T w e n t y S i d e d

We quote a bit of Die Hard in this episode. Trivia: Mumbles saw Die Hard for the first time ever last week. Welcome to the party, pal.

We’ve been raving about the game, but some people are still foggy on the details of why we like Half-Life 2 so much. So here is Rutkarn’s answer, taken directly from the episode. (As nearly as I could, given the combat sounds and the other two idiots talking over him.) THIS is Half-Life 2, as made by ANY OTHER FPS STUDIO:

Here is a run down of what would have happened if any other studio had made this:

Cutscene intro: NEW YORK – You see citizens being mowed down in the streets. A narration plays over, “It is the future. Aliens have invaded the planet and begun oppressing the masses. Humankind can make no defense against it. But now, GORDON FREEMAN is being released by the G-man…”

Gordon wakes up: What? What’s going on? You’d better start giving me some answers, G-man!

GMAN: Well, Freeman… you are my pawn in this matter. I’m sending you to this place for my own reasons. Go kill some dudes.

You arrive there, and your sexilicious bikini babe companion will immediately start accompanying you, spouting wise-cracking one-lines and getting hung up on the environment while you go through the vert narrow New York streets, firing uninspiring guns and hiding behind cover.

And your enemies would be called, like… the Necro-forms. And they would all be these horrible half-human creatures that would howl and shriek.

And then the final boss would be the G-man.

Valve, thank you for not making that game.

Next week we’ll be back in the Mojave Desert. See you there.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

In this episode we mention SoldierHawke, who is currently doing a blind run of Half-Life 2. You should check it out. It’s pretty rare to find people who can go into this game truly “blind”. Much of it has been spoiled in discussions, comics, memes, and songs. To have gone seven years without having any of the major plot elements being spoiled is quite an accomplishment.

We also mention Concerned, the Half-Life 2 webcomic.

So, the proper order of things is:

Step 1) Get the game.

Step 2) Play the game.

Step 3) Read the webcomic.

Step 4) Play the subsequent episodes.

Step 5) Watch the let’s plays, listen to the developer commentary, listen to the soundtrack, play through the game on all the difficulty levels or with various self-imposed restrictions, play the mods, play co-op, try to find all the secret areas, mess around with cheats, go for all the achievements.

Step 6) Join the everlasting flame war against the heretics who refuse to acknowledge the purity and goodness of the series and fail to revere it as the very zenith first-person shootery. Remember, you can’t enjoy the game properly until you convert everyone else, everywhere on the internet, to our way of thinking.

Steps 7-one million) Join the rest of us in the eternal and hopeless wait for Half-Life 3. Welcome to purgatory, dumbass.

Enjoy!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

After a year and a half of constant rage and bile, Spoiler Warning brings you a long, uncomfortable love letter to Half-Life 2. Will our sickeningly sweet gushing throw you into a diabetic shock? Let’s find out…

Note how City 17 is run-down, disheveled, and dirty, while at the same time still colorful. Everyone who has ever inflicted a brown shooter on the public should be made to sit in the corner and watch these first few levels. And then they should have to write on the chalkboard, “I will not squander tens of millions of dollars making colorless gameworlds which are devoid of contrast have no visual separation between foreground, background, and character elements.” 100 times.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Mumbles couldn’t make it to Spoiler Warning this week, for reasons that had nothing to do with costumed crimefighting. She was busy at her mild-mannered job all day and has no idea what happened to the biker gang that tried to rob the Quik Stop. I believe her. I mean, Mumbles wears glasses. People who wear glasses can’t fight crime or they would break their glasses.

Anyway, glad we could clear that up.

In the meantime, we didn’t want to record more episodes of New Vegas without her. So, we did Half-Life 2 instead. For those of you who say that all we do is bitch and moan about games, well…

This was just a one-off block of episodes. Next week we’ll be back with Mumbles, wishing for a nuclear winter in the Mojave Desert.

I will say our episode naming system sucks. What will the title look like if we ever decide to tackle the Half-Life 2 episodes? Spoiler Warning: Half-Life 2: Episode 1: Part 1: VortiGONE! Ugh.

As I said in the above episode, comparing the intro of Half-Life 2 to the intro to Homefront can give you a very clear picture of where games have gone wrong over the past seven years. In Homefront, they cram their entire reveal of the enemy into a single city block. You see people being shot in the street, being beaten, kidnapped, more people being shot, and so on. This all takes place in broad daylight, and it sort of makes you wonder what the whole “police state” thing is for. I mean, if the bad guys want to just shoot everyone they’re going about it in the most expensive and time-consuming way possible. And if they want to control the populace for slave labor, they’re going about it in the most inept way possible.

Then once you pull away from all of that, an NPC on the bus whispers to you that he heard about mass graves. This is such a goofy and sideways thing that I still wonder how that line ended up in the game. After watching a couple of parents being summarily executed in front of their toddler in broad daylight on a street corner, is the player really supposed to be amazed at the rumor of mass graves? In Half-Life 2 you feel like you’re facing an insidious and powerful enemy. In Homefront, the game makes it clear from the start that you’re facing an army of dumbasses.

You can make these comparisons with almost any modern shooter. Crysis 2 and Homefront are just obvious examples. It all goes back to basic storytelling principles: Pacing. Foreshadowing. Compact dialog. Consistency. Showing instead of telling.

Later in the episode we talk about the can cop. I looked it up, and 13.8% of all players (who own the game) have put the can in the trash, and 9.1% have thrown it at the cop. Note that these achievements were added a few years after the game was released, which is why we’re seeing such low response numbers here. This is really only a tally of new players, or those who have gone back to play the game again.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.