just how good is HL2?

[forizzle111]

just wondering how good would you rate half-life 2?

[Dark Nova]

9/10, its insane. i really liked it, unfortunatly i dont own the game yet, but played many times with it

[flawedreality5]

The game itself gets an 10 out 10. I don't care for how the game is installed and has to decrypt itself through the internet before playing as I've said in a recent discussion.

[Hi Ho]

I love it. It is definetly one of the best FPS games of all time. Not only are the graphics beautiful but the gameplay is very immersive. The sound, physics, and visuals are stunning. The AI Is very believable. Graphics aren't everything and many games either have pretty graphics or good gameplay. This game has both, a lot of both. I definetly recommend it! I downloaded the demo the day it came out and I was hooked. I bought the game the next day.

[flawedreality5]

I forgot to say about how good the graphics are. I think they are as good as FEAR's. If you max out the graphics in HL2, some of the lighting in the rooms looks completely realistic. The storyline is just so immersive and unreal but real at the same time. If you haven't played it, you need to. I think it's up there in my top 3 favorite games of all time.

[Snod Blatter]

I thought it was exactly the same as the first HL: Overrated. Good, but overrated.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Ya, it's way overrated. Too gory for my taste.

[tigstah]

i loved it.
all i can say is ravenholm.....and the gravity gun.
its a must play....if you have the horses to run it.

[theyosh]

This game is definitely gory but it's a very good game. If you want to appreciate the story line better I would play the original HL first before you play HL2. If you love fps games then you're going to think this is an awesome game but if you're more of a all around player that really plays any type of game then you're going to think it was overrated. This is just my personal opinion of course and this is just what I saw by listening to what my friends had to say about it.

theyosh

[blue60007]

Originally Posted by tigstah all i can say is ravenholm.....and the gravity gun.

Eww, that was definitely the goriest level.

[flawedreality5]

Canal was the best level I think with the hovercraft.

[TwoRails]

I found it to be one of the better games I've played. The eye candy and physics were fantastic. Game play was good, and it has good re-play value. The puzzles were just right for me, meaning not too hard, and not too simple. The variety of vehicles / equipment to operate was a blast. A good variety of map types, too.

[sgtspector]

You cant have any more fun than the grav gun and tossing the bad guys at each other. When you grab one and toss him down a hallway and knock over 4 or 5 bad guys like bowling pins it's funny as hell.

[juppy]

I'm stuck on the Half-Life games right now and HL2 I'd rate 10 of 10. And I'm only running it on a Radeon 7000 and the graphics are still great. And yeah, I gotta agree, when you finally get the blue gravity gun, that rocks. First time I realized you could actually pick up the guards with it, I kept pointing it straight up in the air and launching this guard like 60 feet or so skyward then stepping out of the way to watch him thud back to the floor. I know, that sounds stupid, but hey, I'm easily amused sometimes.

[tigstah]

Originally Posted by juppy I'm stuck on the Half-Life games right now and HL2 I'd rate 10 of 10. And I'm only running it on a Radeon 7000 and the graphics are still great. And yeah, I gotta agree, when you finally get the blue gravity gun, that rocks. First time I realized you could actually pick up the guards with it, I kept pointing it straight up in the air and launching this guard like 60 feet or so skyward then stepping out of the way to watch him thud back to the floor. I know, that sounds stupid, but hey, I'm easily amused sometimes.

sometimes its the simple things that amuse us......

[TwoRails]

Oh ya! I have a ball with they gravity gun. The first time around, I didn't realize all you can do with it (and other things in the game), so I played it again and had much more fun the second time

[ghost2003]

Originally Posted by tigstah all i can say is ravenholm.....and the gravity gun.

Is that the one with the sawblades and the zombies? If it is thats a great level

Ive had HL2 since the day it came out and im still not even half way through, I just never got into playing it all that much but its very good. I still prefer the original though, not enough barney's in the new one.

[tigstah]

Originally Posted by ghost2003 Is that the one with the sawblades and the zombies? If it is thats a great level Ive had HL2 since the day it came out and im still not even half way through, I just never got into playing it all that much but its very good. I still prefer the original though, not enough barney's in the new one.

yup thats ravenholm....very spooky

[Turbo91Bird]

awesome game. WELL worth the 30-40 bucks.

[juppy]

Originally Posted by TwoRails Oh ya! I have a ball with they gravity gun. The first time around, I didn't realize all you can do with it (and other things in the game), so I played it again and had much more fun the second time

Same here. I went through it once with everything normal like it's supposed to be, but the second time through I activated the cheat console and started messing with some of the gravity gun's settings. It's pretty cool to change the pulling force to a higher level......you can go around chunking trash dumpsters at the enemies!

[TwoRails]

That sounds like even more fun, juppy -- How / what did you change?

[juppy]

Hey TwoRails. I'm not sure if you already know how to load the cheat console and just need the codes or whether you need the whole shmeer, so I'll go with the whole shmeer.

To load the cheat console
Right click on the HL2 icon on your desktop and select Properties. At the end of the Target line insert "-console" (without the quotes). Apply that and exit. (One thing here.....I always leave my internet connection off and tell it to start in offline mode because the cheats aren't supposed to work with server play). When you launch HL2 then it should load with a box that lets you type in codes. Just press the ~ (tilde) key to close this box out and go ahead and load your saved game or a new game. (If you do cheats before loading the game they get ignored and don't work)

After you've loaded the game
Okay, when your game gets loaded, hit the ~ key again (this is always how you open and close the cheat console) and it will pause the game and bring up the console. First, to enable cheating, you have to type in
"svcheats 1" (without the quotes). There's alot of codes you can type in to change stuff, so instead of typing them all, I'll just give you a link to a list of 'em. CLICK HERE FORE THE CODES. The codes you're wondering about for the gravity gun are right at the first of that page....they're the ones that say physcannon, then something else behind it. In the line on the console beside where it says "Submit" is where you type the code in. The ones I messed with were the physcannon_maxmass# and physcannon_maxforce#. When you go to change it, you should be able to see what it's currently set at because right below where you type it tries to list things that are matching what you're typing and if I remember right the current value is in there (I could be wrong about that because I'm just going off the top of my head with what I remember here.....it's in there somewhere though). So, for instance, say the maxmass number is set at 4000. To change it you would type in
"physcannon_maxmass 20000" without the quotes, and whatever number you want to set it at; 20000 was just an example. I don't know if there's a limit on how high it can go.....never tested that. About the only other codes I use when just messing around with it are God (gives invincibility), impulse 101 (all weapons), and noclip (lets you walk through walls or wherever). Be careful with that last one because you can end up out in the middle of nowhere real fast and be lost as to how to get back. It's nice if you get stuck between a couple rocks and strangely can't move though. Just noclip, walk out, do noclip again and it'll turn it back off again.

[juppy]

I just realized, where you put in the svcheats thing, it needs to be "sv_cheats 1" without the quotes. I forgot the little _ sign. Oops!

[David M]

Brilliant game...the only downfall are the controls for the fan boat. I could never get used to steering it with the keyboard and not the mouse. I have all the features turned on with a 1200x1900 monitor with 5.1 sound..and it is very immersive.

The cheats are LOTS of fun and absolutely hilarious at times.

[flawedreality5]

Originally Posted by David M I have all the features turned on with a 1200x1900 monitor

What kind of monitor is that? Sounds like a tank.

[TwoRails]

Hi juppy! Thanks for the good, detailed post; very informative Also, thanks for the link (I'm printing it out now). I'll be giving all that good stuff a tryout soon!

[spartan015]

10/10 The plot is sooooo interesting and like immersive... and best of all u can have a mid range comp and it'll run pretty smoothly unlike FEAR.

beautiful graphics... awesoem story and since it comes with CS Source... neat!

[enhanced08]

My all time fave game!! My uncle got my hooked on the original HL game years ago and I fell in love! lol I now own every HL game out there! The graphics in HL2 are crazy and I only have a 9800Pro! 10/10

[juppy]

Originally Posted by David M Brilliant game...the only downfall are the controls for the fan boat. I could never get used to steering it with the keyboard and not the mouse.

Same here. First time through it, I had to totally take my hand off of the mouse in order to not try steering with it. I'd end up with the boat going one way and my view facing the side angle or the back of the boat! I've gotten a little better since then though because in the second part of the fanboat part you get the gun mounted to it so you pretty much have to be able to drive with the keyboard and fire the gun with the mouse at the same time. Definitely not for those that have trouble with doing two different things with their hands at the same time.

Originally Posted by TwoRails Thanks for the good, detailed post; very informative Also, thanks for the link (I'm printing it out now). I'll be giving all that good stuff a tryout soon!

You're welcome TR, no problem. Just be sure to add in that extra thing I posted below it too about the sv_cheats having that _ sign in it or it won't work.

I tried to make it detailed because it took me forever to get 'em to work. None of the guides I found ever seemed to tell that you had to load your game first and THEN put in the codes. The console comes right up when you load, so I was trying to do the codes there. Very few sites told how to make the console load either......they'd just say "hit the ~ key to open the console". I think I just about wore my ~ key out trying to get it to work until I finally found a site that gave the directions in better detail.

Oh, one more thing.....I said you could throw trash dumpsters around.....you can, but there's some exceptions. It's the smaller green dumpsters with the black tops that I've been able to make this work on. There's some huge blue dumpsters and I can't move them no way no how. The green ones won't move either if they're in a certain position for a reason, like if you have to jump up on the dumpster to reach a ladder or something.....that type is glued to the ground or something! Hope you get 'em going and have fun with it.

[rackham]

HL 2 is awesome. Good story, graphics, gameplay, sound, voiceacting, its all there. Not to mention all the official and unofficial mods. Garry's Mod anyone?