people said half life 2 gets better once you get to ravenholm

in fact, ravenholm is probably the only good part of the game so far imo

tbh it's reminiscent of duke nukem forever, except i had more fun with that game because it doesn't take itself seriously

@beardalaxy i mean ravenholm also showed off the most creative uses for the physics engine, dropping car traps, sawblades with gravity gun, engines with rotating blades as traps
it's a fun chapter because it's much more slower paced due to the enemy theme and lets you have fun with the gravity gun
of course after that i'd say the action picks up in nova prospect and on a reasonable difficulty level it can be quite fun as long as you know what you're doing

@lina the pacing and mood is just WAY different than the original half life and ravenholm is the closest its been so far. i just barely got to nova prospect, controlling the ant lions is pretty cool but there are a lot of..... questionable design choices.

@beardalaxy oh you bet, from the ammo capacity reduction to the slower movement, it's a completely different game compared to the first half life
but still, i like it for what it is, it was one of the first FPS games that had so many mechanics, even if they were sometimes used only once per chapter, vehicles, weaponized vehicles, physics manipulation from doing it directly via the use key and gravity gun to the crane, i think it's more of an interactive proof of concept than a game imho

@lina yeah it seems like if i had played it when it came out, or around that time, instead of in 2022 i might have enjoyed it more, or been more amazed by it. it's a technical showcase much more than it is a game. i think it's fair to say that the best thing that came out of half life 2 was the source engine itself. now with source 2, i wonder if the same fate will eventually befall half life alyx.

the first half life was more atmospheric, and i think it aged better because of that funny enough. half life 2 in this day and age has just felt like a generic action game in most places :P

when i say it's reminding me of duke nukem forever, it's mainly the vehicle sections. that's done a great deal to ruin things for me. i get that you know, they show off the physics and such, but they're hard to control when shooting at the same time and the physics sometimes work to the driving's detriment. it feels like the vehicles should have had a bit more weight to them.

there are other things too, like the design of some of the enemy encounters popping up right when you walk into certain triggers requiring you to approach combat in a certain way. or the times when you're just waiting for story segments to happen. these both weren't problems in the original half life because you were alone for the majority of the game, barring simple friendly AIs, and the game was pretty linear usually with just hallways and rooms, unlike half life 2 which has big open areas, so when enemies just spawn in it's way more noticeable and grating.

and the music.... let me tell you, nothing ruins the atmosphere more than 2000s era hollywood action movie music blasting when all i'm doing is moving a car with a magnet lmao.

@beardalaxy one thing i disagree with is the soundtrack criticism, i wouldn't call half-life's soundtrack 2000s era hollywood action per-say, it's got a distinct style just from the instrument and synth choices, plus half of it is reused from the first game, which are bangers on their own, episode 2 has some good tracks too
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=LF9Cr1KW6f8
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0iXfWWrwrlQ
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zlD5uvOt_Sw
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QsjJmvANWn8
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=RZRNd6osQrk
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=E0k-KbjycRA
but yeah, i don't quite remember what track plays on the crane section, i think by the time i get to it all music ends

@lina for me the game was totally silent and then i started moving the magnet around and it's like, vaguely reminiscent of those anti-piracy commercials that had pirated music xD

@beardalaxy weird lol, maybe once i do a replay sometime later

@lina i don't know if i just didn't notice it in half life or if they just used those tracks better than they did in half life 2. the music in half life didn't really stick out to me like it has in 2, so i didn't pay that much attention to it. maybe it was just quieter in the mix or something??

@beardalaxy the goldsource engine has a fatal flaw that i think came with updates - music gets stopped on map change, remember that elevator in we've got hostiles? once you get on it and start it, diabolical adrenaline guitar plays, but then it changes to the next map that is the surface with a bunker and vent entrance and the music just dies, maybe in the WON versions it didn't cut off, but i always remember it cutting off in the unmodded version

@lina interesting, i didn't play it modded or anything, just straight up gold source. so maybe there were times the music just flat out wasn't playing.

funny enough though i actually didn't mind xen that much. i know my tastes in games are pretty weird and sometimes very particular, so it's probably just a me-thing xD

i turned off the music in alan wake, for instance, because it just sounded too much like generic horror music and i was just not really invested in the atmosphere. i started liking the game a lot more after i did that. perhaps silent hill has spoiled me!

@beardalaxy xen was honestly just pure untapped potential, if you know what you're doing the whole thing can be beaten in like 15 minutes, counting nihilanth
black mesa did it justice in a way, but i always loved it in a barren and minimalistic style that it is in the original, like there's seriously mystery towards what happened to it, was it a proper functioning world in the past or is it just a distant chain of floating islands in outer space brought together by chance?
black mesa's has its own mystery in alien plants, unknown alien tech and an entire vortigaunt ghetto, as well as interloper being more fleshed out as an actual alien incubator factory

@lina i got black mesa in the autumn sale or something, i plan on playing it eventually because it seems like a pretty good recreation. i've heard some complaints about it, but for $5 i figured i'd at least get my money's worth.