Is Half-Life 2 actually a masterpiece like everyone says it is?

Shitting on HL2 is a good litmus test for how much of a fucking zoomer fag pleb one is. You must be 18 years or older to post on this board.

The music, characters, atmosphere, story, sound design, visual design, pacing, and level design are all fucking amazing and cohesive. Not every game has to be enjoyable for the exact same fucking reasons.

Name a game that's more holistic and has a better flow. You can't. Just because there are one or two things about it that aren't as impressive as they were at release doesn't make it any less of a game. HL2 doesn't just have soul, it *is* soul.

T. Valve drone

This is clearly fake because if you turn right every time you're guaranteed to beat any maze.

As I grew older one thing that still surprised me was how some people managed to land easy and comfy jobs but who seemed to be just as qualified as anyone else. Feelsbadman.

Loved it as a kid, but it didn't age well at all. Literally just play any other modern shooter.

1 is better

>"hurr durr zoomers burble wurble"
HL2 was dogshit when it came out. Shit weapons, shit linear level design, shit boring "puzzles" so they could jerk off their physics engine "wow look at how you can put bricks on something, now repeat that a dozen times!" literally the only thing it had going for it was graphics and marketing hype. t. someone who was in college when it was released.

It's pretty damn good.

One thing I remember well about it is that it's not afraid to have moments of "downtime" instead of being overwhelming, constant action which players *think* they want, but actually don't. Because it has these moments, it accentuates the points that are fast and also helps develop the game's world and story.

Eg: Ravenholm is actually quite plodding, but your first time going through it it's actually suspenseful and different. Then later gets faster.
It's also more open ended in how encounters work, the game is linear, but encounters can be handled differently. This is great game design. The commentary feature is also very neat.

Attached: 1440169188384.png (274x242, 5K)

Might also be because they weren't nearing uncanny valley stages, where now we know games are trying to look real but don't.

How hard is it to actually play a fucking game before shitposting about it?

Attached: E6E320E52F6B4400BF9997793BCA2775.jpg (537x608, 51K)

This game is the sole reason Steam became a thing. This should tell you enough.

During the summer sale, I bought the complete Valve pack and since I never played any of the Half Life games before, I went ahead and played through all of them.
My opinion? They were meh. All meh. I don't think the games aged well at all.
I wouldn't give any of the games a score higher than 6/10 and most of them I'd say were 4/10. There were also some complete bullshit segments in the games that made me want to kill myself, like the end of HL Episode 1 where you have to kill the spider thing I forget the name of before escaping on the train. Maybe it was because I played all the games on Hard mode but fuck me that was obnoxiously difficult and made me want to die while beating it. Not fun at all.
Maybe the games were good when they came out but I don't think they hold up well today.
Blue shift was kind of funny to play though at least. Fat boston barneys are great.

Attached: 1563893043558.jpg (282x410, 29K)

t. PC neckbeard
Go suck Gaben's dick won't you

imagine the smell

HL1 is terrible on hard, the enemies become bullet sponges and they have no pain frames so it feels like your guns barely do any damage and the enemies never stop shooting.

You should really play Black Mesa btw. It's a semi-modern remake of HL1. It's using the HL2 engine but features lots of modern-ish graphical upgrades and QoL improvements. The final chapter (Xen levels) will be released later this year, it's already in public beta.

Literally fapping now

Prove me wrong: This is better than 2.

Attached: 74770-half-life-windows-front-cover.jpg (800x968, 131K)

I wonder why that is. What is it exactly that gave this game such immersive atmosphere? The story and the characters and even the setting are not really all that exceptional exceptional on their own but something about this game just sucks me in.

I can't really take modern games seriously enough to get that immersed in the same way. I think maybe modern games just don't even try to take themselves seriously anymore. There always seems to be some meta-ironic undertone or something.

It's like watching seasonal trash anime, except from literally 20 years ago. Just fucking why.

Attached: anime_disgust.png (880x800, 729K)

Yeah I actually wonder if I ruined the game's experience for me by playing them all on hard.
What probably could've been a fun story-driven shootan experience turned into a mindless grind until I finally fucking won at times without any real payoff for my effort.
Like fuck that part where you had to kill the spiderbots that're being escorted by a bunch of hunters.

Yes.

Its pretty good and aged reasonably well. Only contrarian faggots will whine about it.

Jesus they're still not done with that game?

>Yeah I actually wonder if I ruined the game's experience for me by playing them all on hard.

Not him but yeah you kind of did, hard is more for people that played it and want to play again I think. Especially if mechanics are removed (eg: pain frames). HL1 was absolutely amazing when it came out, see it through that lens, but I think it's great even now.

Also, I sympathize with the HL1 fight being bullshit as I also played episode 1 on hard and yeah it's fucking retarded.

The crazy thing to me is that it still has the same amount of content as when it was free, but now it's been $20 or something for years and years.

FULLY

Gun play is pretty bad honestly, i know that the modern day cover shooter is pretty stale.

But it beats whatever it is you're supposed to be doing in hl

Yes. It was a masterpiece in 2004. It is not a masterpiece in 2019. This should be simple to understand.

Attached: 12746466.png (500x425, 241K)

I never really got the hype, it felt like any other mediocre shooter at the time, it just had a physics gimmick.

Remember when thought that letting the player walk around during the cutscenes was revolutional? The result was that the cutscenes were unskippable and extremely annoying since you had to wait until every single line of dialog was spoken in full.

God forbid a game attempt to immerse you in its world.

>game dumb, needs more VBucks
modern Yea Forums in a nutshell.

Attached: 1514762622937.gif (250x250, 2.08M)

No. The boat sequence alone... In 2004 we were blown away by the hype and the Valve pedigree and the graphics (you had to buy a new card!) and the physics, which all helped us ignore the fact that for long stretches the game is downright boring. It has its high points. Ravenholm is great. It's a GOOD game, but it's not a masterpiece. Half-Life 1 is better. So is Episode 2.

I don't like waiting for the npc's to stop talking so I can get back to the game, cinematics are better. Even unskippable cinematics are preferable since they have redeeming factors like cinematography and usually higher quality animation