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Half Life 2 To Appear At E3
MonsieurEvil writes "Valve announced today (http://www.planethalflife.com) that the long-awaited Half-Life 2 will be appearing at E3, and will be released this year. The NDA for press is supposed to end on April 28th, and quite a few magazines are already hyping their scoops. Hopefully all the teen-angst types that show their superiority through decrying this as vaporware can now listen to their elders..."
One would hope and expect so. The thing that made the first game was the fantastic story line, the incredible scripted sequences, and the feeling of intellegence from the enemy.
When the first one came out, it really blew me away with that mix... will the second one be able to live up to that? The marketplace has moved on, and it's harder to impress gamers than it was then...
I hope they've come up with a brilliant single player game as I'm sick of the focus on multiplayer these days. (Which is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to Doom3)
I was looking forward to Unreal2, but it just didn't live up to the expectations. That is really too bad, I know a lot of people who were looking forward to it .... sigh.
:) , so that makes two cool games with totally pimped out graphics. Hopefully, the gameplay wont be sacrificed in HL2, cuz its the gameplay more than the graphics that made HL what it is.
But hey, I think Doom]|[ will be released before this year is over
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Of course, not everyone would behave this way, but still, Half-Life is a very sore subject for Mac gamers. That said, if it showed us anything, it turned out it's indeed true one can have a satisfying gaming experience on the platform without having a specific "A-list" title, and I'm sure that's true for Linux as it is on the Mac, even if there are fewer Linux games than Mac ones. Certainly my own biggest problem isn't too small a selection of games, but too little time to play the ones I have and too little money to get the rest of the ones I want, smaller though the Mac selection may be. Even with more money and time, though, I wouldn't do Windows for games. One has to have principles. ;)
I dont know much about game engines, but I wonder if all games created using the Unreal/Quake ect engines must be shooters? Could it be used to make a whole new Myst/Riven type of game? Would be interesting. I miss those great Zack McCraken type games.
Didn't you play the game? If so, why are you asking questions that have such obvious answers?
Initially, the character (Dr. Gordon Freeman) wants to settle into his new job. At this point, there is no-one standing in the way of his goals.
The first unexpected event happens when the experiment goes wrong. Part of the lab is destroyed, and what remains is infested with aliens. At this point, the aliens and the destruction stand in his way and his goal is to contact people on the outside.
Eventually, he manages to find his way outside, and that's when another unexpected event takes place: the people who were supposed to save him and the other scientists are in fact trying to kill them to keep the whole affair secret. At this point, the soldiers stand in his way, and his goal is to try to learn as much as possible about the situation, and how to solve it.
Eventually, he finds a way to teleport to the alien's planet (which must count as another "unexpected event"). Now his enemies are once more the aliens, and his goal is to destroy them.
Finally, at the very end of the game, there's a final "unexpected event".
So there.
Half-life's story isn't "great" in the sense that it's very original (it's not). The great thing about it is not the story itself, it's the way it flows so naturally and feels so much part of the game, despite the fact that the game's genre is not one typically associated with "a story".
Half-life is essentially an action game. It's not an adventure, it's not a RPG. There are no dialogues and no items. Just guns, monsters, puzzles and the occasional scripted "scene". Given these building blocks, I think HL manages to create a great atmosphere and (apart from the rather weak and predictable ending) to tell a pretty entertaining story (a lot better - more interesting and more consistent - than some movies).
HL's great strength is not its originality, it's the level of perfection and polishing of every single of its elements, from the gameplay to the default keyboard layout to the auto-save system. Things that stem not from great technology or brilliant ideas but from a lot of playtesting, a good dose of common sense, and a refusal to settle for "good enough" just to meet the deadline.
As someone wrote at the time, "Half-life restored my faith in gaming". After fiascos like Black & White and Neverwinter Nights (not exactly bad, but very disappointing nonetheless), I could definitely use a new injection of Valve fluid.
It's ironic that the company that created such a perfect game (and later created and financed so many great free updates and mods) was founded by ex-Microsoft employees...
RMN
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