Half Life 2 To Appear At E3 499
MonsieurEvil writes "Valve announced today (http://www.planethalflife.com) that the long-awaited Half-Life 2 will be appearing at E3, and will be released this year. The NDA for press is supposed to end on April 28th, and quite a few magazines are already hyping their scoops. Hopefully all the teen-angst types that show their superiority through decrying this as vaporware can now listen to their elders..."
Still single player focused? (Score:5, Interesting)
When the first one came out, it really blew me away with that mix... will the second one be able to live up to that? The marketplace has moved on, and it's harder to impress gamers than it was then...
I hope they've come up with a brilliant single player game as I'm sick of the focus on multiplayer these days. (Which is one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to Doom3)
Re:A good game? (Score:5, Interesting)
But hey, I think Doom]|[ will be released before this year is over
But will it run on Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
What do you think . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
can't wait to see hl2!
Re:But will it run on Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Counter Strike 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
If Deus Ex 2 and Half Life 2 are released in 2003 (Score:4, Interesting)
And if TES III: Bloodmoon is as good an add-on as we Morrowind fans hope it is, this year will be even hotter than last year, which brought us blockbusters in triplicate (NOLF 2, GTA 3, AND Tes III: Morrowind / Tribunal).
Then again, sadly, all three could fall short...
Re:But will it run on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, not everyone would behave this way, but still, Half-Life is a very sore subject for Mac gamers. That said, if it showed us anything, it turned out it's indeed true one can have a satisfying gaming experience on the platform without having a specific "A-list" title, and I'm sure that's true for Linux as it is on the Mac, even if there are fewer Linux games than Mac ones. Certainly my own biggest problem isn't too small a selection of games, but too little time to play the ones I have and too little money to get the rest of the ones I want, smaller though the Mac selection may be. Even with more money and time, though, I wouldn't do Windows for games. One has to have principles. ;)
Re:Still single player focused? (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, but I would bet you top dollar that over 90% of sales were "AFTER the initial 5 months".
Maybe now is not the time (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this the first time vaporware has been deprecated?
Re:But will it run on Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Vaporware has to exist... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, rabid fanboys have been speculating about it for years, but that doesn't qualify it as vaporware.
Give it 2 years before calling it that! Considering they plan to have it out by year's end, it should never get that far.
Re:Still single player focused? (Score:4, Interesting)
You may be one of those that is a CS nut, and it really has been an amazing success, but the single player original Half Life made one hell of an impact when it came out, without CS to help it along. It was a hit with the types of gamers that were longing for a really good single player game again, as the industry was so focused on multiplayer.
The fact that you never would have heard of it without CS simply demonstrates that you were ignorant of the best single player game of that year.
Re:Counter Strike 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fantastic! (Score:3, Interesting)
And don't forget Outpost
Re:What the...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A good game? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing I contribute to Half Life's success is that the protagonist is instead of a buff army guy, a physics nerd. You can't go wrong there!
Hrm (Score:4, Interesting)
hl2 vs doom 3 - from a story perspective. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's face it, quake I and II weren't all that immersive, quake III wasn't even in the category.
Half Life was so revolutionary because it brought the story telling/involvement aspect to into a stale shoot-em-up line up.
Now with half life 2 and doom 3 possibly coming out around the same time, I think it's going to be interesting to see if ID can make a game as immersive as half life and also to see if valve can exceed half life and make half-life 2 even better.
Re:System Shock 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
The many sings to us. Your flesh...betrays you.
I've never yet played a "survival horror" game that didn't make me want to laugh at its lame attempts at suspense...but Shock2, played in a dark room with good headphones (oh how I miss you, Aureal!), had me literally shaking in fear.
Please, god, let this be Warren Spector's next game...and let it be done right.
Easy questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Initially, the character (Dr. Gordon Freeman) wants to settle into his new job. At this point, there is no-one standing in the way of his goals.
The first unexpected event happens when the experiment goes wrong. Part of the lab is destroyed, and what remains is infested with aliens. At this point, the aliens and the destruction stand in his way and his goal is to contact people on the outside.
Eventually, he manages to find his way outside, and that's when another unexpected event takes place: the people who were supposed to save him and the other scientists are in fact trying to kill them to keep the whole affair secret. At this point, the soldiers stand in his way, and his goal is to try to learn as much as possible about the situation, and how to solve it.
Eventually, he finds a way to teleport to the alien's planet (which must count as another "unexpected event"). Now his enemies are once more the aliens, and his goal is to destroy them.
Finally, at the very end of the game, there's a final "unexpected event".
So there.
Half-life's story isn't "great" in the sense that it's very original (it's not). The great thing about it is not the story itself, it's the way it flows so naturally and feels so much part of the game, despite the fact that the game's genre is not one typically associated with "a story".
Half-life is essentially an action game. It's not an adventure, it's not a RPG. There are no dialogues and no items. Just guns, monsters, puzzles and the occasional scripted "scene". Given these building blocks, I think HL manages to create a great atmosphere and (apart from the rather weak and predictable ending) to tell a pretty entertaining story (a lot better - more interesting and more consistent - than some movies).
HL's great strength is not its originality, it's the level of perfection and polishing of every single of its elements, from the gameplay to the default keyboard layout to the auto-save system. Things that stem not from great technology or brilliant ideas but from a lot of playtesting, a good dose of common sense, and a refusal to settle for "good enough" just to meet the deadline.
As someone wrote at the time, "Half-life restored my faith in gaming". After fiascos like Black & White and Neverwinter Nights (not exactly bad, but very disappointing nonetheless), I could definitely use a new injection of Valve fluid.
It's ironic that the company that created such a perfect game (and later created and financed so many great free updates and mods) was founded by ex-Microsoft employees...
RMN
~~~