Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, Antlion Troopers

Ant writes "Antlion Troopers is a series of Half-Life 2 modifications where it puts you on the squad of a combine expeditionary force to fight off the antlion population. Just think of Starship Troopers movies. The sequel, Deuce, lets you interact with the squad members, set up sentry guns, etc."Additionally, Gamespot has a first look at the Lost Coast add-on for the main campaign. From the article: " You fight your way up a sheer cliff face, trading fire with those pesky Combine soldiers every step of the way. You'll occasionally have to deal with some of the more vicious sorts of headcrabs, and at the end you'll have to bring down a Combine gunship with Gordon Freeman's trusty rocket launcher. You'll have to solve a couple of light physics puzzles as well, which we won't detail for the sake of preserving at least a little of the surprise."

Comments

rad

[drummie zeb]

awesome

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone actually finish HL2?

Everyone I know got partway through and just couldn't get themselves to complete even though they didn't want to waste the 50 bucks they spent on the game.

I think I'll pass. Valve is a relic who is only surviving because there is little competition left in the shrinking pc game market.

PS. Gabe, stop giving interviews. You've embarrassing yourself...

Re:Yawn

[randomdef]

are you sure it was people you know? are you sure it wasent nothing?

Re:Yawn

[Wandering Idiot]

Did anyone actually finish HL2?

Yes. (Including the Citadel sequence which some didn't like but I thought was an excellently done "falling action" epilogue after the proper climax of the battle with multiple striders). You mind saying what you didn't like about the game? Personally, I consider it to be the best single-player FPS ever made. The only way I can see for someone to really hate it is if they don't like, y'know, shooting things. Which is generally considered something of a given when you buy a First Person Shooter.

Re:Yawn

[@madeus]

I thought it started off brilliantly and was immediately very immersive, but it really failed to sustain that interest and the story seemed to fall by the wayside, turning it into a mediocre by-the-numbers shoot em up (albeit one with a great 3rd party physics engine). I found it pretty repetative and formulaic with very linear level design with few 'milestone' points (unlike the origional). I'm fine with 'repetative' in the sense of 'shooting things' over and over (ala Doom 1/2, Unreal 2, etc), but when the environment repeats itself for large sections (as with Doom 3) it gets very tedious. 'Ravenholm' was certainly a nice departure, but they failed to really take enough advantage of it, and they had some dodgy elements to the level design in that section.

Dispite being heavily critisized by some of the gaming press, I loved Unreal 2 because of the varied gameplay. It had many different weapons, multiple types of deployable equipment, several completely different types of enemy and unique envrionments. It also had a consistant story to move things along (between every 'level', there was an additional 'level' set aboard your ship, where you could wander amoung your shipmates and interact with them to play out the story). This was actually a lot more 'interactive' than HL2 (and area in which HL2 is very much overrated IMO), in which it was almost entirely scripted and you just happened to be able to move around - though it was possible to 'trigger' a small number of additional scripted routines by looking or clicking on various things, it was noticeably quite limited.

With regard to HL2 feeling 'linear' IMO, I felt quite artificially constricted in by the outside environment. After playing titles like Ghost Recon, PlanetSide, Soldner, Joint Operations, BattleField (etc), when I'm outdoors I want to have freedom to explore and find my own way from A to B, over a reasonably large map (all of these support maps up to several kilometers in size). I hate getting to the top of a hill or mound - or worse, facing an invisible barrier - and discovering I've reached "the end of the world" just because I've gone a few feet off the beaten track. Far Cry did much better in this respect, and gave the player genuine flexibility and what felt like inteligent AI. There are even open source tools which can seemlessly stick together large outdoor maps into one envrionment (e.g. in whatever map format the Ureal engine uses). HL2 did particularly poorly in this regard, one of my most enduring memories of it is the frequent loading screens.

At the exteme end: You can drive for miles in Solder, for example, and the world just keeps being drawn - without repating the map over and over (forests, lakes, hills, mountains, grassland), because it seems a tool has been used to auto generate a huge amount of terrain and they have simply placed special interest points (i.e. basis, buildings) on top. As a bonus, the terrain in Soldner is dynamically deformable too (as well as buildings, you can fell trees and forests, even create new rivers, or destroy a whole mountain). The descruction models for buldings were a bit linear (several 'impact points' which could be struck and blown up/off/open), but at least they were there. The origional PlanetSide team used real world map data and adapted it to build the continents of Auxaris. I imagine something like an adapted version of the terrain builder from Sim City 4K would be ideal for this sort of work. Certainly after playing larger 16-46 multiplayer games and MMO's (and even the likes of GTA3/VC) I have no desire to back to out door maps that feel like they have been rendered according to the limitations of something like the Q3 engine.

In summary, I think I just felt that HL2 lacked imagination and vision - it did not really bring anything new to the table nor did it alternatively execute it all that well (with regard to the comments above, but also to the much maligned AI of the supposedly more intelligent opponents). For that reason I felt it wasn't as good as some other rec

Re:Yawn

[Hinokagutsuchi]

I finished the game, and honestly, it wasn't all that great. I mean, it was fun and all, but it didn't live up to the hype.

The gameplay was fun and enjoyable, but the storyline was horribly lacking. As an FPS, it doesn't really have to have a gripping storyline, but even so, basic questions should have been answered.

As Freeman, you're dropped into this bleak future, and nothing gets explained about how the world ended up that way or anything along those lines. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, because I could have missed it, unless the explanation was simply "crap hit the fan after Black Mesa"

Re:Yawn

[myc_lykaon]

As Freeman, you're dropped into this bleak future, and nothing gets explained about how the world ended up that way or anything along those lines. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course, because I could have missed it, unless the explanation was simply "crap hit the fan after Black Mesa"

Bit of a late reply - been on hols, but if you finish the airboat bit and get to Black Mesa East then Dr Vance will explain a bit about the 7 hour war and the installation of Dr Breen as administrator. This though is only activated if you zoom-look at the noticeboard with news clippings on it. In fact several 'plot' elements are revealed this way.

I use 'plot' in quotes as I think that you are in some measure correct, that HL2 could have been much more enjoyable had they actually made it more interpersonally interactive and less 'shoot things, get to next waypoint, shoot more things, next waypoint'. Just because it sits in the FPS genre, doesn't mean it has to be only shooting and slogging.

torrent

[QuantumRiff]

The torrent from there site is here

Half-Life 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or is Half-Life 2 the most wildly overrated game since Black & White? Granted, the engine is pretty nice, if you can tolerate the load times.

Otherwise, HL2 is little more than Yet Another Generic Shooter. It's completely linear, almost as bad as those early rail shooters. "Go this way, now this way. Oh look, a scripted event trigger."

The story is fine, but gameplay-wise it's just boring. For godsakes, it has ubiquitous exploding barrels and crates with ammo! It's a dull, cliche shooter.

Re:Half-Life 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe true, but name another phyysics oriented game with a great modding community. Half-Life 2 was pretty fun, in fact it's the pretty much best game of 2005 that i've played. Granted, there are better ones out there and is *is* slightly overrated but it was an enjoyable game for the most part.

Re:Half-Life 2

[Blaaguuu]

i would actualyl say the Halo games are th most overatted... never seen much in them. while i do think HL2 is overrated, it still is a very good game. the most interstign party i thought, was the physics interactions, whcih havent been doen much in games, thusfar. other than that, i agree it is very generic. and i actualyl thought the story was terrible o_O

Re:Half-Life 2

[Cyanara]

Yeah, it's fairly overrated. There wasn't a single enemy to defeat by problem solving, really. Handheld weaponry always seemed to do the trick, and one of Half-life's big claims to fame was that it broke this tradition in the first place. And maybe it was just my computer somehow, but graphically, it struck me that a lot of its textures were rather low. Sure, it speeds up the frame rate, but surely that's why you add another setting in the graphics options for people with cards that can handle it?

At any rate, I do find the facial simulation in HL2 to be really awesome. I'd love to do a mod that can be played out like a movie, so realistically.

Re:Half-Life 2

[Luigi30]

It auto-detects the DirectX hardware level of your card. High for a DX7 card would probably be low/medium on a DX8 card and low for a DX9 card. You need the latest in video cards to have the best graphical experience. I saw a major difference running in medium when I went from a GF3 to 6600GT.

Re:Half-Life 2

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just you.

Does it still give you motion sickness?

[sgant]

I have no idea what the hell is going on. But Half-Life 2 gives me major motion sickness. Never had that before playing these games.

I can play CS:S with no problems. Been playing Battlefield 2 everyday. Red Orchestra through UT2004 quite a bit. So just 3 nights ago, I thought I'd fire up HL:2 and go a little further and WHAM about 2 minutes in I begin to get queasy again. Breaking out in a cold sweat and very nauseous.

No idea...

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[antdude]

I heard HL2 uses some odd POV. I don't know if CS:S uses that too. Do a search about motion sickness and Half-Life 2. It's common. Even *I* got motion sickness which is very rare!

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[sgant]

Thanks Ant (is this the Ant from Bluesnews...if so, cool!).

I've been playing these types of games since the original Wolfenstein...but I met my match with this one in terms of nausia.

I DO remember getting motion sick when playing Quakeworld...but I was using this weird controller at the time called The Orb...where you just move while holding this ball attached to this gamepad...you could pull and twist and bend the direction to move and look in opposite directions. This is before WASD became popular as a control scheme...but The Orb got me motion sick also.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[antdude]

sgant: Yep, that's me and the rest of the Internet. ;)

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Wilson_6500]

An attack of Uncanny Valley?

Or maybe I shouldn't give HL2 so much credit.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Jackmn]

The HL2 FoV is far too narrow by default.

Try the following:

sv_cheats 1
default_fov 90
fov 90

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[HD Webdev]

I have no idea what the hell is going on. But Half-Life 2 gives me major motion sickness. Never had that before playing these games.

Make sure that your framerate for the resolution that you are playing at isn't 60Hz. Try 70/72/75/etc... and give it a go.

Even though it's hard to see, different framerates can make people queasy and/or have epileptic problems.

I had a similar problem with Quake1 and then found out that 60Hz at the resolution I was using was the problem.

HL2 gave me a similar problem. Then I found out that I was using a different resolution for HL2 singleplayer as opposed to CS:S. Once I set HL2 to the same settings as CS:S, the discomfort went away.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Sepht]

It's a well known problem with HL2, I played it through the first time with just a bit in Ravenholm, and after that I was fine. I tried playing it again a week ago and I got motion sickness. Slashdot had an article on this: http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/11/23/1631228.s html?tid=204

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[sgant]

I'm on an LCD, so there is no flicker or framerate really.

But I'm going to try the FOV adjustments.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Txiasaeia]

Can anybody else confirm that this works? I never got past the boat section of the game, but if this ends the motion sickness I'd definitely like to get back into the game.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Anonymous Coward]

no

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[teloro]

I had the same exact problem with HL2. I could only play for about 15 minutes before I developed some nasty motion sickness, and I'd have to lay down and stare at a wall for another 30 minutes thereafter just to feel normal again. This was while playing on a Sony G420 CRT (1280x1024 @ 100Hz) and refresh rate was not an issue.

Then I happened to get a new 30" LCD HDTV and subsequently decided to hook my computer up to it using DVI. I tried HL2 again in widescreen (1280x768) while sitting about eight feet away from the screen. Motion sickness was completely eliminated, and I was able to play for six hours straight if I wanted with no ill-effects.

Not sure if it was sitting so far back from the screen, the larger size of the screen, the widescreen format, or all/none of the above that eliminated the motion sickness. All I know is that I'm just glad it's gone.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Anonymous Coward]

Framerate != Refresh rate

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[HD Webdev]

Someone Said While Passing By: Framerate != Refresh rate

True...if we completely ignored the context of the discussion and did the AC 'Nitpick Boogie'.

Frame Rate

Refresh rate

It's all about context.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[mink]

Strange. I was using the same monitor as you, on a 1.5 GHZ (Athalon XP2000) machine using a Radeon 9600 Pro. I was sitting only about a foot away and had no issues.

I guess it depends onthe person playing.

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[Some_Llama]

I saw a lot of posts about motion sickness on the forums when HL2 came out, and changing the FOV seemed to help a lot for people...

I think it's default is 75 which can play games with your vision since humans can see I think in excess of 120...

Re:Does it still give you motion sickness?

[neumayr]

*lol* No, you really should not.

antiquated game play

[bobsalt]

hl2? i run a cyber cafe. I have had a few people ask about hl2/cs. I explain what they want to charge me per month($10 per pc per month) and they say wtf?. I woulnd't pay that! I then have them try out bf2 or some other game that isn't limited to a map the size of your local shopping mall and never hear any further complaints. hl2 and doom3 are wonderful game engines but the game play isn't there. People have moved on past that. They try a game in the bf* series and forget about playing a game based in a hallway someplace. I feel bad for valve but the simle matter is that people want a larger play experience. Playing cs over and over isn't much different than playing tank on the atari 2600. You get your paterns down and thats that.

Re:antiquated game play

[C0rinthian]

I think people simply expect something other than the developers intentions. Comparing HL2 and Doom 3 to something like Battlefield 2 makes no sense. The first two are story driven single player games. The developers wanted players to have a specific, almost cinematic, game experience. So don't be suprised to be on a rail triggering scripted sequences. BF2 is trying to generate an entirely different experience for the player.

Personally, I think both styles of FPS are completely legitimate. WHen I want a story drien game, I'll fire up HL2. If I want open-ended gameplay and bigass maps, I'll play BF2. Different is not always a bad thing. If every game played the same, it would get pretty damn boring.

Re:antiquated game play

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. You can go ANYWHERE in bf2 maps.

*tries to go off into the scenery and gets shot for being a deserter*

Err, might want to find a new game to use as an example.

Re:antiquated game play

[C0rinthian]

Okkay, point taken. :) However it is less linear than Half Life or Doom, you gotta admit that.

At least it's not a box canyon.

about antlion troopers

[Tibor the Hun]

I love it!
I've enjoyed both similar situations in the game (in the prison, and when teleporting with Alyx), and this is way more fun.
I don't know if it's just the simple pleasure of hearing the bugs die or what, but I can play this all day. (which is actually what I did today).

Thanks RomeoGuy! I'm sure you and your team will be rewarded for your endeavor.