Imagine defending valve games, imagine liking linear games

Imagine defending valve games, imagine liking linear games.
glitchwave.com/game/half-life-2/

Attached: hih.png (720x484, 90K)

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>linear is always bad

t.never played deus ex, doom or stalker.

>tfw there will never be a game as good as deus ex ever again
youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30

>literal who made a review 2 year ago about a game that came out almost 15 years ago

Attached: 1534523178748.gif (320x228, 1.78M)

Deus Ex is shit compared to Gradius V or Contra Hard Corps

It's probably died down a lot now, but about 15 years ago at the height of the popularity of cutscenes, when the gaming community was obsessed with promoting "games as art" it seemed to become somewhat trendy in critical circles to trash linear narratives and cutscenes and promote environmental storytelling and organic choice-based narratives as almost being inherently superior. This led to plenty of great games being written off due to being "too cinematic" and a restrictive division into a certain way games had to be rather than embracing all the tools available including those from other mediums (which is a man-made, not really relevant distinction anyway) like cinema and literature - there seemed to be a huge critical drive to separate gaming into some restrictive definition of what a "game" had to be. That was fine when it was in general critical discourse and could be easily ignored. But when games like Half-Life and BioShock came along and started writing this into their narrative and critics started purring over these narratives it felt somewhat like not only were gaming critics trying to restrict what a "game" could be for the sake of some intellectual exercise to prove that games were art, they were spitting on the entire medium and plenty of great games which had been made and had a profound effect on people through liner and/or cutscene based narratives as an extension of this. It got really tiresome after a while.

But the game seems to have absolutely no faith in its vision or mechanics - it feels like it almost has to change them or add a new gimmick in every section of the game, at times it even feels like a party game with 11 or 12 distinctive mini games and it gives the game no time to pin down its ideas and give the player a vision of what it actually does well. It's a decent, polished shooter, but certainly not a great one - it doesn't allow the player, say, the exhilaration of Doom or the calculated tension-building of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - all created by this vision of its core shooter mechanics being constant throughout the game. There are times, it feels like it could get exhilarating or really tense but you quickly get release and it then moves onto its next idea - it allows no time for these emotions to really hook the player. It's puzzles can be enjoyable, but again, they feel like they are completely cut off from the game, that they provide a quick "aha" moment and then generally on with the game - there's no overarching complex challenge or puzzle system there which feel so challenging and satisfying to complete get to grips with. The driving mechanics are outright dire but I don't think anyone enjoys those bits.

It's the constantly chopping and changing that just becomes so tiresome, there are genuinely times the game feels like it could be going on to build some kind of vision of creating a good tension-builder, or create some catharsis, but it quickly forgets about it wants to move on to the next thing and it just ends up kind of frustrating,

I never liked half life. I've dropped both games repeatedly since launch because my friends keep pressuring me to play them. They're just boring as fuck with terrible gunplay.

>deus ex, doom
These are linear games

But enough of that anyway and maybe I ended up being subconsciously biased against the rest of the game due to getting sick of these sweeping comments about what gaming should supposedly aspire to be but Half-Life 2's other biggest problem for me is it has no idea what it really wants to be, so it just throws everything at you without ever really having any clear vision and trying to make itself into a decent genre game. It's a shooter game for a bit, then a story-based exploration game for a bit, then a driving game for a bit, then a physics puzzle game for a bit, then a platforming game for a bit and the seams are constantly on show. The game will stop in the middle of a chaotic war for an outdoor physics puzzle where you have to drop some car in a skip in open daylight when you coincidentally won't be attacked. Given Half-Life's constant praise by the War on Cutscenes crowd by not taking the player out of the game, it sure seemed to take the player out of the game a whole lot. Constantly stopping one section for another with very clear and distinct *puzzle bit* *story bit* *shooty bit* *driving bit* sections which the seams of where one begins and ends can be seen to end and begin pretty easily. And a lot of these apparently amazingly innovative and important non-cutscene scripted moments happen entirely by taking you out of the flow of the game - behind shut-off windows in tight rooms with no escape, or in tight spaces with no escape or at some points, the game will literally pin the player in place so they cannnot move. I really fail to see how this adds so much more to my experience and why this makes cutscenes the bane of gaming or something.

>Seething chink makes yet *another* thread

It's the constantly chopping and changing that just becomes so tiresome, there are genuinely times the game feels like it could be going on to build some kind of vision of creating a good tension-builder, or create some catharsis, but it quickly forgets about it wants to move on to the next thing and it just ends up kind of frustrating,

But the constant praise for its nihilistic view of gaming - an essay on how on rails everything is - which has since also had the same pretty sigh inducing influence on BioShock and Portal - with the meta-narrative explaining how games put you exactly where you have to be and show you exactly what is needed exactly when the developer wants you to in an entirely on-the-rails kinda way (the train metaphor in Half-Life 2 isn't quite as on-the-nose as the travelling on actual rails in BioShock Infinite, but it's still a pretty sigh-inducing and highly un-subtle metaphor) - and this is all fine - but it's entirely not what I see this fantastic medium of computer gaming as.

Valve and Half Life are both shit, but not because they're linear. Linear is way better than the aimless open world sandbox shit that's in vogue nowadays.

Hey zoomers,

News flash. Not every game has to be open world.

All I can see is this incredibly exciting and experimental young medium which has told stories, enlightened and educated me and created situations and experiences in ways which other mediums have simply not been able to in the past - and there have been exhilarating, sombre, beautiful, ecstatic, enthralling, mind-bending and at their best profound experiences, knowledge and stories which I've gotten from computer gaming - and they've happened in ways which other mediums could not possibly create - and non-linearity, the irreversibility of moment-to-moment player choice and the player being able to tell their own story rather than being fed one is a big part of that - I'm not saying that's the only part of that and I'm not saying all games should tell their stories like that - telling stories on rails is a perfectly valid way of telling stories or creating experiences or teaching knowledge or ideas or feelings in gaming, but so is the cutscene - the much hated mechanic of many a Half-Life defender. And that's the problem, the Half-Life-BioShock-Portal essays on gaming on non-linearity and telling games through scripted sequences is a nihilistic one - it preaches that players have no real choice and we should accept that and that gaming's "voice" as an artform should not be about player choice or the player driving their own experience but through scripted cutscenes as apparently that's what sets computer gaming apart (even though that makes it basically the same thing as theatre or theme park rides) and it's kind of depressing that games with very little vision about what they want to be and which just see to throw a bunch of slick, but pretty soulless attempts at doing a genre together and try and take the easy way out by making a meta-narrative about noticing how on-the-rails you are as an excuse for a lack of wanting to create a unique approach to storytelling in gaming is sitting atop the computer gaming canon.

FUCK HALF LIFE , FUCK PORTAL FUCK BIOSHOCK.

A game doesn't have to be open world to provide the player with opportunities to express agency.

Half of the posts in this thread outword your average short story
Half life is good, fuck you if you don't like it

>muh sandbox open wrld nonlinrrr

whatever bro. there good and bad games in both styles.

These games are non linear compared to movie life

It's bad. Bad gameplay bad story, what's to like?

MUH LINEAR GAMEPLAY WITH NO CHOICES.

I swear these retards just don't like video games. I like both linear and open world games or just simulators, why is it always either or.

Half life is not linear compared to canobalt.
Your point?

there's nothing wrong with linear games. half-life 2 is just a garbage "cinematic experience."

pcbros are too stupid for stalker, deus ex and doom level design.

MUH CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE MUH SCRIPTED SEQUENCES.

Still no refutation

MUH theme park rides

>Every game needs to fit to my preconceived notion of what a game should game

Enjoy being part of the cancer that killed gaming.