A Worthy Successor? | Half-Life 2 (Half-Life Series Retrospective) 

Sorry for the delay on this video, folks - personal stuff got in the way while I was writing this episode. I still will hopefully have the videos for Episode 1 and 2 out by the end of the year! (Postponing Black Mesa to a later date). Timecodes are in the description as usual! And before you ask, yes I did watch the Half-Life: Alyx trailer. It looks really promising! I'll share my thoughts in the Episode 2 video. A question for all of you: do you prefer Half-Life or Half-Life 2?

I don't really look at Half-Life's character re-introductions as retcons, more as just building characters from the blank canvas Half-Life established. Barneys and scientists were just character models with a couple of repetitious lines. They layered the story on top of their vaguely familiar faces. There was no continuity to retroactively change in that department.

I never even noticed the citizens only had 2 voice actors until you pointed it out!

There's nothing wrong with the game putting out more music during gameplay. In older shooters such as Doom, Quake, GoldenEye 64, etc, you had music playing out a lot.

God, what a game. I remember my dad getting swept up in the leaks news, he was SO anxious that the game was going to get even more of a delay or even cancelled outright. I remember him coming into my room and saying "Come here, you have to see this." once he got the gravity gun. He tried to sit me down to play through the whole thing but my 9 year old pea brain got scared of the security check 5 minutes in. Thought being told to "pick up that can" and ACTUALLY being able to pick it up was the coolest thing, though. I share the same sentiments about the story. Retcon after retcon and OMG GORDON FREEMAN the whole way kinda dilute the entire experience. It's weird, on the one hand it's totally fanservicing everybody that loved the first game, yet it's almost like they wanted the story to be standalone enough for folks that didn't play the original and got caught up in the review hype. Also had no idea about that arcade port. That one is absolutely fascinating.

While I don't agree with some of the changes being better or worse compared to the first game, you made some solid points that I totally respect. HL2 the game that got me into FPS's and played it before I got the chance to play the first Half Life, so I suppose I might be a bit biased or lack the perspective you're coming from. Great video as always though, especially with how you articulated your points.

Can't say I agree with you regarding the vehicle parts. Back when HL2 was out and I was still in school, there was no FPS that did/incorporated that and had this adventurous feel. Maybe Halo, but it was still a Xbox exclusive (I had only a PC so no money for consoles) and didn't have the "same" feel. The vehicle sections were fast, aggressive and the addicting part for me was to get trough them effortlessly and in one swoop. I loved leaving the buggy and wonder about to find either resources or get myself into trouble, and the atmosphere of the canals was scary, unwelcoming and... well fun. It's still fun now and I also enjoyed it in Episode 2 Also, Combine not memorable... Come on dude...

Just finished playing through this again. My goodness what a great game. Still stands up. Awesome experience.

Nah man, I'm all about Frohman But seriously now. Anybody else like the first half of the game? About up to Sandtraps chapter. You were on your own (mostly) and your surroundings were changing at a nice pace. I especially love the transition from Route Kanal to Water Hazard. Coastal levels aren't that bad actually. Yes, scout car's handling has aged quite a lot but there is that nice feeling of freedom. Oh and also *the* bridge, yeah that one.

No loud music nor sound effects. Just some good lore reading with a pleasant voice. Not too loud nor too quiet. Perfectly done video.

I feel like hl2 is best on it's first play through, and hl1 is best after mastering it.

Dude that intro/ background information on Half Life 2's development was hella interesting! I mean... what games development almost involve trying to catch a hacker with the FBI! xD Yet another video though that makes me want to visit this prestigious series. Would love to get into specifics on your videos but we seem to cover games neither of us have played or completed xD But as per usual, amazing video and I can't wait to learn more about the series with Half Life 2's episodes :)

I wrote my research paper for English class about Half-Life 2 and used your video as a source. Thanks for being a reason I got a B on the paper :]

Mossman wasn't a Black Mesa employee, she applied for the same position as Gordon, who was hired instead of her.

How good HL2 looks for a game released in 2004 still blows me away

We already talked about Half Life as a series. I played HL1 recently and thought it was okay. My criticisms of HL still apply to the second one though.

7:03 oh Deutschland, you’ll never allow anyone to stomp on you will ya?

37:19 Call me crazy, but that high-pitched warbling kinda sounds like “free-man, free-man, free-man”

Old video, but it's a little refreshing to see a half-live 2 review that isn't just a unconditional praise of the game. It's a good game, but not without its flaws, and I think some of it didn't age particularly well. The tech demo remark honestly rings true to me, as I think some aspects of the game were clearly made to showcase the tech rather than provide the best game experience. I think it's best noticeable with the physics puzzles - they more of a novelty piece which loses its appeal once it stops being a novelty. Not to mention that often times they aren't all that creative, and boil down to "stack some weight on a seesaw". If not tech demo, the game surely structured a bit like a theme park ride - game introduces a gimmick, and has you play with that for a while, then moves on to the next gimmick. Here's the boat level, here's the car level, here's the antlion level, here's the squad level. Can't say it's wrong necessarily, but I think it does feel a bit artificial at times and it clash a bit with the idea to present an organic world to the player. HL1 still had some of these - like On a Rail chapter but I think far fewer of them, and weirdly enough it does feel more organic. Story is often praised, but Freeman as a messiah figure might not even make too much sense, and also keeping him as a silent protagonist while NPCs talk at him becomes a little awkward. As you pointed out, other NPCs became distinct characters, but Freeman stayed the same. First game was simpler, and we had just "the scientists" and "the guards" instead of NPCs with personality, so Freeman just being a silent avatar of the player was fitting. I think it doesn't work as well in HL2 no matter how much lampshading the game does. The "no cutscenes" argument is used often as a revolutionary feature, but functionally scripted sequences when you are locked in the room while NPCs talk, aren't much of an improvement. You have control over your character, yes, but you still can't really do anything, while at the same time, you can't have the main character to interact more organically with the NPC, which leads to the previous problem. So yea, interesting video, thanks for sharing.

Series has been great so far, glad I found your channel! I can appreciate the criticisms you put forth even if I don't agree, but I haven't played any of these games in awhile so I say that based on memory and nostalgia. One thing I did wonder a couple of times throughout the video was if you played all of these games to review consecutively in a relatively short amount of time? It kinda felt like maybe by this game you were getting pretty sick of the Half-Life formula due to burnout, but of course that's a wild ass guess. If so, I do appreciate how you managed to be as fair as you were. Must've taken one hell of an effort and would be downright impossible for most!

I think the game is really good overall, but everytime I play it, the parts I find the most tedious are the boat section in Route Kanal, and Water Hazard, And the Driving Sections along the coast. It's really nothing more then padding and where's itself out really quickly.

Gmod is a half life mod too! #Gmodlivesmatter

New Half-Life vid, woo. So when you gonna cover Half-Life 3?

So no more subtitles on this series from now on? (Actually since Decay)

I agree with most things i this video except the music being overused and stuff I think the music is used right

19:01 I don't see the problem, isn't that what games do? Forcing a plot? At least we get to move around and ignore it in HL2 than a forced cutscene. Now a lot of what you say about HL2 I disagree with and don't see it that way, but I get not everyone likes the same things. 23:58 Well, technically ... You CAN make it in the entire game with the use of ... Some cool cheats that I know.

You know I really got to push against this every man narrative that so many people seem to have with Gordon Freeman, like the blank slate character okay, sure he's a scientist or at the very least an intern.. but has extensive firearms knowledge and training, is circus performance ability to jump and Tuck his legs.. a crackheads ability to swing a crowbar at something till it dies or explodes which is technically both, and and also I feel like this is a key point.. extensive familiarization knowledge and capabilities with firearms and combat. Like sure he has power armor, power armor is nice it helps.. but there's a lot of corpses in Zen that have power armor as well.. and a couple hundred Marines, few dozen special operations ninja ladies, and pretty much the entirety of the special operations universal Union breaching team, I'll beit conscripts but still.. Like, those grunts were literally born to kill.. designed to kill.. and Gordon Freeman's just in every man scientist yeah yeah no and killed every single fucking one of them pretty much, barring any playthroughs when you figured out the vorts would more or less leave you alone, and run away for good once they took a hit... like sure he's got his PhD but like the guys definitely got to have some sort of military service under his belt, maybe ROTC or something like that at the very least are you kidding me? Just the familiarization with military firearms, like all of them LOL well all that they brought with them which weren't the best apparently cuz.. like mp5s are cool and all and the grenade launcher thing is nifty but, well I guess they are the Marines so they probably took their real guns away that they just got that are 20 years old and gave them the mp5s like right before the mission LOL. And then tried to rewrite history and say it was an M16 LOL... Classic government. Look my point is okay for one he's a PhD theoretical physicist at a top secret lab experimenting and interdimensional travel and everything else that you could probably throw into a area 51 was for tourists government facility... So right there not really in every man, the fact that he also has an extraordinary amount of combat skills, to the point of where if he had not had combat experience it would not really make sense but at the very least, at the very least a grounded familiarization with weapons and tactics, let's not even get in to the fact that he can jump 5 ft in the air duck his legs in and shoot right on into a vent in one, and on occasion a few tries of the same technique LOL.. granted he also can't climb a chain link fence but you know, at this point I think we're specialized enough to forgive that LOL. So he's got that going for him and power armor, I really don't understand how people get this every man thing going on.. for when the the character is a blank slate, it's literally every man I suppose.. but just that by concept is like some some people they're Gordon Freeman is going to do grenade Foo for speed runs, like that's not an every man that takes a grenade and flies.. exactly to where he was trying to get to, despite that most men would just take the grenade and then fly to the last place they're going to go to.. Like you can overcome traumatic situations and all that shit but like, those Marines were were trained and on the tear that they were I don't know why it was the Marines again but maybe it was a budget thing, either way they would have seen combat experience and the special forces sent in to kill all the Marines, definitely had seen combat experience before LOL like that's that's not even going into the quite possible they were la femme Nikita from birth.. and and then and then we have to go into the the enemy grunts that were actually grown and designed for combat.. like every man my asshole... Like okay so he's not like a grunt but, like somebody taught him how to fight and you can't say RU-vid cuz this was the 90s.. and and like unless it was just every black Mesa employee was trained in this regard, that still doesn't make him every man that makes him a super scientist by professional title LOL not just happened to be a super killer and a scientist in that situation.. and also doesn't explain how many heV suit bodies you walk over.... so yeah I really don't get the Everyman thing like I hear it so many times and it's just like have you thought about this for like any amount of time? Considering how many people hold it super dear, it's kind of surprising actually... My theory, join the army at a young age.. maybe did special forces whatever, maybe ROTC who knows either way it got him in a position where he was both trained and specialized and then from there GI Bill, he seems to be pretty smart you know on account of the plot requiring it.. so maybe he did it did the PHD real quick, and on account of his specialization and government inside, got a job at a top secret research facility which is an extension of the government and the dod and all the other things that we don't know about that have some sort of oversight and authority that exceeds anything that we know about, have a complicated relationship with trains and time travel shenanigans, and our old enough of an organization to still polish their junior G-Man badge from the 1930s that they got when they put on there j Edgar training bra one day and stopped a major bootlegging operation at a young age when they were walking home from the post office and saw nefarious activities taking place and at the very moment, the badges pin got loose and pricked them inspiring them to not just stand by.. and instead beat them all to death with a briefcase... And then promptly contacting the authorities and returning all the money... all right that's as far as I'm going to go with that one but anyways hopefully at some point in the several reiterations somebody gets my point cuz I feel like I'm the only one that's ever said anything about this, and that doesn't make any sense at all.. but I would like to know more people that that are also calling bullshit on the everman thing...

42:00 Homura did nothing wrong

I’d take HL2 over HL any day. HL has aged like bread and feels like a “you had to be there” kind of game. HL2 is still impressive detached from its context. I played both games back to back and while HL is definitely fun and a decent game, HL2 just captured my imagination in a way very few games have. I hate how popular the “it’s a bad sequel” and “it feels like a tech demo” takes have become. It feels to me like contrarianism coming from people who can’t look past their nostalgia for HL.

31:02 It's completely impossible--you spend about a third of the game without it.

I agree with literally everything you said lol

loved hearing your criticism for this game. everyone praises this game like its perfect and it gets repetitive hearing praise all the time. Great video!

13:50 HAILF LIAF 2

Why did the leak cost Valve so much? The hacker didn't delete their work, right? I don't know how these things work, can anyone explain it to me?

I haven't played it but it looks fun, personally, It doesn't seem like a real sequel to Half-Life to me but at the same time it does which is weird and I think that's due to the upgrade in graphics which kinda disconnects the two Update: Played it, it's good but doesn't feel like a sequel to Half-Life 1, it's a good game but not a great sequel.

Half-Life 1: Chaotic Awesomeness Half-Life 2: Slow Burning Masterpiece

Like probably most of the folks here I grew up on half life but especially hl2 and the source engine. I just replayed hl2 again after probably 8+ years and one thing referring to the "convenience" of the plot and the returning black mess cast...I just couldn't get over playing this time through how deliberately "convenient" your actions as Gordon and plot characters pull you along. Making these grand decisions for all of humanity, seemingly thoughtlessly. Similar to HL1, you unknowingly kill scores of innocents. Suppose all I'm trying to say is the plot "convienence" feels intentional. Whether or not this is just fanboy cope is another subject

this video is underrated

A worthy successor? Duh.

Firsty??

Secondy

Hello gamers, I am Thirdy

there is so much wrong in this video...

My only problem with this game is that it doesn't feel like half life. Like, what the fuck happened? I love all the half life games but like, I would love some context man

My god, you're telling me that.. valve.. created a gameplay demo that was scripted..? Scripted? Like, a series of events channel down a narrow path of set pieces that tries you might to alter the course will play out the exactly the same way and any push to have any sort of will overset pieces will be extensively patched in order to not...* Rant>> * like I swear they put a couple hundred hours into making sure that the civilians died at the set points where they were supposed to die.. like why? Coming back to this game after 15 years, in Gmod with the physics gun god mode and host time scale, and the remover gun at one point.. I have failed on more than a few occasions to save scripted cities that used to just be a matter of shooting somebody quickly before they got got LOL, and that the windows for the ones that you actually can save still like they tighten those they put a lot of effort into making sure these people would die for the sequence that has no consequence to the overall plot or narrative, the staircase one.. with the people running down the staircase getting shot, that was a shot that was so tricky even with no clip at 001 time scale l... like I thought I was being sneaky by jumping through the elevator to the other staircase to get a better shot but as it turns out they're not going to spawn unless you're at the worst place to get that shot LOL and they tighten the distance, they basically have to die as they spawn... And the civilian in the tunnel get that gets shot by CP.. I ended up in a combat duel with the remover gun host time scale, fighting infinite spawning CPS desperate to finish out the script sequence.. and I failed that one, I must have evaporated at least a dozen before a CP spawned at just outside the tunnel while I was on the other end where they were responding from the other end for their insta kill sequence, who spawned right outside the graded tunnel entrance and got the shot off on spawning naturally, as did all of them.. hence why even the remover gun it's almost like they they thought about that you might use Gmod to try to save this guy, a guy that you could easily save including the other guy that was supposed to run out that doesn't actually do that anymore. Like why why did why was this a priority? Like, the amount of effort in some of these cases for just random people that you could save from the scripting sort of.. even the guy in the tunnels with the man hacks who dies later if you go back, you can't even carry him to safety, cuz he hits a death trigger as soon as you get to a certain point.. Like I get trying to keep these sequences from getting more janky, but you now insulated the outcome of the sequence with jank... I think what really cracks me up at this point, is you can fight layers of added final destination esque determination to kill the NPC yet for the sequence.. and it's almost like as a fuck you at the end it'll trip a death trigger of some kind.. like it will let you try it will be difficult and you'll probably have to use cheats at some point, and it'll let you.. but like toying with its food, eventually it's had enough and it'll just complete it's assigned task, no matter how entirely inconsequential... And one could argue that there's a progression issue, because of how heavily scripted everything is oh wait excuse me I thought that I guess that was a secret.. anyhow, like you'll have to get to certain places to trigger certain things and if those triggers don't happen it'll break the game in a lot of cases, you can break it right back to unbreak it but.. in all of these cases, you were more likely to break the game actually dealing with the added layers of determination to play out a sequence usually involving the death of an NPC naturally.. and, for other things LOL that you might have bright ideas on the pseudo immersive Sim mechanics that are core to the gameplay but completely utilized towards completing the exact sequence laid in front of you.. like for instance when a grenade is supposed to fall next to some barrels that are easy to see, that you might want to grab you know cuz barrels right.. I'll drag barrels through map loads.. those barrels weren't moving LOL they could not be moved they should have been able to be moved... they just gosh they just weren't moving and then I remembered all right this guy's supposed to drop a grenade and blow up the bridge thingy, of course valve would do that, considering all the layers that they put in in order to make sure NPCs died.. I just I'm just sitting here like, this game had more than a few bugs, still has more than a few bugs even if it is aged fairly gracefully I'll be at in reverse naturally and that's only fair considering the hardware difference in the time span, I'll be at in a lot of cases it was on account of the update pipeline philosophy which is also why it is still as playable as it is today on modern hardware as well so it's a double-edged sword I suppose, but.. making sure that the civie in the tunnel got got.. that was that was a priority damn it! Too many people were were shooting that CP in the tunnel and keeping the civilian from being shot, and it wasn't enough to make him run out and do a machine gun fire cuz they saw through that, just in PC must die he must die, it's not enough to have the five NPCs on the wall that were shot by the machine gun that's die this one must die more importantly, the gamers are defying our scripting Lord gaben, we gave them immersive Sim mechanics light immersive mechanics, just enough to make it feel like you're missing all the other immersive mechanics and enough to impress on a technical scale.. but gosh darn it I'll be damned if those wascally players try and interrupt our scripted sequences in an unbroken first person narrative! Ladies and gentlemen we have work to do.. oh they can't crouch anymore? They don't blink anymore are you kidding me how are you even bringing this up that is not an actual thing stop wasting my time, with this trivial nonsense.. tunnel civilian must die..

This game sucks

Probably I'm the only one who thinks HL series are overrated :/ They are great games with good mechanics but NO story Yet, people are still praising those games because of their story???