If they've figured out how to sell good games for a measly $2 US then they're awesome.

That we have to put up with bullshit enforced upon them by whatever country we happen to be then the blame isn't difficult to direct.

For example a friend bought Psychonaughts but the credit card charge was more than the cost of the game.

I remember when they brought Steam to the Russian market (link please) and basically said 'there's only alot of piracy there because they can't get hold of the game legally'. 

That boatcarwhatever sequence was painful. Please tell me there are no more vehicle sections or at least none as stupid as this one. The physics puzzles feel very forced, out of place in a "realistic" game. Grenades love to bounce from corners that are not in their way.

Gorgeous textures and brushwork. 

Spirit: Agreed. Especially about the physics puzzles. But do remember: in 2004 physics was a "new" thing. 

There's an equally long car sequence later on, but it's slightly better than the hovercraft one.
See here for reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRsexrhbG8 

I just played the boat part again and I thought it was awesome.
what was it that bothered you so much ( other than the lame floating barrel puzzle)? 

i like the boat section, especially how the sun slowly goes down as you play so that it's nighttime when you reach the base.

also, the section half way through where you escape into these leaky tunnels and the chopper flies away. the whole chopper chase is very loud but that one section with the physics puzzle is really really quite and moody. very cool audio contrast.
it's not a subtle effect, but i love it every time it's done in a game. 

Tank! 

Hacked Rochelle:

"Tank!!!! Tank!!!! TatatatataTank! Tank Tank Tank Tank TANK!!!!" 

http://www.halolz.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/halolz-dot-com-left4dead-confusion.jpg 

I would shoot the gas canister *clever* 

 

Finally got through the whole awful car stuff. Reminded me of the bad things in GTA:SA. The locked animation when exiting the car is ugly, consoleritis for crosshair centering?


Zombies and the other stuff in Ravenholm were utterly disgusting. The parts with the shaking rain gutters somewhat comedic. Felt like Painkiller there.

Oh, another broken road tanker! Oh, more broken cars! Oh, another abandoned building with enemies in it! Oh, I am on a bridge and pressing a button. Oh, another gunship. I was expecting it earlier because there was that rocket chest.

I died out of nowhere after avoiding the train on the bridge by simply driving backwards into safety. Before I managed to get the car sideways between railing and train, I had 6hp left but the game killed me. Fuck it! I also died once because I was adventurous enough to attempt a dive into the water, well, midair fade to black.

So far HL2 seems like a Halo to me. Is it really the age or is it just a not-so-great game after all. I found it extremely boring and without any immersion so far. Super random encounters with enemies in a big empty landscape. Oh, tunnel, "loading"!

No clue why I am driving around there, I think I am trying to find someone. Or I am running away. 

"No clue why I am driving around there, I think I am trying to find someone. Or I am running away."

Maybe you're not enjoying it because you're not paying attention? 

Ah, I forgot that the game crashed hard right after the Ravenholm church and that I had to use a cheat to unlock the next chapter. Savegames were corrupt and the alternative was to replay Ravenholm. So I missed why I am in the car. Now that I come to think about it, well, that's why I have no clue. 

Overall I felt HL2 was a decent game but I thought it was incredibly over hyped and over rated. My main complaint was the very gimmicky and often-copied Gravity Gun. I did not find it very appealing tbh - all the driving stuff was sort of meh to me too.

Loved Ravenholm though, that bit was awesome. 

StarCraft 2 beta supposedly launches towards the end of the month. Anyone else excited?? Even remotely in the niblets? 

I thought it was a fun, gimmicky FPS. Every chapter featured some gameplay gimmick, several of these built on previous ones (e.g. hovercraft -> dune buggy.) I thought this was nice, kept things interesting. I also liked most of the locales, especially the prison level and some of the industrial stuff.

The game has flaws and some maps are kind of weak, but overall i never got bored. 

Was the super gravity gun and all the levels featured.

Big anticlimax. 

super gravity gun as the end to hl2: let down
super gravity gun as the into to ep1: surprisingly fun.

not sure if it's just because i already understood how it worked by that point in ep1, but it seemed more satisfying to progress from the super gravity gun to normal weapons than the other way around. 

Going from complex gameplay to simple felt wrong - from simple to complex much better.

Simple as in the range of options available. 

~~~ for megaman ~~~

I managed to get through the car sequence and to some buddies. Right there we got ambushed by dropships. Are those invincible? I shot 3 rockets in one and it did not crash. Then I got killed by some clipping bug on the lighthouse (where I had to rocket down a gunship for the 3rd(?) time in the last 30 game minutes.

Then came the part where I must not touch the sand because antlions will spawn (with screen shake and a grumbling sound!). I got through the first part alright but then felt down in that little area where the houses are. A fuckton of antlions spawned and hit me from everywhere while I was trying to cover my ass and run into a building. These things feel like slowdown-mechanisms more than anything (right now). I then hit the button and that stomping thing was enabled. Ok, that is kinda cool, earlier I thought those things were generators. I assumed the beach was safe now and was killed by antlions that spawned as soon as I stepped onto the sand.

That uber-antlion fight was stupid. I ran from it, got bumped into the back, then realised someone else was shooting at it. So I ran closer to the gunner and the thing followed me. Then it got stuck and did not attack me anymore, sheepishly loosing health and finally dying (its animations reminded me of the Droles in Quoth, no way to tell if it is dying right now or not).

Ok, so now I can attract and "command" antlions. Ooook, that's gonna show the enemy. I guess there will be some puzzle where I have to use them. Might be that I played too many "next gen" shooters in the meantime, but those enemies with their glowing headlights and no faces feel really stupid and clichee.

One thing I have to mention is that the cliffside and also that part on the bridge earlier really impressed my vertigo sense (?). That rarely happens in games but always feels kinda cool. Like "Oh my god, I'm gonna fall down!!" I am not sure how much of it is plain uneasyness and unfamiliarity with the controls/movement. Or even dreading loading times (which seems a good thing as it makes me dive into the game some more).

Now I am at that Nova Prospect beach where the enemy built silly short-range bunkers. I mean wtf, are they there as antlion shooting range or what. The guns are very uneffective (or the enemy guys have 5 layers of fat...) so what are they doing there. The antlions proved to be very useless and more of a distraction here. It felt like there were new ones randomly spawned for me. I approached the next loading trigger (I can smell those) and let it rest for now.



The crossbow is a lot less fun than the one in HL1. (The arrow looks like a lava stick?) The projectile is affected by gravity like a czg, you cannot even shoot straight for 100m and it flies very slow too.

Weapon changing takes ages. I should see if there is at least a cvar to make switching instant. Oh, kudos to Valve to keep the good id order of "mouse up -> previous and mouse down -> next". 

Today's session was much more fun. Feels like a FPS now. Open and a bit like Titan Quest though (tree, hill, grass, enemy horde, crates, goto 10). I hope there will be good old close combat, restricted indoors short-story driven gaming later. 

all of it. there wasn't a single part that didn't work for me. but then that probably had something to do with it being the only fps of last decade i actually played so i don't really have anything to compare it with :)

if i HAD to pick one criticism i'd share with you spirit it would be the sand generator type machines. they seemed to have no purpose; i too assumed they would activate some sort of electricity current that would stop any nearby antlions from rising; felt quite miffed when they didn't.

but i get the feeling the crashing/random death bugs you've experienced have dented your enjoyment of it to the point where every negative aspect seems worse than what it would have been :P 

Haha yes. I've been super negative about the game right from the damn speedboat sequence onwards.

Yesterday I went through Nova Prospect. Used godmode at the "defend 4 entrances with 3 turrets that get constantly knocked over" moment after dying 10 times.

A lot of the gameplay was waiting for a shitload of antlions to run and die. I took a turret with me as long as I could, that was kinda nice.

Could someone fill me in on the story. Why was the black guy in that combine thing?

That "plot twist" with the woman in white was totally unpredictable... I expected her to betray "us" right after her first sentences in the game. Bah, silly clichee.

Got crushed by the moving castle... err citadel because I got stuck in debris. And then I spent a long time to stack crates in the high elevator shaft (where dog falls down later) just to fall into the loading screen and not damaging me at all.
Puzzles feel awfully gimmicky, just out of place in a world that tries to hard to seem realistic.

Also the "that old puzzle but this time with this marginal difference" parts (disabling the force fields by taking out the plug, shooting the plug, throwing a grenade around (fucking stupid physics btw)) are bleh.


It crashed again (corrupting the savegame) so I need to build up some motivation. How much of the game is left, I just got the squad?

PS: The one death I described earlie (being levitated and crushed) actually was one of those things that hang on ceilings. There is no visual hint that it grabbed you nor a sound, pfff. 

"Could someone fill me in on the story. Why was the black guy in that combine thing? "

I ... don't want to be insulting here but you've asked several highly obvious questions about the story so far in this thread. Are you watching the cut scenes and listening to what people say? I get the impression that while they're talking, you're over in the corner jumping around or something.