Ello Greg =)

I'd say the finest moments in Half-Life 2 were neither the overly scripted cinematic wanders (poor mimickry of Freeman's arrival at work on that fateful day in the nineties), nor the endless corridor-stomping murderfest - it was the freeform gameplay in the middle of the game, travelling by buggy, with wholly optional exploration of the abandoned (and reclaimed) structures along the coast. And aye, Episode 2 capitalised upon that freedom, as though they finally realised what they'd done right, and what they'd completely fucked up.

Although upon a recent replay, I noticed Ep. 1 is actually rather good O.o Far better than the original game at least. Still, I'd love to see a Half-Life entry get back into the hands of Gearbox someday.. Opposing Force was my favourite chapter.

That sense of being treated like a God.. On the contrary, it's so rarely appropriate that I'm coming to hate it more than ever. I'm really aching for a game in which I am NOT the estranged son of the deposed king born under a sacred star sign with the blood of ancient wizards and aliens running through my veins who happens to stumble upon an ancient relic which bonds with my right arm and speaks to me in an evil voice making me the avatar of duality prophesised to lead the underdog faction to the promised lannnnnnnnnnd *breathing happens now*..

Gods damnit, just let me 'forge my own destiny' - even New Vegas keeps a constant weight on my mind because of that damned main quest. I have no desire to go to The Strip, but feel continually obligated to do so >.>

You're right about my comment on the bridge sequences of Halo - fighting that long gauntlet through the snowy canyons both ways, having.. Matured in my tastes, it came to be a compellingly intense experience. I see what you mean about the tram sections of HL1 in that regard - though Freeman is very rarely rushed during HL1 - unless you're the type to worry about Black Mesa collapsing under the portal storms. Without an emotional obligation to hurry or a logical reason to rush there's not much sense of gruelling struggle - unless the danger is a constant. System Shock 2 achieves that constant tension, that grinding horror, by virtue of its fantastic AI and spawning systems. You can never rest easy, you can never take it for granted that something isn't slowly tracking you, or standing, muttering behind the door of the next office. Makes me shudder happily just thinking about it.

You're right - SS2 never got old. I think Bioshock made even more certain of that by cloning the gameplay while drastically simplifying it - SS2 remains massively ahead of the game even today. Drag-dropping a charged battery from your inventory directly into a receptacle in the game-world is UI design beyond anything else in the mainstream - only Penumbra ventures to that level of physical presence and interactivity. SS2 and Thief feel like games in which you actually have a body, rather than a flying camera in space. FEAR also nailed that 'physical presence'.

Having played Thief only around two years ago, I can say it certainly hasn't aged as well as SS2, but that it's still a very entertaining game. A lot more simplistic, of course - but it's a graceful minimalism.

As you mention a racing game, I'm curious - how did you feel about the 'weight and handling' of Burnout: Paradise, if you've played it?

Geh. StarCraft. It had a clunky interface even when it was new. RTS games have a very hard time appealing to me today. Blame Men of War, Total War and Dawn of War. War war war, we are the war-riors..

.. M.. m.. m..

.. Morrowind..

Gregg, do me a huge favour and make a serious project out of that game. Write a little about your experiences as you play, either casually on the forum or as articles. I've love to hear how it strikes a newcomer. A dark and seedy love, but no less passionate.

Morrowind is one of those.. Special games. It is the reigning king of the Open World, and scores pretty high on atmosphere as well. The scale of the game, and the variety of content.. Nothing else compares. Fallout: New Vegas is the first game to come close, but it lacks the charm..

*shuffles off, insomniac muttering*

SUPER EXCITING UPDATE!

... I've now played the entirity of Red Faction 2 in one sitting. On a PS2. For about the third time. Except that FUCKING END BOSS. I'll just watch the final cinematics - I beat the bastard when I was 14, and that's enough.

Curses, I'd really lost track.. Those games are just.. Fail. Not terrible, but my god they're derivative, repetitive, visually lazy and poorly made in every respect. The gaming world at large decries Guerilla for going third person, open world, and abandoning 'what made the originals great'.. Hells, on the contrary it was the first Red Faction game that was truly worth buying, by today's standards. Well, more on that soon..

I look forward to besting you by rambling, Finkbug. I certainly won't by armwrestling, with my puny girl-arms. Well, they're not that girlish. There is hair. But they're very thin, really. Don't you feel better now you know these details? Thief.. Thief, what's the trick to Thief. It's unknown, it's mystery. It's being given a sandbox zone full of secrets, hidden rooms, clever tricks, bonus objectives, hand-crafted level designs that can really be quite impressive, and setting the player loose. It appeals on the same level as an open world game, albeit tightly restricted. Consider it a minimalistic Deus Ex in single levels, and you might nail why I found it such an enjoyable experience.

The fact it's packed full of zombies also helps =D

SS2 - I agree, the weapon breakage was a real issue - although playing as a Navy operative my first/only real playthrough (although I sadly didn't quite complete it before life flipped upside down a bit), I was able to keep all of my equipment in excellent condition. As a 'Soldier' type, whatever they were, I imagine I may have gone insane, or simply married my monkeywrench. However, when compared to any modern FPS, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex remain vastly more advanced. They're certainly clunky when it comes to combat, but in SS2's case the movement, too, still surpasses any other FPS - remember it has the ability to clamber onto any horizontal surface by holding down Jump, and allows you to lean forwards as well as left and right - as a physical movement that collides with walls, rather than simply a slight alteration of camera position.

The question, as far as I see it, isn't so much whether SS2 has aged - as whether the rest of gaming has caught up with 1999 yet. It hasn't, other than aspects of Penumbra, FEAR and STALKER, and each only in part.

 - Jack, working up the motivation to conlude his studies of RF 1 and 2, so he can immerse himself in the joy of RF:G - and the trauma of learning how to mod it again..

Well spotted, Finkbug =) The notion has occurred to me – though I'll speak out (as I do) in favour of SS2 and mention that the insidious appearance of -intelligence- in the way a wrench-wielding hybrid will walk along a corridor exploring each room he finds will always outstrip the obvious psychic abilities of a Hunter viewed as a spectator in a L4D campaign. The AI Director knows everything – whereas Xerxes knows only what his cameras tell him.

I find SS2 terrifying because it remains the only game in which I was not fooled into believing I was being hunted by an intelligent enemy – because it was the only game where I actually WAS being hunted by an intelligent enemy D:

I'm far too smart to believe their foolery – I am not scared of oppressive hordes of flawless and inescapable seeker-drone AI. I fear something that is actually alive, with strengths and weaknesses – something I must respect. Something I cannot predict. SS2 remains one of the only games possessed of something I'd call 'AI' rather than attack scripting. Halo is one of the very few others.

GreggB – Exactly! Downtime, contrast! They're vital to a truly satisfying game! =) But there's still such a thing as simply having a poorly designed and boring gameplay sequence. Ravenholm was trying hard to be horrifying, suspenseful and exciting, the fact it was a grind came down to simply poor level design and cliched setting. STALKER's long, uneventful crawls through ruins and wanders across windswept moorland, on the other hand, are boring but only serve to build a delicious suspense and jitteriness in the player to be released almost orgasmically when you spot a bandit blocking your intended path and delicately place a bullet behind his left ear.

Half-Life's tram tunnels, however, were simply what they were. They were intended to be a long sequence of tunnels populated by two warring factions, Xen aliens and Marines, into which you descend in fear and from which you emerge desperate for fresh air and sunlight. It wasn't 'fun' necessarily, but it was good.

That moment with the Rumbler. I feel for you. Oh god that must have been traumatic. First time I was ever that badly struck by an 'in-your-face moment' was embarassingly innocuous – I was Ghosting (noclipping in Unreal engine terms) in the original Unreal because I was too scared, at 12, to play it properly. I was inside a sniper rifle I had spawned using yet more cheats – in that epic, grand, star-ship sized scale you can only get by being the infinitessimally small camera with no bounding box and a wide FOV, it rotated with an insidious slowness through the entire right side of the screen, this inexplicable, horrifying, expanding brown mass RUSHING toward my eyes. My depth perception had a complete panic attack and decided bigfoot was about to skullfuck me and I almost fell off my chair =<

Forbidden Siren on the PS2 can have a similar effect, for suddenly and horrifyingly being confronted with things that sneak up behind you >.< Ever played it, anyone?

Ah, Gregg. You and I are born to be game design consultants, says I. You understand, clearly, the value of the player-body, the sense of mass and movement. Physical presence is vital to an avatar, and rarely ever accorded any attention.

At least we've moved on from Rainbow Six/Ghost Recon – do you remember how it felt to move in those games? Camera tripod on a skateboard..

How do you feel about FEAR's physical presence? I love being able to see my body, particularly in a game involving melee combat and acrobatics?

Mmm. I like it here. People talk good sense. *warm glow*

- Jack

Edit:

Steerpike! Oh gods, the potential for a crossover. What the hell genre would that be? Sapphic AI Valve/Looking Glass Survival-Horror Interactive Erotica?

GlaDOS versus SHODAN. Sweet Jesus in a convenient pig-themed salt-shaker.

I'm afraid the Haunted Cathedral was where I zoned out with Thief. Loved the game but burned out some time before the end, and it was that level's difficulty that did it to me. I think I remember that objective though - that was where I admitted defeat =x Give me freakish crab-men, give me retarded underground velociraptor tribes, but not those red-robed, skullfaced horrors.

Not seeing the feet! Yes, that's the problem. I just.. lose it, the moment I look down. I am reminded with a sharp prod in the imagination that I am playing a game, and it was developed by lazy unimaginative bastards.

I'm not sure being 'with' the antagonist of the System Shocks was the key so much as being -inside- them, subject to their whims, you yourself a virus in a larger body, wreaking havoc as you battle the mutant and cyborg immune systems.

Hah, that's it. That's the key, that's what Bioshock was meant to be and missed, that's what Irrational did so well and forgot, most tragically; ecosystems.

Games that are themselves living environments, bodies within bodies, interacting. Bioshock's original design was a tragic loss.

I'm not sure I agree - there was the sawblade gimmick and the car-engine spinning blade traps, as well as some car-crushers - but the vast majority of Ravenholm was played using a shotgun and magnum, if you roll with the ammunition you're provided. Much of the town was actually very sparse on the physics objects after the introductory buildings.

My prevailing feeling about that zone was more that Valve wanted to see if they could achieve a dedicated horror scene, and depict an insane support character, as a break from the bleak monotony of their dystopic hellhole - resulting in something that would have disgraced a mod.

Now, Episode 1's screaming Stalker in the crashed train, and Episode 2's Advisor Pod hunt, THAT was real horror. Between the Hunters, the Striders and the Advisor, Half-Life suddenly owed a greater debt to War of the Worlds than to anything else, and lived up to that sense of grand action-horror involving an implaceable, but very scientific, believable foe.

Xtal: No! I'd like to be more polite, but.. but.. but NO!

Most emphatically, no. Half-Life 2's action was insipid, bland, slow paced. Fuck, it has the worst combat I think I've seen in a modern FPS for straight shooting. The means to kill the average combine soldier using any firearm in the game is to sprint up to point black range and hold down left mouse until either he dies or you need to reload. Once the game gets boring during the long corridor runs, this becomes the quickest way to just -move on with the fucking plot Gordon-. The enemies have virtually no AI to use cover (drastically weaker and simpler AI than the USMC from the original Half-Life), no expression of personality (being combine doesn't completely excuse their absolute blankness), and to compensate Valve simply gave them -ridiculous- amounts of health.

It lacks the visceral feedback of a Soldier of Fortune, it lacks the beauty of an Unreal, the acrobatic satisfaction of FEAR, the stealth of Thief, the imaginative and interesting weapons of Painkiller, or even the interesting weapons of the original Half-Life and Opposing Force.

In fact in terms of raw action I can't think of a single good thing about that game. Gravity gun is a crudely handled gimmick with a lot of potential left unexplored. I think the only thing I actually found exciting about it was the secondary fire of the pulse rifle, launching that glowing energy orb.

On the other hand, I did enjoy fighting ant lions and black-crab zombies, who brought some interesting dynamics to the fight. Anything involving combine foes, fast zombies or normal zombies just made my brain switch off in despair.

I think I'll dart off in a different direction to succinctly sum this up; an elegant, action-packed, varied and exciting action FPS (with an epic scifi story) can be found in the original Halo. Half-Life 2 came out some years later, as a drastically simpler, cruder and less varied game.

Heh, that reminds me – I recently played through the entire half-life series, skipping only the long boring Xen segments of HL1 and most of Blueshift, in order to show a close friend what she had 'missed', as she aspires to be a well-educated game geek but missed the boat during the golden years. She sat cackling with me as we tore the game apart, until we reached a point about halfway through HL2 that she was pointing out the massive texture cracks, the flawed level design logic, the ridiculous AI and obvious cliche moments before I could even mention them.  I gained further sense of justification in these opinions beyond my extant determination, as a result.

Aww, damnit xtal. We're just fundamentally incompatible. I adore FEAR, and actually enjoyed it more replaying it around 6 months ago. Now we can never marry and make many beautiful klidrin [Image Can Not Be Found]

Gregg: You seem to nail my feelings on the game, albeit with less anger and frustration. Vehicle segments, awesome. Sentry guns, awesome. Hell, years before the Weighted Companion Cube I carried a single sentry gun through almost the entirity of Nova Prospect, until getting into the Combine teleporter still carrying it, jammed and vibrating inside the confined space with myself and Alyx. It crashed the game to desktop the instant we teleported. I'm surprised no-one tried to carry a sentry gun they had fallen in love with out of the level during testing. Perhaps I simply give all the love to virtual inanimate objects that I am incapable of feeling for living beings.

You also hit the nail on the head that the Episodes are fantastic - almost as though made by a completely different team, they are a beautifully paced, well-crafted sequence of semi-linear gameplay challenges, nicely integrated, honestly intense (fighting hunters in the nuke silos and intermediary storage halls underneath the 'strider battle' area).. I just can't imagine how the same team was responsible, broadly, for HL2 and its mini-sequels. They have a powerful feeling of Halo's unstructured, open-to-interpretation gameplay freedom in a scifi, outdoors environment.

Hah. And we also coincided on System Shock 2 - I first got to play it in around 2002-2004, at a rough estimate. I was in the company of a friend, with poor atmosphere and a noisy family around me, yet we were captivated.

... for the 40 minutes I spent hiding behind a medical trolley, physically shaking like a leaf in the wind, unwilling to go back out there where I had seen my first Hybrid wielding a wrench. I then turned the game off and didn't play it for several years *nods*