@PurpCat there are a lot of people who will blindly just love whatever nintendo puts out, but i think there are a ton of people who are the opposite too lol. nintendo has developed so many games with so many different styles you can't really put them under that wide of an umbrella.

i kind of feel this same way about shadow of the colossus too lol. sure it's got these massive boss fights but it runs at like 15 fps and it has basically nothing else going for it.

i've got a little bit of that feeling towards the souls games too... they have a lot of great things going for them from world design to the story to the music but the COMBAT, the CORE GAMEPLAY, sucks ass and i think people really only like it because they have stockholm syndrome from the dopamine administration when you finally bust your head through the brick wall bosses.

this is all coming from the guy whose favorite devil may cry is DmC though so idk sue me.

@hazlin long story short. i played hl2 right after hl1 basically. it felt way more like a generic action game, whereas half life 1 had this atmospheric sci-fi horror thing going on that i really enjoyed. it also goes way harder on the realistic graphics and i think that these days, it's actually to its detriment. i don't think HL2 has aged nearly as well.

this sounds really weird, but i consider FEAR to be a perfect spiritual successor to half life. HL2 feels like an entirely different game. FEAR's still got the atmosphere i liked so much in HL1 and it even ends with a science facility exploding! it builds on the enemy AI and the gunplay in meaningful ways. it's a lot more action packed but it doesn't feel hammy like HL2 does.

when half life 2 came out, i'm sure it was revolutionary. it feels more like a 2008 game than a 2004 game, for better or for worse. for someone who didn't play it back then and didn't play it until like 2021 or something, it really did absolutely nothing for me. i hated the vehicle sections, and there was way more dead air that was either going from point A to point B with maybe a dumb puzzle in between or lots of dialogue.

i respect half life 2, especially for its impact and the source engine itself, but i just did not like the game.

@beardalaxy
Ahh, that makes sense! It was amazing in 2004, but I don't think I would enjoy it now xD

It was more like an exploration game, with a focus on the latest game tech.

Which, only works when that tech is the latest xD