Half-Life 2 is the game of the DECADE!

[Mazty]

Mummelmann said:

Mazty said:

Mummelmann said:

Chrizum said:

Mazty said:

Chrizum said:
Mazty man you are insane. And you lack reading comprehension but we often do on these forums.

My reading comprehension is just fine....Why am I insane? Because I don't just follow the crowd and the "in" thing?

The "in" thing? I would hardly call Half-Life 2 the "in" thing, Mass Effect and its kind of storytelling are much more popular than Half-Life 2... I think Half-Life 2's style puts off a lot of people (like you), but appeals to a certain type of gamer which is not very mainstream at all.

But no, that's not why you are insane. I find it hilarious (in a good way!) that you think having the sole "female" role be an AI is the mature way to handle a female characters in a video game I must picture you laughing out loud at your keyboard when you were typing that.

Mass Effect and Halo is just about as "in" and mainstream as gaming gets, right along with Need for Speed, CoD and other monoliths. Half-Life 2 is simply more original and influental in practically every single way.

Hahahaha. Right, so HL2 is more influential then Halo: CE, the game that shaped almost every FPS this generation. Okay, if you say so...
HL2 is the "in" thing because it makes the person look edgy and knowledgable about games when in fact it never really had a good storyline, it just created a silent protagonist. As far as the actual game went, it's hardly anything special. 

Halo CE "shaped" some console shooters. PC FPS games are a race of their own, Halo is not as important as you would have it. CoD has regenerating health, yay, influence! There is nothing "edgy" about talking about and loving HL2, it has sold tremedously well and is not a hipster product. The difference lies in the direction and ambition it holds, not in sales numbers. You're simply trying to disarm the entire argument by claiming we enjoy niche gaming and thus have no voice in the concerns around stories and gaming, a pretty shallow and childish techique in my opinion. And really, really far from the truth as well.

HL2, from a technical perspectice, has breed every single highly interactive shooter ever since and showed and taught that an environment that you could actually use and be a part of adds tons to the gameplay and immersion, the Source engine has laid the foundation of Cryengine, modern Unreal Engine, Aurora engine, FrostBite engine and most other huge, important and game-changing engines of this generation.

The main reason HL2's story is celebrated is because of the way it is told, which is direct and damn near perfect, it is also down to the point and lacks hours and hours of uniteresting cutscenes with glossy character models and embarrasing dialogue. You are always in the middle of the story and you drive it directly, this is the genius of HL2, along with physics, visual superiority (at the time of release), AI and incredible art direction/level design.

The Source engine still produces impressive images today, Left 4 Dead 2 looks pretty damn good on max settings, and that's on a modifed version of an engine that was born nearly a decade ago! There is simply nothing to compare it to. As far as comparing RPG and FPS games storywise, that's just grasping for straws. You want to compare the driving physics of Gran Turismo to Burnout while you're at it?

I also maintain that Mass Effect 1 and 2, even despite being "RPG's", have pretty standard and bland stories, I much preferred the character side-quests in ME2 before the main story and that kind of speaks volumes... ME's side-quests were dowright bad and had no story at all and the main story is cliched and drab, allthough the some of the dialogue is fairly well written.

HL2 is a hipster product. The story is praised yet ~70% of the game is devoid of story. Go figure. 
Also Halo: CE didn't just do the regen health - it was the whole package it brought with it:
Melee
Quick grenades
Ammo & weapon limit
Vehicles which didn't suck
Regen health

I'm not sure what you mean by "PC FPS games are a race of their own"  considering most FPS' on PC are multiplat. Say I'm being childish but I've given a legitmate argument - parts of the story are cliche, other parts are rediculous, and it actually lacks story. 

How has HL2 bred most shooters from a tech point considering most don't use the source engine? I think you are forgetting games like Morrowind where a lot of the environment was interactive. You are barking up the wrong tree if you think the natural progression of engines wasn't to add interactivity to the game world and that they just took a leaf from HL2. Think about Fable, a game where the world evolved and changed around you. Or, to really put a hole in your argument, Red Faction.

Perfect is not having a female lead fall for a mute rambo scientist. That's absurd. Also just celebrating a game for how it told the story seems pointless considering how little story there is to tell. SotC says next to nothing and is considerably more immersive then HL2 in every aspect. 

If you are going to celebrate a game for it's story, why are you limiting it to it's genre? That's just creating an arbitrary limit in order to make it look better then it is. But if you insist on drawing such a limit, frankly HL2's story is no better then Halo's and yet Halo isn't lauded for having a genre defying storyline.