Just got this game and put in a couple hours last night.
Excellent graphics, excellent physics, smooth gameplay. I particularly liked the realism of the other people and the "body" physics they use -- no more dead zombies falling into walls or laying horizontal on a slanted staircase, the interaction with the environment is perfect (just watch the way someone falls down a staircase...)
I had two problems, though:
1) Load times are too frequent. Maybe I'm spoiled by RPG's that offer huge, seamless worlds, but I was annoyed at having to pause what seemed like every 10 minutes for "Loading". If every RPG in the world can offer seamless loading of a huge environment, why can't HL2? I'd gladly sacrifice some graphics if it meant they could do away with pauses to load between areas.
2) Gameplay was way too predictable. Maybe I've just played too many FPS games, but HL2 was really formulaic. There's only 1 path to take, any other path is just a deadend with supply crates, it felt very arcadish (as opposed to immersively realistic). Like oh, the way is blocked! Well, good thing someone left a big ramp here, which I can't use because it's not at the right angle, but luckily someone left just the right number of floating blue containers here that I can use the jack it up to the correct angle to make the jump!
I mean come on, okay, you have a nice physics engine, we get it, you didn't have to set up a time consuming yet completely obvious puzzle just to demonstrate the fact. It was interesting in a "it's neat the physics engine can do this" sort of way, it was not interesting in a "this is a fun aspect of the game" sort of way.
I almost feel like I'm playing a demo moreso than a game. Like they set things up to say "look what our engine can do" rather than setting out to create an awesome level that's fun and immersive to play.
So here's my advice to Valve:
Stop letting your programmers do level design. Design levels that are fun and immersive and don't worry about whether or not every nuance of your physics engine is being demonstrated. That's pretty annoying.
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I'm very glad that I waited until I purcharsed a top of the line computer to play this game. The visual quality of the environments is marvelous and the game play is very fluid. I have a P4 3.2 Gig, 1 Gig of RAM, X1800 XL graphics card, and a high end monitor w/ a DVI connection. Even with the high end graphics card (w/ all settings on maximum, visual and audio) I still get a few spots in the game where it will lag for a second. However, these spots are few and far between. Also, it only lags when something incredibly amazing happens on the screen and I don't mind if it happens to freeze for a second b/c it's something that's spectacular to look at.I played this game over a span of 5 nights for about 6 hours per night. I did this on the medium setting so it took about 30 hours of game play to finish the game. Granted, it would have taken a couple less hours if I wasn't admiring all the the graphically brilliant environments. Oh, and I highly recommend you play this game at night w/ all of the lights off. If you have a high end PC and monitor, it's pure gaming enjoyment. I did play HL2-Lost Coast on the Hard setting and that was much more challenging. The enemy can kill you much more quickly and you need to do a good bit more damage to them to get the kill. I plan to play HL2 on the dificult setting sometime next week. Let's see how far I can get w/out dying. ;)I don't see why everyone is complaining about how the game is "on rails" or that there are a few puzzles to solve in the game. First of all, HL1 was the same way and nobody complained about it then. If you haven't played the game, so what if there's only one way. Just find it and finish the level. As for the puzzles, they don't take much time to solve and don't detract from the game at all. Just think 3 dimensionally on some of them and you'll figure it all out w/ no problem.So many people have been complaining about STEAM. Get a grip people!!! If you have a DSL connection the "updates" to HL2, Counter-Strike Source, and Lost Coast only take about 30 minutes to download. These updates are there to fix problems in the game so that you have a better gaming experience in the first place. So stop complaining about STEAM and start thanking the fact that it exists. Otherwise, you'd be complaining about all the bugs in the game and wanting patches to fix them. W/ STEAM, all of the patches download automatically. Additionaly, you can even turn off some of the updates if you aren't interested in playing those games. That way, HL2 will update even faster. Ultimately, if you have waited over a year to play this game anyway...another 30 minutes isn't going to kill you. Just deal w/ it.In conclusion, if you have a great computer system I highly recommend purchasing this game. It's an awesome gaming experience. The Half-Life saga is the greatest thing in PC gaming history. Also, I hear that even on slower systems the grame runs perfectly well if you turn the graphic settings down. Actually, the game will recommend which settings for you to operate w/ based on your system.BTW, I've played CS Source and it's definitely not like Condition Zero. I much prefer CZ as it has the older CS feel but has much better graphics. Source is just too odd, it's harder to track your fire and all the people run like hunchbacks. LOL, you'll see if/when you play CS Source.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2005
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Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2004
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Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2005
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Frank Hever
WARNING, never buy a used pc game.
Reviewed in Canada on April 5, 2016Verified Purchase
