Half a Life is better than none
Jun. 6th, 2011 02:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoAnd this evening I spent a few hours with the last of the Orange Box offerings, Half Life 2.
And I'm really impressed.
I'm impressed with the physics engine. I'm impressed with the interactivity and problem solving stuff with objects and characters in the game. I'm impressed with the depth of the world I'm in.
And yes, there are some complaints. Like the room with the seesaw where I had to pile crap on one end so I could jump to freedom from the other. Which I thought was a cool puzzle. However. It's a dark room. And there are exactly eight widgets in the room, scattered and hidden. The puzzle requires all eight of them in order to weight down the seesaw. Convenient, eh? So puzzle solving turns into widget hunting. Of which I am not a fan. But much like our seesaw here, minor complaints like that are completely outweighed.
There's obviously a lot of history going on that I don't know--in fact, for the first forty-five minutes I assumed that I had amnesia, and everybody here was just assuming I knew what the hell was going on despite my blank stare. But I haven't seemed to actually need any of it yet.
And there have been a lot of times when I look around and say "I don't know what I'm supposed to do next." Like the bit where I'm being chased by a helicopter with a bullet spraying attachment. But they say "That's okay. Just run around, get crazy, and see if you notice anything. You may have to get crazy two or three times before you notice it. We're not going to kill you outright--trust us."
There's probably more but really I'm only here trying to get sleepy so I can get to bed, and the nub of my gist is that I really did not expect to be as impressed as I am by this game, and I think I've kind of covered that bit.
And I'm really impressed.
I'm impressed with the physics engine. I'm impressed with the interactivity and problem solving stuff with objects and characters in the game. I'm impressed with the depth of the world I'm in.
And yes, there are some complaints. Like the room with the seesaw where I had to pile crap on one end so I could jump to freedom from the other. Which I thought was a cool puzzle. However. It's a dark room. And there are exactly eight widgets in the room, scattered and hidden. The puzzle requires all eight of them in order to weight down the seesaw. Convenient, eh? So puzzle solving turns into widget hunting. Of which I am not a fan. But much like our seesaw here, minor complaints like that are completely outweighed.
There's obviously a lot of history going on that I don't know--in fact, for the first forty-five minutes I assumed that I had amnesia, and everybody here was just assuming I knew what the hell was going on despite my blank stare. But I haven't seemed to actually need any of it yet.
And there have been a lot of times when I look around and say "I don't know what I'm supposed to do next." Like the bit where I'm being chased by a helicopter with a bullet spraying attachment. But they say "That's okay. Just run around, get crazy, and see if you notice anything. You may have to get crazy two or three times before you notice it. We're not going to kill you outright--trust us."
There's probably more but really I'm only here trying to get sleepy so I can get to bed, and the nub of my gist is that I really did not expect to be as impressed as I am by this game, and I think I've kind of covered that bit.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 02:09 pm (UTC)Eventually, I worked out that you can just wedge something by the fulcrum and walk across quite a few of them. I know that wasn't the answer, but dammit, there's only so many seesaw puzzles I could take.
Half Life 2 - and its attendant "Episodes" - are some very good games. I'd say that Episode 2 is probably the best one so far, but you'll see why, I think. Valve has always done a good job of making you like the NPCs, and by the end of Episode 2, you're very attached to them. It's neat.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 02:34 pm (UTC)I think the helicopter thing was a breakthrough for me because--well, even with unlimited saves, I don't like games that kill me off for little mistakes. And realizing that this thing had opened up on me with a howitzer when I was in open ground and I was pretty much only bruised.... I mean, I didn't want to take up exploring and randomly poking around as a hobby, but it was sort of tacit permission to put myself in harm's way.
Kind of like in the transit station, when the cop told me to pick up that can. The little pop up said "If you click mouse1, you can throw that." And I blinked, and I said seriously? Are you saying what I think you're saying?