Idk, of all the ways you could criticize Ubisoft, dragging this random guy just because he didn’t care too much for HL2 (and then took the time to write down his thoughts instead just going “game bad 👎”) feels silly.
Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Speedforce@multiverse.soulism.net to games@lemmy.world
Comments
LiveLM@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
paultimate14@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They make some good points about how we view “classic” games too.
A lot of 16-bit games are remembered fondly because of things like “look at how many colors are on the screen at once! Look at how big the sprites are- they’re almost as big as the arcade version! Hear how there are 4 separate audio tracks that kind of almost sound like real instruments sometimes!”.
Mario 64 is a great example for me. I hear other people was nostalgic about how incredible it was to be able to move in 3D space at the time, and how they spent hours just wandering around levels and marveling at the technology. For me, I did that with Crash Bandicoot (which came out a few months earlier in the US). And shortly after Spyro blew them both out of the water with its incredibly smooth controls and, imo, better graphics and sound. When I’ve tried to go back and play Mario 64 I find it a clunky mess of a game, more of a tech demo than anything else.
On the one hand I can respect the pioneers. The original thinkers who push the frontiers of what art can be. On the other hand, those games that rely so heavily on being “revolutionary for their time” often don’t hold up well decades later when tons of games have done what they did better. I think it’s possible to appreciate those games for what they did without enjoying going back and playing them.
When I look back at what I’ve played the past couple years, games like Control and Horizon: Zero Dawn stick out. I don’t think either one of them had anything particularly innovative or new. I see any games coming out today where I say “wow that’s a Control-like” game. But what they did do was execute on a high level, with a lot of polish and very few flaws. I think that’s the biggest strength of AAA games: execution, not innovation.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Not to play the devils advocate but they do have an argument. Not in the physics point because physics haven’t been done to death so that part of Half-life 2 IMO is still fresh. But the rest of Half-life 2 can be dull and boring and nonsensical if played today. Half-life 2 was such a cultural shift that everything great about it has been dissected, analyzed and improved upon wherever possible.
Much like Half-life 1 the things that made the game great are industry standard now. You’re used to the greatness so all you see are the flaws. The boat section is too long, the car section is poorly paced, the story is too cryptic, the list probably goes on. But anyone who played it at launch knows how fucking sick the game is because there was nothing else like it.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Friends of mine who played at two different points far after launch still found it to be just as great, even if the physics and facial animations were no longer best in class.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I personally played it some time after Portal 2, probably 2015 or so. I found it great, particularly as far as lore and pacing are concerned. Sure, there are bits that drag, characters that aren’t well written, and plot/lore details that are too ambiguous, but I’d much rather that than hand-holdy, surface-level plot of most similar shooters, or plot told through YouTube videos and flavor text like many modern shooters. IMO, its still one of the best at what it does, and its still a personal favorite for it.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
That’s an insane claim to me. HL2 set the bar for worldbuilding. From the guy muttering “don’t drink the water” in the train station, to the people and vortigaunts building homes in the sewers, to the stick legged stalkers waddling around the citadel, HL2 took “show don’t tell” to heart. It was the most immersive experience anyone had played in video game up to that point, or for years after.
I’ll grant you that other games have learned a lot from it, but I would say the vast majority haven’t. Games still come out today where everything needs to be spoonfed to the player literally, for them to stop and process what they’re looking at, rather than just running and gunning.
When you say HL2 can be boring and nonsensical if played today, the first thing that comes to mind are all the people who turn subtitles on, and then for 75% of the runtime their eyes are in the bottom 1/3 of the screen, not taking in any of the visual information the filmmaker is putting in front of you. Like, yeah, HL2 is quite boring when you’re not looking at it.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I tend to agree with this. I had given up on PC gaming by 2004 so did not play HL2 until the Orange Box on Xbox in 2007 and my reaction was “Jesus this is boring!”
I’ve tried to replay it a couple of times since then, most recently on Steam Deck, but it just doesn’t click with me and I give up around the Canals.
Chozo@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I have to agree with him, honestly. HL2 was novel for its time, but if you're playing it for the first time in 2026 then yeah, it really doesn't hold up to modern game experiences. I also dislike games that end ambiguously or on cliffhangers, and the lack of closure provided from sequel-bait endings like HL2's can be annoying to people who just want to play a complete story. I want to see it through to the end and get the feeling that my actions had any sort of consequence to the world, and HL2 really doesn't provide that.
And narratively, the fact that Gordon is a silent protagonist really doesn't make the player feel like they're a real part of that world, and rather they're just going along for an on-rails carnival ride. The player has no real agency to affect anything that isn't a part of the singular route offered by the game. This would be okay if it was a role-playing game, and the player is intended to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, but HL2 is a wholly linear game where characters just bark commands at you from start to finish.
Honestly, for being a negative review, I think he was very fair about it. It's an important part of gaming history, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great experience for modern players.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
HL2 has a ton of story, but it isn’t spelled out in cutscenes or written down in item descriptions. It’s discussed by NPCs and inferred from the environment. You experience it all in a first person frame, without third person cutscenes or by asking someone to exposit at you.
You’re a person in the world and nobody will be the explaining the concept of lightbulbs or the where the combine came from or how the city was built. But you can absolutely find out more about that in the game.
But yes, we all hate the cliffhanger.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.
Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah I played it for the first time last year and I couldn’t really get into it. Gave up a few hours in.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah gameplay wise the game basically leaned a lot on novelty. But they are wrong to say that it lacks world building and lore because it’s scant on narrative. That’s like saying “the Quiet Place lacks world building because there is barely any narrative”. The game is excellent in using game mechanics to tell a story. Instead of relying on the storytelling mechanics of film.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Its world building and such is visual story telling.
SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 2 weeks ago
This makes me think that the guy ran through the game instead of playing it. Just because what happened isn't spoonfed it doesn't mean it's not there.
Reminds me of all the haters of Dear Esther.PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s much more rare nowadays in new video games that have this style of physics or visual storytelling. It’s a game that will always be a fresh experience to me anytime I replay it.
malle_yeno@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Okay but like, Half Life 2 is similar to Citizen Kane.
A revolutionary piece of media for its time that brought the medium as a whole forward.
And kind of a slog to get through now because we learned a lot of lessons about the medium since then.
Like I’m sorry, but you’re not going to convince me that the strider fights on your way to the citadel were actually good and definitely not a painful chapter that soured a lot of people ln the game. And Water Hazard is infamous for being very uninteresting to the point that people that play half life now joke about it.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
is the time shown on steam reviews accurate? cause i’d guess that it takes more than 12 minutes for a casual player to finish half-life 2
in fact i checked and the world record in speedrunning is around 36 minutes lol
DeadDigger@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Lots of mods for older games circumvent steam, so steam does not know about the game running. Famous example was Skyrim and Skyrim script extender. If this is the case with mmod idk
dosse91@lemmy.trippy.pizza 2 weeks ago
I have some similar reviews with 0 hours because I usually play a cracked version of the game and then buy it if i like it just to support the dev. Maybe that’s what was going on here.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
that makes sense. maybe the mod they installed causes steam to not count the hours.
caut_R@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you play in offline mode (Steam Deck) Steam doesn‘t clock your playtime IIRC
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Afaik it does if it resyncs. Just takes a while to update
demonsword@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you launch the game outside steam the time isn’t accounted. I know this because I love playing Timespinner with a randomizer. Inside steam I have 40h of played time. If the timer counted my randomizer sessions I’d have at least 4x that
MurrayL@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Bro spent hours playing HL 2 and then had to turn on godmode? Does he only have 1 hand or something? What happened?
Bbbbbbbbbbb@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I did that for Control when I played that, I was just ready to be done. Im guessing by every other part of the review the person was also just ready for the game to end
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
I suppose people who don’t enjoy overcoming challenges or figuring out strategies wouldn’t enjoy a lot of videogames in general.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
0.2 hours to be exact.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Ah good catch, that means they lied as well.
Romkslrqusz@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Using MMOD doesn’t track playtime for the man game
PapstJL4U@lemmy.world [bot] 2 weeks ago
I expected a really bad take, but this is not it. HL2 has strength, but the story is not it. It’s okay, but I want you to remember that the ending of HL2 is just not good - neither to ‘boss fight’ nor the deus ex machina ending.
Even the gameplay gets boring when you have the “op” gravity gun.
I prefer HL1 to HL2. The physics riddles are not hard either and I think Stratholm is only “horror” for people with no xp in Survival Horror games.
cybernihongo@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
I played this game twice, and tried to get to the end twice, and in both times I just WALKED AWAY. The original was actually playable and beatable in comparison.
One moment it’s a shooter, then it becomes a driving game, then it becomes one of the earliest walking sims with long stretches of nothing, then a horror game, then a tactical shooter, and it wasn’t good at any of them - it was all just cobbled together. Valve would have had a much better game if they sold just Ravenholm.
And by this point in time I can’t help but think the funny letter G guy is just a Mary Sue to glue the game together with very little character or substance besides “man in black”.
I firmly believe the only reason this game is “beloved” is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them. (And also because of this game every fucking company that breathes has an online DRM launcher)
Fear by Monolith and its expansions on the other hand, they were so much better despite the aiming system being unintuitive in comparison to HL the 2. Everything just clicks. I just loved Fear. But I’m sure this won’t save me from “Ubisoft target audience” allegations.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I firmly believe the only reason this game is “beloved” is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them.
It’s more nostalgia than branding. I’ll entirely agree that half life hasn’t aged great, but what’s important is the historical context. The games were groundbreaking for the time, especially HL2 with its physics engine and gravity gun. I remember playing it just days after release then being shocked and amazed at those different systems. There just weren’t many games with that level of polish tackling such a wide scope.
Just like with watershed TV/movie/music, it seems quaint and overhyped as their innovations become the norm.
cybernihongo@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
I once saw someone somewhere comment that HL2 is actually a tech demo meant to show off the physics stuff. Which I wholeheartedly agree with, and even that didn’t win me over. The game doesn’t feel like a shooter meant to be enjoyed, rather it feels like Valve flexing its muscles only because they can.
demonsword@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
As someone who hates open-world ubisoft style games, I’m personally not much of a fan of HL2 either. I tried it multiple times at different points in my life and each time found it to feel like a slog that I end up giving up on a few hours in.
I enjoyed the 1984 aspects of the world at first, but I ultimately can’t get past how bullet spongy enemies are. Virtually every weapon feels extremely impotent except the revolver, which has very limited ammo. I began to dread every encounter with enemies because it rarely felt fun to fight them.
On my last playthrough I cheated and gave myself infinite revolver ammo, which helped me get farther than before, but even then I was struggling to push onward after a certain point, just because it felt like endless waves of enemies being thrown at me with some mildly enjoyable physics puzzles tossed in between them.
Never felt a connection with any of the characters, and without that the gameplay itself just becomes repetitive to me, I stop having fun, and stop.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think the pistol and SMG are intended to feel weak, to push you into other weapons that take more interesting use. For instance, half an SMG clip into a soldier could instead be one launch of a barrel from the gravity gun. Notably, you only see those soldiers after getting the gravity gun.
If you’re referring to the early cops, about half of them are around some tricky environmental kill, like an explosive barrel. But, I’ll grant there are times you’d desperately spend a magazine to land headshots with the pistol. So, I guess you’re not wrong.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
From what I recall, I didn’t really enjoy using the gravity gun all that much since bigger objects had a tendency to clip terrain if they weren’t aimed quite right, and thus miss the enemy I was aiming at, which prompted me to switch back to the other weapons to finish off a gunfight. Admittedly that might’ve been just a me problem, and others had more success using it (I know the sawblades with the gravity gun were quite accurate and easy to use in ravenholm, but they don’t think they show up much after that area).
I felt like most of the game doesn’t really give you enough ammo with the non-standard weapons to really use them outside of one or two bigger fights, then I’d be back down to the smg, pistol, or shotgun (which I also felt was a little under powered unless you used the alt fire, but that chewed through ammo too quickly to be viable most of the time).
frongt@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
The revolver’s first shot is dead center. Use your suit zoom and you can snipe a headshot.
Other than that, use the appropriate weapon. Soften them up or flush them out with grenades. Pop around a corner and hit them with both barrels of the shotgun. And don’t be afraid to use the quicksaves liberally.
HL and HL2 definitely aren’t polished AAAA game experiences, they’re experimental games from people trying to push the limits, so it’s natural that they don’t hold up to modern games. The modern games are standing on the shoulders of Half-Life (which stands on the shoulders of Quake, Doom, and Wolfenstein).
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
As I said, there was never enough ammo to really use the revolver more than a few times in my experience, hence why I cheated infinite ammo for it.
I don’t have any nostalgia for the half life games as I didn’t play them growing up, but I also don’t think their age is really a contributing factor. Personally I found Half Life 1’s combat to actually be far more fun due to the enemies feeling a little less sponge-y, and the gunplay/guns themselves feeling more punchy and overall just better to me. HL2 I consider a step down.
There are shooters older than HL2 that I would consider to have much better combat, like Blood (1998) or Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) despite their age. I understand that HL2 was trying quite number of new things, but ultimately my gripes with the combat are mostly down to what I consider to be a poor choice of damage variables, but that’s just in regards to my own preferences for combat in games.
isyasad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
truly dull sections - yes I’m looking at you the vehicle sections … makes playing through HL2 a slog. Just a few hours in, I didn’t want to play any more. I was done.
Totally agree with this. HL1 is one of my favorite games ever but HL2 was just boring. I tried it a few times and never finished. Opposing Force and Blue Shift are my Half Life 2 and Half Life 3.
RandomStickman@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Reading the comments aged me more than anything
hissingmeerkat@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Half-Life 2 would be a mediocre game if you lacked empathy for people in conditions where the protagonist (the player) starts.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Tbh, that’s just the difference between someone who has nostalgia for a game and someone who doesn’t.
I played Pokemon Red as a kid. I replayed it dozens of times since and it’s always really fun. Just feels good.
I didn’t play Pokemon Gold as a kid. I tried to play it quite a few times and never got throught it. Objectively, Gold is a much better game than Red in every regard. But I don’t have nostalgia for it, so it’s just an old game with bad UX, outdated gameplay and weak graphics to me. Can’t get through it without getting bored and quitting.
HL2 was revolutionary, 22 years ago. Nowadays it’s just woefully outdated in every respect including gameplay.
As OOP says e.g. about physics: That stuff was amazing in 2004, but it really isn’t in 2026. Almost every shooter includes physics and in many cases better physics than HL2 did. In part because game designers have learned from HL2 and other games and improved upon it.
Speedforce@multiverse.soulism.net 2 weeks ago
I would agree with you in theory, however I am the same age as Half-Life 2. I never got around to playing it until it was already an old game (11-12? MAYBE 13). I played other shooters before, like various CoD games, Bioshock Infinite, etc., but they never clicked with Me. They obviously took great influence from it, every shooter did, but I could tell even as a kid that they didn’t do it as well
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The bridge crossing level and using the crossbow to crucify combine soldiers were about the best parts of the game as I remember it.
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have yet to play half life 2 (waiting on my son to get the motivation to help me beat decay, I’ve beat the other expansions)
But I can’t imagine that half life 2 doesn’t hold up when the first game is a masterpiece that holds up better than pretty much any FPS released after it
awfulawful@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Unfortunately several parts do not hold up when you remove the novelty and temporal context. The whole game was mind blowing when it was new; I very much enjoyed it then. On a subsequent playthrough years later, there were definitely parts that just did not hold up. I used the console liberally at times because I couldn’t be bothered to do them for real.
I think it’s the consequence of bringing a truly revolutionary game to market with limited resources. There are clearly portions that exist to showcase the cool shit they could do rather than to drive the narrative or be genuinely fun.
artwork@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not only the author of the post frame the ineffably marvelous Ubisoft for their Assassin’s Creed only, or the people in the organization who are not even related to the case, and for literally unknown reason, but also the author of the review feels like a disrespectful bigot who has a bad time enough to inscribe their hatred into someone’s effort.
Such a deep sorrow some people do not care about their actions… and ruin this world in hatred and utter, disgusting unfairness…
Agrivar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Dear lord, I actually hope you used AI to write that nonsense.
artwork@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I never use LLM except for pentesting or experimental/medicine.
Meanwhile, I am sorry to know that you found it nonsense.
MotoAsh@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Stanning for Ubisoft isn’t the look you think it is.
artwork@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Half-Life was the same. The game doesn’t spoon feed you a narrative, the same way real life doesn’t have a narrator (at least one outside of your head).
You need to pay attention to your surroundings, listen in to NPCs talking, read posters on the wall, etc to piece together the story.
It was and is one of the cooler ways to do storytelling in my opinion. Cutscenes etc are fine but for a first person game, I love the immersion of the story happening around you rather then being loredumped on you while you’re agency is taken away from you.
Auster@thebrainbin.org 2 weeks ago
Agreed. And in this line of more subtle storytelling, from the games I played from the franchise, if anything, it took all the way to Portal 2 for some things to start making sense.