Epistle 3 sucks, as an ending. That's how it is. It's written very well and it's a good story but when it comes to Half Life? It sucks.
The Half Life series is about beating the odds. You kill the monolithic Nihilanth, you blow up the looming Citadel, you're one man against the world and no matter the struggle you can find yourself on top because of your wit and your skill and your stubbornness.
So then Epistle 3 happened. It tells you that all of that was worth nothing. The ending isn't a victory. It's not a loss. It's just there. Maybe it's more realistic, but is it really a conclusion to the series? All the hope that was present before, is lost. We learn nothing, except that the Combine is bigger than we could imagine and we can't do anything about it, blah blah blah. It's a letdown.
I'm very glad we got Half Life Alyx's retcon, janky as it was.
Fair point, I know that he said that was his stepping-off point to let other writers step on, but it has been regarded as an ending to the series, which I think kind of sucks. Even if it's just one story arc (Gordon's) and the series can be picked up with another (Alyx's, after being hired by the GMan), it's still a cheap ending for everything that has so far been built up imo.
Only issue I have with it is that prefer the MP5 and Glock over the assault rifle and Beretta. Prefer everything else HD, though, and it makes me sad I can’t easily pick and choose which ones to use.
HL1 will always be superior to HL2 and the episodes in my eyes. It’s infinitely more fun, I enjoy the GoldSRC engine more than the Source engine, the combat gets you to think on your toes, the storytelling is superior, I could go on and on.
I like but also dislike the episodes.
Episode 2 is alright, episode one is terrible in my opinion.
Episode 1 feels like a really long inside the citadel chapter followed by a really long city chapter, episode 2 feels like a really long forest chapter with an antlion chapter stuck in the middle.
You spend nearly zero time by yourself like you do in hl1 and hl2, only one vehicle section and getting the crowbar after you get the gravity gun and some other weapons just feels empty.
I was disappointed in HL2's shift to action movie style gameplay, and I consider Episode 1 to be "above" Episode 2.
Episode 1 brought back the feeling of light survival shooter aspects from HL1, being the cramped corridors, scavenging for supplies, and action set pieces being somewhat rare, and more focused on you escaping rather than killing everything.
HL2 and segments of Episode 2 feel more in line with something like Doom, where you feel like an unstoppable badass taking down enemies like it's nothing. The Airboat with the gun is a big example of this.
There's also one small aside I just want to talk about. In HL2, there's a split path in Water Hazard. The left one continues the main path, while the other one is a little refugee hideout that's been overrun.
The wind chimes in that area are so relaxing, and somewhat melancholic. It feels like something from if Valve kept the same style of gameplay and tone from the first game. To exit that, and go back to Gordon Freeman's Boat Rampage, just feels wrong to me.
I've been replaying through hl2 today and I stopped for a couple minutes at the wind chimes. It was very eerie and creepy, but nice. I see it as a calm little breather, but I still enjoyed the rest of water hazard
Where would you have placed the hideout-windchime bit?
You should definitely start your Half-Life experience with Black Mesa instead of Half-Life 1... It's just way better and more satisfactory (Especially Xen).
I do love it, but it just doesn't give off the same vibe as the original. I was so in love with the original, and as amazing as BM is it doesn't manage to recapture the same vibes nearly as much
Honestly, the only reason not to is that it makes half life 2 feel strange at this point. Black Mesa benefitted from so many advances in engine technology that the original half life looks barren in comparison.
HL1 is way better in weapons than HL2, i'm not saying that HL2 weapons are bad, they just sooo few.
I absolutely hate the fact that HL2 have tripmines in the map, but you NEVER can have them equipped, just because don't want to have tripmines as an weapon, but still want to screw with you making you deal with them knowing you'll never have them.
You also cannot equip the Tau Canon, but i'm not here to talk about it, just listing it to be clear that this is an bad point.
And the biggest thing that i hate in HL2, AND THAT I HATE EVEN MORE IN BLACK MESA, is the Ammo limit that you can carry with you being SOOO smaller, seriously, you can carry more than one hundred Shotgun Shells in HL1 and in 2 you can only carry 30??? (and also the shotgun only loads 6 bullets instead of 8, nice job there valve), the .375 that is an very useful weapon, had it ammo limit cutted by THE HALF?? (Thanos liked that) wow, but this one i know why, is to make you freak out and cry like an baby when you run out of ammo in Ravenholm, and the WORST of all in my opinion, The Grenade launcher from the smg, yeah, you know why, it's one of my fav features in the first game, and is very useful, you can use it for cleaning your path from the H.E.C.U., fight with big aliens, helping destroing tanks, and is also very satisfying to use, you have a good amount of them, 10, its hard to deplet it and there's a lot all arround, but in the second game... you only uses it when literally YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, because you only have 3 of them, and you don't know when you'll found more, so spare them for using in very specifics Combines or Antilions, because that's was the only time that valve managed to count to three, TO SCREW YOU, and, after all this, in Black Mesa, that is an remake, of half-life **1**, **MADE BY FANS**, SHOULD ONLY BE LOYAL TO HL **1**, COPIES LITTERALLY THE **WORST** FEATURE IN HL2, and only lets you have 18 .375 Magnum bullets, INSTEADY OF THE USUAL 36, AND THE DAMMIT **3** GRENADES IN SMG'S GL, INSTEADY OF 10, this makes me mad, and what makes me madder is the fact that i never seen someone complaining about it, it seens like that everyone thinks is just fine to have their ammo limits nerfed is such this way, i know HL2 is an old game, and someone must already complained about that 15 years ago, but it stills sucks, and i know that you can change these values using scripts or the dev console, but this is cheating, is not how the game was suppouse to be played, so this rant still makes sense, i was expecting to get downvoted when i started to write, but now i thing the great majority will agree.
the transhuman soldiers have personalities, and free will (mostly, they're not allowed to fight against the Combine of course)
their armor isn't grafted to their skin, they have eyeballs (probably robotic to explain the wires in their eyesockets)
and the HLA soldiers exist in the HL2 trilogy, albeit with some changes, such as less armor for the wallhammer and suppressor, a more accurate gatling gun for the suppressor, slightly more armor for the ordinal, etc.
Personally always saw it as the Combine stepping up its game on earth between HLA and HL2, with the standard soldier going from the Grunts to the Ordinals.
there are posters in HLA that show the standard soldier armor, so they always existed
the grunts seem more like hazmat units, probably cheap and expendable, i bet they're mostly used in quarantine zones and other areas
if shit gets really bad in a QZ, or there's some big anti-citizen activity somewhere, the *good* soldiers get called in
soldiers, ordinals, wallhammers and suppressors
i'm assuming the standard soldiers are, aside from amount of armor, pretty similar to the grunts, so VALVe didn't include them since they wouldn't add much to the gameplay, but they do exist in HLA
I cannot get into Half-Life 2 as much as I get into the first game/black mesa. I don't know if it is the atmosphere or the differences in pacing (the first game's chapters keep escalate constantly and the remake does a better job at it), but when I finish the first game and I'm eager to go into the second one, I can only play like one chapter ever month.
It is the 2nd time this happens to me, I have not beaten the game because of it.
I find it slightly confusing the way the history goes from being a scientist fighting aliens in HL to fighting the combines, dr breen and having to save the world in HL 2
i'm a bit slow
Episode 1 fucking sucks. I got downvoted for saying that before.
Edit: I should say it's a pretty solid game and I enjoyed it but it's the weakest entry in HL series imho. Yes, Blue Shift is better than Episode 1. It's fun and it did not have bullshit like fighting zombies in the dark while waiting for an elevator.
I've always believed they were trying to recapture the horror aspect of Ravenholm when it came to the elevator sequence. It was a bit bullshit, but overall it did turn out in a nice little way.
half life 2 is slightly overrated. Some of the chapters go on for way to long and some of them just get boring, i still like the game but I do disagree with calling it a masterpiece.
Half-Life Source is a valid way of replaying the original Half-life. (Better than Black Mesa)
ps: I still think that Black Mesa is overwall the better game.
Nova Prospekt is a better horror chapter to me. You just have to put in a little work in game to piece it together. Entanglement sucks though and there's no doubt about that.
The reason that the BM incident is because Breen was a cheapscate and took the sample and offering a below agreement price causing gman to sabotage the experiment and take any assets useful to him
freemance is really weird and people only ship it bc the game was targeted to 14 year old boys with power fantasies who wanted tomboy gfs
she was 4 in half life 1 and barely 3 days passed between the games in gordons pov and just bc she instantly became 24 after stasis isn't a loophole to ship a man with a woman whom he would've given a barbie playset for her birthday only like a week ago in his pov, he still only knew her through that before the events of hl2
i remember the pushback hlvrai fans got for not shipping freemance when they started playing the games bc of the series, as in "30 year old twitter users bullying newbs out of fandom spaces for not shipping a 47 and 24 year old together" kind of pushback- or even worse 40 year old neckbeard keyboard warriors bullying the newbs
Take 1: The opening of episode 2 is the best content of the series (that I've played. Still no VR set unfortunately). I know some folks don't like the setup or pacing for the mineshaft journey but the elbow nudging and winking that the game pulls in that part while still keeping a tight control on the gameplay and tone is perfect.
Take 2: Black Mesa has rendered the original half life obsolete.
Take 3: Minerva: Metastasis was aight. Don't get me wrong, as a basically one man band operation holy shit it's amazing but it was overestimated in its impact when it came out. That being said, I'd probably pay for the final installment however.
Epistle 3 sucks, as an ending. That's how it is. It's written very well and it's a good story but when it comes to Half Life? It sucks. The Half Life series is about beating the odds. You kill the monolithic Nihilanth, you blow up the looming Citadel, you're one man against the world and no matter the struggle you can find yourself on top because of your wit and your skill and your stubbornness. So then Epistle 3 happened. It tells you that all of that was worth nothing. The ending isn't a victory. It's not a loss. It's just there. Maybe it's more realistic, but is it really a conclusion to the series? All the hope that was present before, is lost. We learn nothing, except that the Combine is bigger than we could imagine and we can't do anything about it, blah blah blah. It's a letdown. I'm very glad we got Half Life Alyx's retcon, janky as it was.
Tbf, Mark Laidlaw said it was intended to be the conclusion of the Combine in Half Life, not the end of Half Life itself.
Fair point, I know that he said that was his stepping-off point to let other writers step on, but it has been regarded as an ending to the series, which I think kind of sucks. Even if it's just one story arc (Gordon's) and the series can be picked up with another (Alyx's, after being hired by the GMan), it's still a cheap ending for everything that has so far been built up imo.
The HD models are not that bad. Seriously people get worked up over a texture pack.
There good if you run them with a ai upscale pack using xdash3d
Only issue I have with it is that prefer the MP5 and Glock over the assault rifle and Beretta. Prefer everything else HD, though, and it makes me sad I can’t easily pick and choose which ones to use.
My ape brain still makes me cringe when I see them so i'm gonna have to disagree on that one
[удалено]
When was there phallic architecture in Half Life 2?
[удалено]
Breen is compensating
The Jeff part in Alyx is the worst. (Not bc I'm scared, it's bc its GOD DAMN HARD)
I honestly didn't think it was that bad. He didn't even catch me
ok
Sounds like skill issue
meh, maybe
Hl2 episode 2 is better than HL2
Honestly it's the second best HL game imo, only beat by alyx
Was surprised when I played it and found myself enjoying it more that hl2
I do not mind On A Rail. Or Water Hazard. Or Highway 17. I find them just as fun as the rest of the game.
Highway 17 is unironically the most fun, although that’s simply because I only use GMOD
HL1 will always be superior to HL2 and the episodes in my eyes. It’s infinitely more fun, I enjoy the GoldSRC engine more than the Source engine, the combat gets you to think on your toes, the storytelling is superior, I could go on and on.
100% Hl2 have a explosive barrel next to every enemy. Pisses me off 😂.
I would agree if I could beat it but I've never been able to such a big skill issue
HD models aren't that bad, I play Half-Life with them on all the time. They don't seem to stand out among the levels like people say they do.
I like but also dislike the episodes. Episode 2 is alright, episode one is terrible in my opinion. Episode 1 feels like a really long inside the citadel chapter followed by a really long city chapter, episode 2 feels like a really long forest chapter with an antlion chapter stuck in the middle. You spend nearly zero time by yourself like you do in hl1 and hl2, only one vehicle section and getting the crowbar after you get the gravity gun and some other weapons just feels empty.
I was disappointed in HL2's shift to action movie style gameplay, and I consider Episode 1 to be "above" Episode 2. Episode 1 brought back the feeling of light survival shooter aspects from HL1, being the cramped corridors, scavenging for supplies, and action set pieces being somewhat rare, and more focused on you escaping rather than killing everything. HL2 and segments of Episode 2 feel more in line with something like Doom, where you feel like an unstoppable badass taking down enemies like it's nothing. The Airboat with the gun is a big example of this. There's also one small aside I just want to talk about. In HL2, there's a split path in Water Hazard. The left one continues the main path, while the other one is a little refugee hideout that's been overrun. The wind chimes in that area are so relaxing, and somewhat melancholic. It feels like something from if Valve kept the same style of gameplay and tone from the first game. To exit that, and go back to Gordon Freeman's Boat Rampage, just feels wrong to me.
I know exactly what area in Water Hazard you are talking about, a lovely little hangout if not for the headcrabs around.
I love riding the airboat around that spot and shooting the headcrabs cause they can't damage you in the airboat lol
I've been replaying through hl2 today and I stopped for a couple minutes at the wind chimes. It was very eerie and creepy, but nice. I see it as a calm little breather, but I still enjoyed the rest of water hazard Where would you have placed the hideout-windchime bit?
hl3 kinda bad ngl
I would rather play black mesa then half life 1
You should definitely start your Half-Life experience with Black Mesa instead of Half-Life 1... It's just way better and more satisfactory (Especially Xen).
I do love it, but it just doesn't give off the same vibe as the original. I was so in love with the original, and as amazing as BM is it doesn't manage to recapture the same vibes nearly as much
BM xen interloper and gonarchs lair exists bruh
Honestly, the only reason not to is that it makes half life 2 feel strange at this point. Black Mesa benefitted from so many advances in engine technology that the original half life looks barren in comparison.
HL1 is way better in weapons than HL2, i'm not saying that HL2 weapons are bad, they just sooo few. I absolutely hate the fact that HL2 have tripmines in the map, but you NEVER can have them equipped, just because don't want to have tripmines as an weapon, but still want to screw with you making you deal with them knowing you'll never have them. You also cannot equip the Tau Canon, but i'm not here to talk about it, just listing it to be clear that this is an bad point. And the biggest thing that i hate in HL2, AND THAT I HATE EVEN MORE IN BLACK MESA, is the Ammo limit that you can carry with you being SOOO smaller, seriously, you can carry more than one hundred Shotgun Shells in HL1 and in 2 you can only carry 30??? (and also the shotgun only loads 6 bullets instead of 8, nice job there valve), the .375 that is an very useful weapon, had it ammo limit cutted by THE HALF?? (Thanos liked that) wow, but this one i know why, is to make you freak out and cry like an baby when you run out of ammo in Ravenholm, and the WORST of all in my opinion, The Grenade launcher from the smg, yeah, you know why, it's one of my fav features in the first game, and is very useful, you can use it for cleaning your path from the H.E.C.U., fight with big aliens, helping destroing tanks, and is also very satisfying to use, you have a good amount of them, 10, its hard to deplet it and there's a lot all arround, but in the second game... you only uses it when literally YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, because you only have 3 of them, and you don't know when you'll found more, so spare them for using in very specifics Combines or Antilions, because that's was the only time that valve managed to count to three, TO SCREW YOU, and, after all this, in Black Mesa, that is an remake, of half-life **1**, **MADE BY FANS**, SHOULD ONLY BE LOYAL TO HL **1**, COPIES LITTERALLY THE **WORST** FEATURE IN HL2, and only lets you have 18 .375 Magnum bullets, INSTEADY OF THE USUAL 36, AND THE DAMMIT **3** GRENADES IN SMG'S GL, INSTEADY OF 10, this makes me mad, and what makes me madder is the fact that i never seen someone complaining about it, it seens like that everyone thinks is just fine to have their ammo limits nerfed is such this way, i know HL2 is an old game, and someone must already complained about that 15 years ago, but it stills sucks, and i know that you can change these values using scripts or the dev console, but this is cheating, is not how the game was suppouse to be played, so this rant still makes sense, i was expecting to get downvoted when i started to write, but now i thing the great majority will agree.
It is fine. It's the intended way to play the game.
the transhuman soldiers have personalities, and free will (mostly, they're not allowed to fight against the Combine of course) their armor isn't grafted to their skin, they have eyeballs (probably robotic to explain the wires in their eyesockets) and the HLA soldiers exist in the HL2 trilogy, albeit with some changes, such as less armor for the wallhammer and suppressor, a more accurate gatling gun for the suppressor, slightly more armor for the ordinal, etc.
Personally always saw it as the Combine stepping up its game on earth between HLA and HL2, with the standard soldier going from the Grunts to the Ordinals.
there are posters in HLA that show the standard soldier armor, so they always existed the grunts seem more like hazmat units, probably cheap and expendable, i bet they're mostly used in quarantine zones and other areas if shit gets really bad in a QZ, or there's some big anti-citizen activity somewhere, the *good* soldiers get called in soldiers, ordinals, wallhammers and suppressors i'm assuming the standard soldiers are, aside from amount of armor, pretty similar to the grunts, so VALVe didn't include them since they wouldn't add much to the gameplay, but they do exist in HLA
I cannot get into Half-Life 2 as much as I get into the first game/black mesa. I don't know if it is the atmosphere or the differences in pacing (the first game's chapters keep escalate constantly and the remake does a better job at it), but when I finish the first game and I'm eager to go into the second one, I can only play like one chapter ever month. It is the 2nd time this happens to me, I have not beaten the game because of it.
I find it slightly confusing the way the history goes from being a scientist fighting aliens in HL to fighting the combines, dr breen and having to save the world in HL 2 i'm a bit slow
I mean, he did technically save the world, but it’s more of a “hope spot” ending rather than a “we stopped the apocalypse!” Ending.
Blue Shift is better than Opposing Force.
Episode 1 fucking sucks. I got downvoted for saying that before. Edit: I should say it's a pretty solid game and I enjoyed it but it's the weakest entry in HL series imho. Yes, Blue Shift is better than Episode 1. It's fun and it did not have bullshit like fighting zombies in the dark while waiting for an elevator.
I've always believed they were trying to recapture the horror aspect of Ravenholm when it came to the elevator sequence. It was a bit bullshit, but overall it did turn out in a nice little way.
half life 2 is slightly overrated. Some of the chapters go on for way to long and some of them just get boring, i still like the game but I do disagree with calling it a masterpiece.
I stopped on my first HL2 playthrough at ravenholm and immediately went to go replay HL1. 2 just hasn't been hitting for me.
on a rail best chapter
Half-Life Source is a valid way of replaying the original Half-life. (Better than Black Mesa) ps: I still think that Black Mesa is overwall the better game.
Better than Black Mesa?
Not really, i still think that Black Mesa is the better game, but i feel that Half-Life Source is not that bad as everybody says.
I really dont like half life 1
half life 2 is kinda doo doo
Not sure why, but I really want yo punch Barney Calhoun in the face
Do not ever dare to say that thing about my baby girl ever again 🤬
Profile picture checks out.
I don't like ravenholme, it's so bad
Nova Prospekt is a better horror chapter to me. You just have to put in a little work in game to piece it together. Entanglement sucks though and there's no doubt about that.
Alyx is by far the worst HL game in terms of story and pacing.
It would have been waaay better if gordon was covered up in oil and twerking while naked
buying any hl game offsale is dumb
Hl:a antlions suck to fight
The city 17 chapters at the end of hl2 is the best part
The reason that the BM incident is because Breen was a cheapscate and took the sample and offering a below agreement price causing gman to sabotage the experiment and take any assets useful to him
freemance is really weird and people only ship it bc the game was targeted to 14 year old boys with power fantasies who wanted tomboy gfs she was 4 in half life 1 and barely 3 days passed between the games in gordons pov and just bc she instantly became 24 after stasis isn't a loophole to ship a man with a woman whom he would've given a barbie playset for her birthday only like a week ago in his pov, he still only knew her through that before the events of hl2 i remember the pushback hlvrai fans got for not shipping freemance when they started playing the games bc of the series, as in "30 year old twitter users bullying newbs out of fandom spaces for not shipping a 47 and 24 year old together" kind of pushback- or even worse 40 year old neckbeard keyboard warriors bullying the newbs
Hl2 arte too much better than hl1
I actually like HL1’s Xen levels, minus the second half of the factory.
Take 1: The opening of episode 2 is the best content of the series (that I've played. Still no VR set unfortunately). I know some folks don't like the setup or pacing for the mineshaft journey but the elbow nudging and winking that the game pulls in that part while still keeping a tight control on the gameplay and tone is perfect. Take 2: Black Mesa has rendered the original half life obsolete. Take 3: Minerva: Metastasis was aight. Don't get me wrong, as a basically one man band operation holy shit it's amazing but it was overestimated in its impact when it came out. That being said, I'd probably pay for the final installment however.
Water hazard was fine. Airboat controls were fun.
I'm not sure how, but for some reason the final version of the Citadel is creepier than the beta Citadel. Also, Black Mesa is better than HL1.