connect plot between those two games. In my opinion Episode 1 fits in that idea perfectly. Short, plot-driven expansion that settled the previous cliffhanger and leaving in another that would be less restrictive for writers. Well, we saw what happened to that plan.
Here’s a cool EP1 speedrun: lookie.
Its almost as nauseating as when Josh is playing.
Also,a very interesting way of speeding up npcs by hitting them on the head with stuff.
Source is so broken at the hands of speedrunners… It makes those runs entertaining to watch, though. That (among other) glitches and bugs is explained at some point in the recent HL2 run, DWaHMoV.
Worst part of HL2?
Likely the mines after Ravenholm, after such a trial its not fun to have a load of falling and headcrab dodging. I forget they are there and have an unpleasant reminder every time I reach them.
I didn’t really like the repeated turret fights in the prison complex, but then again, I’ve never though tower defence games were that fun on their own (now, if add an actual economy and base it on medieval history and make stronghold…anyway).
There were too many, and the most reliably tactic to me always seemed to be to set them up covering one corner to then hide in, while Breen sent waves and waves of men until the turrets reached their kill limits…or something.
Putting turrets down in addition to needing to do other things is sort of fun, but there were too many sections of it for my liking too quickly after one another.
To me the worst parts that come to mind are the vehicle sessions. On later playthroughs it’s easy to say what parts can be skipped and just breeze through them. The first time through they feel kind of long. That’s kind of a problem I had with HL2 in general though. A lot of the areas felt a little long and overstayed their welcome. Sure by that point they ended soon, but it often felt like if it had ended a little earlier I would have come out of it on a higher note. That said I still loved the game.
Worst part? I’m going to have to go with about 10 minutes (in 2 parts) of non-interactive citadel train ride. Immediately followed by another 5 of non-interactive chitchat.
Valve really felt the need to make up for the whole “no-cutscenes” thing there.
The least favourite part for me would in HL2 be the boss fights and the zerg rushes in Nova Prospect, and in Ep2 the antlion nests. I like Nova Prospect overall and it’s nice to have Alyx back with you, but the fights had the most filler like feel over the whole game. It is also pretty much the end of quiet moments in the game.
The antlion nests were claustrophobic and easy to get lost, were filled with enemy bugs, and the antlion bosses are my least favourite enemy.
My least favorite part was where you’re running the city 17 residents to the trains at the end of Episode 1. It wasn’t really all that difficult to get through, but it felt like it went on a little too long. It felt a bit like a set piece battle that didn’t offer much in the way of looking around and seeing anything cool.
I also lost a lot of immersion when I had to escort a dozen guys across the street and they all had the same exact face/voice. I lost my empathy for the citizens after watching so many of them die and Barney just keeps sending more of them with you.
Spoilers for Episode 2 below.
Worst section of Half-Life 2 for me would be, surprisingly, finale of Episode 2. It was just too hard for me. Half of the reason was that car’s automap didn’t help with my lack of spatial imagination, and the other half of the reason was that I didn’t have enough twitch skill to kill Hunters fast enough (and because the Striders tended to move away before I did, I would miss with the bomb throw, too). I failed at least seven times and had to set the difficulty to easy to be able to even finish that, with every single building in ruins.
Probably find the section in Kleiner’s lab the most annoying part to get past. After the first time of enjoying the little details around the room, that part is a drag.
I tend to skip it entirely. Otherwise I still enjoy every part of the game.
The worst part in Half-Life 2 for me is and shall forever be the airboat section, cause it triggers my motion sickness. Really, any section of any game that triggers motion sickness in me is automatically the worst part.
The worst part of Half Life 2 is the entire “Follow Freeman” chapter. It’s long and boring and I just want to get to the end by that point.
Absolutely second this emotion.
It’s not just the timing – the “follow Freeman” section is one of the few sections of Half-Life 2 that I think were simply sloppy and poorly executed.
In their quest to include pretty much every mechanic they could think of Half-Life 2 (something I don’t generally mind about the game), they decided to add a “squad” mechanic. There was even a bit of strategy about whether you included medics or shooters. And…it didn’t work at all.
You never felt like you were leading a squad, or fighting fights you couldn’t fight yourself. Your companions weren’t “smart helpful” types (like Alyx) – they were braindead mooks like the ones you were fighting who would routinely get themselves killed. Your options were to “not care” and ignore them, or get angry with them – “dammit, stay in cover until I snipe those two guys out with the crossbow! No, don’t charge them with a shotgun! You can’t even hit them with a shotgun! What are you…oh, you’re dead now.”
If you want to put squad mechanics in a game, put them in. Part of that is the means to give orders to your squad – to direct them, to use them to further the ends your character wants to achieve. Without any “real” squad mechanics, your squad was dead weight. They don’t help, and it’s like the only reason they’re there is to make you feel bad when they die.
This didn’t feel like an escalation of the scale of the battle – it felt like a multi-character escort quest.
It’s one of the few moments where I felt actively angry at the developers. They did this really sloppily, and it’s one of the few times where I felt completely uninvested in something they wanted me to care about.
I don’t know if it’s the “worst” section, but I hit Ravenholm, forced myself through it, put the game down, and never came back.
It seems to me that there are two broad categories of shooter, which I refer to as ‘reflex’ and ‘tactical’. In a reflex shooter, you are reactive. Things jump out at you, and you must quickly respond. In a tactical shooter, you are proactive. You know roughly where the enemies are, and can plan your approach to them. These are radically different gamestyles, and create radically different emotional experiences. One of them I enjoy. The other makes me literally ill – so tense that I’m physically shaking and near to vomiting.
I’d say most people play Half-Life 2 these days as a tactical shooter, then. If you’ve gone through an area once or twice, you DO know where everyone is.
That’s going to be true of pretty much any game that doesn’t have either a random algorithm or multiplayer. The ‘making it through once or twice’ is the catch.
I did make it through Ravenholm, but it was so unpleasant that I lost all interest in continuing after that.
What was the worst section?
There’s actually quite a few, if I’m going to be honest, but the one that got me ripping my hair out was probably the part where you’re supposed to be shooting down a combine tripod (stalkers? striders?) while inside a building under construction. You get narrow windows of opportunities to launch your rockets, it can reach you from an amazing amount of different angles, you can’t shoot the rockets straight at it or it’ll just shoot them down and the ammo supply requires you to go through very narrow steel girdles into a spot open from all sides to enemy fire. It was maddening.
Now to the episode, let’s see what Rutskarn was talking about.
On an unrelated note, it seems Shamus is going through a breakdown at twitter as his nostalgia for MASH is slowly but surely shattered.
Ok, maybe not shattered. And not a breakdown. But after hearing him pimping the show so much these last weeks to the point I was considering looking it up and watching it, it is a bit saddening.
Or maybe it is like Star Trek TNG and the first couple of seasons are awful?
The first season of MASH is horrible. It gets better from there, and really becomes gold once they trade Blake for Potter, which was in season 4.
The worst in the half life series is the end of HL1, xen. I haven’t beat HL1 because of that. damn jumping puzzles. the worst of HL2 though? I dunno even with the car highway 17 drags a bit for me. but yeah the antlions bit sucks alot.
I’m guessing this one won’t have been mentioned before – and will probably make a few people bamboozled – but I really didn’t like the approach to Nova Prospekt with the antlion pheromones. Once you got into the prison I started enjoying it a lot more, but the approach itself I felt was both way too hard (I’d say it’s the hardest bit of any Half Life 2 game) and unsuited to the “gimmick” of the area. You can’t reliably hit those guys on the towers with the pheromones, and it’s next to impossible to snipe them off. Then you get swarmed by like a million guys, and then a gunship shows up that you have to fight off, but it keeps hiding behind the prison, so you keep missing and the RPG reload box is so out of cover that you just get torn to shreds by the time you get to it.
A very close second to that is the mines section after Ravenholm. I’m not a huge fan of Ravenholm itself either, because I find the game is strongest when you’re fighting people with guns, but I really liked the ambience and atmosphere. Then it comes to a satisfying conclusion, you’re ready to move on to the next type of enemy, but you’re still forced to fight headcrabs for a few more minutes so that Valve can have the sun come up.
Yes abut the mine, but you have to admit that walking towards that morning light is a nice reward for the pain you had to endure before.
As for the guns vs melee: gunfights are more interesting, but I’m a sucker for melee opponents any day: it feels much scarier, up close and personal. It is *especially* true of HL where being hit by gunfire has essentially no debilitating effect at all. You can be killed in a gunfight without even seeing it coming if you’re not paying attention to your meters. Where’s the tension in that?
You dont have to.Its enough to just throw the pheromones at the tower,then wait for the antlions to climb up and do the job.If you arent in a rush,this section is a breeze,because the infinite antlions will clear out every combine nest long before you approach them.The only places where you have to rush in yourself are the thumpers.
On the “˜playing games as they were first released’: on Skyrim's release day, I noticed that if you ran Skyrim.exe instead of its launcher, it would cheerfully just run the game without talking to steam or anything, apparently DRM-free, (I believe this was changed after a week or two), so I decided to preserve a copy with all the original bugs and quirks.
I watched around 5 minutes of the first episode, then decided not to spoil myself any further. I’ve yet to play HL2 and the episodes from start to finish.
Yeah..Maybe in 2016 seeing how my steam backlog is growing faster than I can curb it :(
I once almost played through half life 2 without shooting a single bullet (not episode 1, the original half life 2. (Although I have played through ep1 with only 1 bullet as well.))
I wasn’t able to make it past the museum, but playing like that made me realise that the level designers give you heaps and heaps of ways to just use the gravity gun and explosives to win fights. It’s really, really cool.
10:50 mark, Josh unloads a dozen bullets into a head crab at point blank range.
“Nice shot”, says his companion.
Something to add to the Unreal engine is how it never said fuck you to other keyboard layouts by inverting azerty with qwerty in the options. something that always bothered me in other games including Quake and Half Life. Even nowadays I don’t understand why some engines still fuck this up such as Unity.
That said, it’s not a big deal, if i press the Z key in options for forward, it shows up as W but pressing Z still works as I wanted.
In most cases, I don’t even have the option to change that or it’s so badly done (some games reserve Q or W for special actions) that I have to give up and switch my entire keyboard layout to qwerty in windows. This can be troublesome as I then have to bend my mind around chatting with no punctuation in online games and be careful not to swap some characters.
If you ever see something like “i4, neqr the entrqnce” in any chat, it could be a tired azerty user.