The story isn't very good. The game sheds light on nothing that was unanswered from the last game and characters don't fill you in on backstory, and they talk about events as if the player is already fully informed about the game's history. On top of that, the fact that you reemerge from your pocket dimension years later, means most of Half-Life 2 is just filling you in on what happened while you were "out". It doesn't even fill in all of that! Honestly, if you don't play HL2, you'll have fewer questions as compared to someone who has completed it. Hey, Valve...learn how to end a game, ok? The rest of your teams seem to have their stuff together, so try making a real ending sometime, you're 0 for 2 thus far, it's time to try something different.

High tech super suit. Protects you from harm. Filters oxygen out of the water, even allows you 6 Million Dollar Man style bursts of speed. 10 second flashlight. What's up with that? That's some fantastic progress we're making on those batteries in the future.

The puzzles just seem completely unnecessary, as if they were just designed to advertise the psychics engine.

I think this is probably the worst teammate AI I've seen in an FPS since Daikatana. It's like every one of your followers are the Redshirt sidekicks from Star Munchkin. If you get attacked, they take the hit for you, if you DON'T get attacked, you roll a die. Hit a 6, and they sacrifice themselves ANYWAY. At one point I had 3 medics on my team, and 1 follower for the full complement of 4. I got to an area with Manhacks and I got the team through that fine. Immediately afterwards, there's a door at the end of the hall, where the Combine has set up a wicked ambush. The ONLY way I can get my team through that area with ANYONE alive is to bust out the door first, Crossbow in hand, snipe 4 guys, 2 of which are manning machine gun nests. Then I have to turn and gun down 2 more soldiers behind me, all within 3-5 seconds. If I don't bust out the door first, my teammates will run out first, block my path, yell out, "Ow" and never try to run back inside for cover. They'll all get shot and killed until I remove every possible way they can die. I feel like a mom safety-proofing her house.

Another time I set off a machine gun turret in order to get behind a doorway that would keep me protected from the turret's firing arc. If it didn't detect anyone in the firing arc, it would deactivate. I had 3 NPCs with me, and for the next minute and a half, instead of ducking behind the wall like me, they'd all wander into the firing arc, yell something about how their leg hurt now, and head for cover, only to be immediately followed by the next NPC taking their turn in the "get shot in the leg" line. All they had to do was sit there...and I'd given them a command that would supposedly do that, and they couldn't even follow that for more than 3 seconds. Eventually, I came to view my squadmates as free portable medkits, ammo, since they'd drop items at their point of death, and that went a long way towards tearing down the 4th wall.

Speaking of tearing down the 4th wall...what's up with the inviso-walls, Valve? Wanna see what I mean? Get the Dune Buggy. In the area where you take out the two Combine Missile Trucks, hit Turbo and go right into the log ramp from the opposite side you're supposed to "jump" off it from. You'll crawl over the logs, but won't be able to complete the "jump" to the next sector. You'll get up in the air, have the speed and distance, and bounce back. It won't let you pass until you blow up some red barrels behind a 40-foot container that supposedly allows you access to that ramp. This took me 15 minutes to figure out, because you don't know to look for something like that once you've already figure out an alternate path to the same tunnel. The same goes for the big battle with the Striders in the streets. I was lobbing the laser guided missile at the Striders to try and help out the guys on the ground, and thinning out the troops down there...only there were infinite numbers of troops, and the Striders wouldn't take any damage until I hit another plot switch. LAME. Some of my least favorite moments in gaming arise a developer tries to make you think a game, or section of the game is open-ended, but in actually is bolted down to a rail. It's like a woman wearing a Wonderbra...it's just false advertising. You know the truth will be revealed, and when people find out they are not going to be happy. Just be up front about it, and people won't have anything to complain about.

Leave the forum please

both half-life and half-life 2 are godly and shouldn't be touched what so ever

You don't touch anything in a museum either right.

Half-Life is godly.

 Fast learner, i like you!

Halo has the same flashlight issue, as does AvP2. It's a game mechanic.

 Don't bring in halo just because of his username =P

I also think the game is overrated

I rented the orange box on my 360 and big time hated it, thought that team fortress was weird as heck, and portal gave me huge headaches

but you know what, thats my opinion and theres bound to be some people who dislike certain games, just like the huge amount of people who dislike halo on this site

Did you play it on 360 or PS3? If so that's your problem. If not, then you're crazy.  You think I'm exaggerating about it on 360 or PS3?  If you rented or bought the Orange Box for the console and disliked it, it's because it's meant for PC, and I'm not kidding.

To be honest, I love Half Life 1 and 2 as excellent first person shooters. But anyone praising the games for their story telling are either blind or playing a very different game to me.

Both games have barebones, completely minimal storyline going for them. There's a difference between telling a story in a very subtle manner, and not telling any story at all, and HL falls into the latter.

I could ask a million questions for both games, What is this, Why that? And I guarantee you that playing through the games with the sharpest eyes possible would not answer any of them.

Half life = Excellent shooter - Rubbish story which frankly is almost non-existant.

 Qft.