Oh wait, when I said "garbage" did you think I meant Half-Life 2?

No, I meant the other CoD games. You generalized them with that phrase I bolded, and I was referring to your generalization, not other FPSs in discussion. I apologize if you misunderstood.

Actually Vlad321 knows FPS games very very well...and is not the only one thinking COD4 is lacking. He probably jsut didnt feel like discussing COD4 in a hl2 thread.

You made a statement before that COD4 has more variety than HL2...amongst other things...and that its only drwback is the short campaign. I could write an essey on how i disagree with that statement but I figure maybe I could let you explain what you mean.

How does a game with no vehicles, no in game character dialoge or non shooting missions, no puzzles, no imaginitive weapons and no shooting tactics other than standard shoot/duck and cover have more variety than half life 2?

Face it...you were most likely just blown away with the COD4s presentation and its "in your face" narritive to notice that you were playing a glorified twitch shooter. Actually if you turn aim assist COD4 feels 80% like a rails shooter...

I actually don't feel like discussing our differing opinions. Why should I? It's not important.

You are the one who interjected CoD, if I recall, and made this thread a comparison thread. I simply gave my opinion, and I stand by every word of it.

As for your summation of CoD, I really don't care what you think. You're not someone I'm worried about in a debate, nor am I interested in debating something as common as "differing opinions." Squabbling over bullet points wastes my time and yours, so don't presume to lecture to me.

If you think CoD sucks, then your opinion is in the minority. I find that reassuring, but it means nothing. I'm sure you find it reassuring that you have a thread full of people willing to debate me, but again, it means nothing. Opinion is one of those things that can't be wrong. One of my favorite CoD4 missions is actually the on rails shooter portion towards the middle, from the plane. I was blown away by the presentation, and the "in your face" narrative, and yes, I feel that the campaign was fantastic, and different enough to warrant praise from me. Deal.

is the PS3 version really unplayable?

if its playable i might get it.

i haven't played this game since ....... uh... i don't know when it was released on PC.

lol, this is how this thread played out when it comes to your posts.

1. State COD4 is better than HL2

2. Select posts which are not developed and argue with those

3. Realize that you are outnumbered and state HL2 is better but COD4 is pretty good too

4. Use poetry and word trickery to state you are above it all and wish not to argue about personal opinions.

Its cool and I don't wish to argue as well but you can't put an elephant in the room and expect people not to notice it. And you did by saying COD4 is better sp game than HL2 in your first post, on which you backtracked nicely since...

And for the record, I don't think that COD4 sucks at all. Its a fun game that has its moments of win and has one of the best online multiplayer on consoles today... Buf as a sinlge player game, it should not be held in the same regard as Halo1 and ODST, HL2, Bioshock...even FEAR.

This is the usual response I get when I post my view on HL2.

You say it gave new life to the FPS story. How?
You say it is showing what really can be done with a single man taking on an alien inversion FPS style...Dind't Halo: CE do that 3 years before Half-Life 2? Other than a pretty physics engine, it didn't do anything new to the FPS genre that had not been done before. And actually, considiering it was released near enough the Halo 2 release date, it's actual run-and-gun style was pretty damn dated.

As for saying the silent protaginsist is needed so that it feels like you are in his shoes, then why doesn't he talk? If he was to talk, surely that would really make you believe you were in another persons shoes.
All you are are a floating camera being talked at the entire game. You have no room to make a single choice in the game, meaning that it is you in his shoes, just you watching through the eyes of a mute. You have essentialy no free will in the game, it seems completely pointless to then have the main character character-less. 

Imagine in Killzone, or any other FPS, where you were being talked at the entire time with the main character showing no reaction to his surroundings. All you are playing as is a voicless shooting machine, yet you are apparently human....A total cop out of trying to make a likeable character. If you actually had some free will, then not voicing your character e.g. Morrowind, is a good idea. But as you have to play exactly as "gordon" wants you to, he may was well be given a character.

^Note that my previous post mentions Half Life, the 1998 one. That's when the design choices were made. Half Life 2 inherited the silent protagonist and all of the previous game's phylosophy.

And while the gunplay in HL2 might not be as exhilarating as FEAR's, the action is overall extremely well paced. And the physics and the use of the gravity gun again showed how much new life you could cram into an old-style FPS without changing the rules of the genre.

As for the protagonist, I can't agree in the least. When Gordon moves, it's always because I want him to. If Gordon spoke, he wouldn't say what I want. Hearing him say a few canned sentences written by the authors would make him not me and not enough of a person anyway.
The other characters in the game respond exclusively to how you behave, and that's perfectly consistent with the design of the game. The choice made was that of giving you a pure first person and completely immersive experience.

still non answered!

is it unplayable on ps3? im only going to play HL2 if i get it.

I'm not following your logic here.

Yes, he moves because you want him to. Is this not true of every FPS though??

"If Gordon spoke, he wouldn't say what I want"
....In which game can you actually speak as the main character? None. This is where I call "cop out" on valves part. It's hard to make a character when they speak, not sound like a goon/prick etc.

"The other characters in the game respond exclusively to how you behave,"
Well yes, because you can't behave in any other way, other than the way that Valve want you too...Like in every other generic FPS. Only a very rare few games, say Fable, do the NPC's react to individual choices you make. In Half Life 2, the fact the NPCs respond the way they do has nothing to do with a unique player experience - it's a linear trigger system which everyone has to go through from start to end. There is no exclusitivity in it at all. My experience in HL2 will be the same as yours and every other person who has played it. This is not true for other games, e.g. Morrowind, where each persons experince of the game is different through the individual choice they choose to make. 

If it was a truly immersive expereince you would have free will in it. Which you do not. Therefore, there is no excuse for Gordon not to have a character as you have to play exactly as him, and do exactly the same every run through of the game. As I said, this is just like almost every other FPS on the market e.g. Killzone, Reistance, Halo, F.E.A.R. etc.
If you have to be Gordon right down to being the drone doing nothing but looking through his eyes, controlling his feet down the pre-planned routes and pulling the trigger at only the people Valve want you to kill, he may as well speak. If you are a slave to what Gordon wants to do, clearly Gordon is the one in control of the big decisions in the game, not you, as with most other FPS'.

Unless you think that having a mute in GTA3 made the game better. Other than perspective, there is nothing different between the two mute characters, Gordon and the nameless mute guy.

^Err, no. You're not forced to move, you're not forced to shoot. The game won't progress, but you're actually not forced to take any actions. They don't happen without your will. When you enter a new room you're not forced to look into a direction, even when characters try to call for your attention. If Gordon spoke to a character when he saw him/her, then for the first time you'd be forced into something.

When I say that you have a fully immersive experience I'm not speaking of having complete freedom, because I never said that the experience in which the immersion happens is that of a free world. No game guarantees that, all games offer immersion into a smaller world with definite rules. I speak of a game that sets those rules very clearly and always plays by them, so that once you know them you will never be yanked out of the game world by their violation.

And frankly, they have some pretty good writers. Some of them are experienced game writers, at least one -Marc Laidlaw- is a writer of SF and horror novels that only later started working with Valve.
The characterizations, expressiveness and dialogs for all other characters are great, so I have little doubt that if they wanted they would have managed to explicitely build a character for Gordon and to write his lines accordingly.
It was not a cop-out, it was a conscious design decision that was probably actually harder to follow through.