| MrMarc said: 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. |
Well I disagree that the "story-telling" aspects are poor. How they tell the story is very well done and usually non-obtrusive for people not interested. I do agree the actual story being told is rubbish, which I don't hold against the game unless it insists on beating my over the head with it, something I felt they were getting close to with Episode 2.
I think the “physics” puzzles often get too much credit as well, when they’re almost all some variant of the same tired teeter-totter routine. Like someone else said, they’re not “puzzling” just a chore. When it’s not them it’s making stepping stones on something you can’t walk on, or just clearing junk out of your way. It felt like to me a generally uninspired execution to a genuinely inspired idea.
I think the original poster makes some decent points, which is odd when he goes on to claim the Halo series is flawless. A series I have a far longer list of issues with, the pacing being one of Halo 3’s biggest problems. By pacing I mean most everything, difficulty, story-telling, and general action and movement. It was like no one ever knew where the hell they were going with any of this.
And what is it with the charging flashlights? Three different series all embrace that idiotic concept. Why? Let’s a generally useful ability have to stop and pause for a few seconds every now and then. Such a novel idea, especially when real flashlights just running on ordinary batteries last for hours at a time. =P
