Half-Life 2 Coverage Appearing
scottcha+4 writes "When it was released in November 1998, Half-Life redefined the action gaming genre by combining fast-paced action and an intelligent, intense story. Players quickly began clamoring for a sequel, but developer Valve Software responded with silence. Five years later, the call for that sequel is as loud as ever. Get the details via this CNN story." The CNN coverage has a couple of amazing-looking screenshots and some brief details, but there's going to be a whole lot more after magazines like this arrive in stores and the press embargo is fully lifted.
This has been waited for sooooooo long.
But how long before this becomes the next TF2? Hopefully, Valve is serious this time and manages to make a great game (like what TF2 could have been). Too bad we'll have to wait until E3 before they break this silence.
Merely a means to an end: Counterstrike 2! Lets hope they do some rigid security enhancements to limit cheating.
http://www.remix.net/
All I'll say is that I sure hope that Half-Life 2 has a better ending that the origional. Half-Life was one of the best games I've ever played, but it had one of the worst endings I've ever seen.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The story in itself was just as stupid as the story of Doom: "There's a portal to some hellish place, and now monsters are swarming around you. You have a crowbar. Can you save the world?"
That's actually quite unimportant for an action game. I think what people perceive as "intelligent" in the story of Half-Life is the way it's told. It makes you wonder what is happening, what happens next, who are those people and why do they want to kill you?
Doom and Unreal were just card games with shooting in them: find the key card, find the door, shoot some monsters. I think the story Doom was based on was about the same as Half-Life, but it never made me curious of what was happening. That's the difference of intelligence levels in the "stories". Half-Life had a more intelligent way to tell you what was going on, and that's all you can expect from a story in a game. It's not high literature.
After all, you don't expect an FPS to be The Brothers Karamasov or Orlando, do you?