Ech, thought it was okay at best. What really kills it is the voiceless protagonist - a cheap, easy cop pout of making a like-able character.
No this does not make the experience more unique as the game is completely linear. Plus it's more of the one man army nonsense which is hard to break through with FPS', and has been for almost every FPS bar a rare few (Quake 4 for example).
I feel like HL2 receives a lot of praise for just being a well polished run-and-gunner from the mid 90's.

Same thing happened to me. I rented the orange box to play portal and then beat it, so I got bored and tried half life 2 and thought it was awful. And then I told my brother it was awful so he stayed away from it too. Then about half a year later same thing happened except this time my brother played it. He thought it was the best thing ever and thought I was crazy. So I played it again and thought holy crap what was I missing out on?

Best single-player FPS in existance still.

There is just so much you do in it, you can't really compare it. It's just the pacing. You use boats, buggies, gravity. You fight off hordes of zombies and you drag around baddies like a rag. You annihilate dozens of War of the World look alikes and more. It's the pacing that makes this the best, and it's hard to beat.


As for COD4's campaign. Weak, that's all I have to say.

I also like Gordon. Silenet may be a cop out, but at least they tell aa good story without boring you with hours of cut-scenes and pointless talking and all that bullshit. It's the way storytelling SHOULD be done in games. If I want to have a protagonist who I watch form afar and don't feel in his shoes, I'll go watch movies.

I don't see how anyone could lump CoD4 in with all that other garbage(meaning other games in the CoD series, which I think were average or below).

good good good I m currently getting CoD4 to see if my computer can play it
(had problem with the demo but I m ablez to run Crysis demo, so ... perhaps full game CoD4 will function)

Half Life took the classic FPS genre with all its trappings (one man army and everything) and gave new life to it through an original way to tell a story. It didn't try to create new gameplay modes, like true branching or open world. It didn't care about things like carrying 7 or 8 big weapons being unrealistic. Its mission statement was "let us show you what can _really_ be done with a single man taking on an alien invasion first person shooter".

The silent protagonist is not a cop-out. It's a necessary device for a series of games that never moves the point of view away from Gordon's eyes, that never uses cutscenes and that reluctantly ever limits your control. Gordon can't have a personality of his own, if all his actions are really yours. He voicing something on his own would just be a lie. Every feeling he expresses would be coming out of nowhere.

You think CoD4's campaign was weak?

Wow....

Your credibility just took a huge nosedive in my eyes. The only real weakness in that campaign was its length. The difficulty was well balanced, the levels were inventive and varied, and the gameplay was fun and cinematic. If you think that game's campaign was weak, then I can only count on you for two things. Saying AAA PC related games are great, and rolling a lucky 8 ball for all other multiplatform reviews.

You understand what I'm telling you, I hope. If you can say the campaign in CoD4 sucked, then I can't really trust your opinions on any other game. Sure, most people have fluke/wrong opinions on a few games that they either never experienced correctly, or when something just stuck in their craw wrong. But something like this, is so opposite from my, and the accepted tastes of most gamers, that it calls in to question the basic credibility of your opinion.

Like the guy who told me that he didn't really like Zelda, the other day.

If that guy tells me that....Bayonetta sucks, or if that guy tells me that FFXIII was boring....can I ever really believe him? Or would it not be better for me to believe the opposite of him, since our tastes are so entirely different.

There is no 4 hours length of time in Half-Life 2, that's as good as the rather concentrated and well paced campaign in CoD4. That's my opinion, however I still think HL2 is probably the better game due to its runtime amongst other factors.

I certainly don't think EITHER of them suck. If I did, you shouldn't trust my opinion, because I would be either wrong, ignorant, or biased.

Might as well tell me Deus Ex sucked, while you're at it, and concrete discreditation.

That's a weak defense against my argument.

When you look at it, it's not actually any defense at all. Why did you bother posting?

For that matter, why do I?

Half Life 2 is probably the best single player FPS out there.

Since you're going to be argumentative, let me respond.

Your argument had a basic misconception. CoD games can be generalized. In reality, they are vastly different depending on entries. When you lump them together, you really have no argument. You have a generalization, that is incorrect. If I said "the problem with all Deus Ex games." If I started off a paragraph like that, why would you even bother reading further? You shouldn't. It's an ignorant phrase, and I should be busted out on it. Deus Ex games are vastly different, and share very few similar traits. MW manages that. It is vastly different than every other CoD game I've played, and is easily far superior. Most critics agree that it's vastly different, and most also agree its not very similar.

By your posts, I don't even know if you've ever played CoD4, or are just speaking on the series in general.

Now, that might be my misunderstanding. Did you realize that this comparison started with CoD4, or did you think someone else generalized the series, and you were just commenting with a generalization of your own?

As far as needing a defense against it, I don't think that was the goal of my post. You and I diagree about CoD4 having significant problems, I would assume, but I can only judge by your generalization of the whole series. You never commented on that particular game.

Also, I've always said HL2 was great. In fact, the things you've said about the game, I've already realized, long ago, when I played it, and gave it rave reviews. It's a fantastic game. Arguably better than CoD4 based on its length alone, and the pacing is great, yes.

CoD4's campaign is also great though. You shouldn't deny that, even if you don't believe it. It's just argumentative, against popular belief, and will obviously start a fight with the vast majority of people who did enjoy it. What it amounts to is insecurity in most cases. You have to promote one game at the expense of another, simply because someone else interjected a comparison.

That's not right.

What am I defending exactly?