alright.... i'm going back in to half life 2. i'm going to probably need a palate cleanser after this
half life 2's version of difficulty is to give you full health, put you in a small space with unlimited rockets and bullet sponge bosses that can kill you in like 10 stray hits, and then give you full health again. it's the same exact story over and over, not fun in the slightest.
or, they do the same thing with the health but it's enemy waves instead, and they'll spawn behind you from places you've already cleared out. and they're still pretty bullet spongey. why does it take 3 revolver shots to the head to kill a dude? but only sometimes? because every now and then i can kill by shooting with a shotgun up close in one shot, but for every time that happens i have to dump three shots into a guy. the gunplay feels super inconsistent.
did this game really just censor out the use of "fuck you"
did it really do that. with a bleep and everything
a rated m game
i'm at a loss
it feels like half life 2 is trying to be a call-of-duty-esque modern shooter rather than an atmospheric fps game like its predecessor. which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it had a sniper, real headshots, and a quick melee attack. there are just way too many enemies in play at any given time and the game doesn't telegraph things very well. it's got these open maps but hardly points you in the right direction. enemies are coming from everywhere, so where am i meant to be going? i run out of ammo with a bunch of boss enemies around, so where can i find more ammo? you end up running around aimlessly trying to find where to go while abusing the fuck out of the quick save, only to find out that you were never supposed to kill these things, they opened up some passage for you a while ago that you didn't see because you were in cover so they didn't annihilate you at a moment's notice.
and then when you KNOW where you want to go there's an NPC fucker blocking a doorway that gets you killed because a combine soldier that spawned behind you throws a grenade down the stairs.
it's infuriating! the game is a bad fps with a mediocre story and a physics gimmick. perhaps revolutionary for 2004 but not now, not even close.