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I actually played Portal first by downloading it through a website. If you're really anxious to have a go, hit me a PM.
This week I finally bought the Orange Box, and managed to get a try at Half Life 2 Ep2.
It's really good, but not good in the sense in how HL1 was innovative and how HL2 was just extremely competent and efficient until the last well-laced string (an old thing done well in a way never seen before). Ep1 had a few moments that just doesn't exist in other FPS games, some nice puzzles and some really amazing moments. But HL2, while being this really great experience above the average FPS (and I think longer than HL1), lacks somewhat in what made these other games outstand themselves so much. The puzzles are really easy, there are really no moments like the police-state chase in the beginning of HL2 (or its exposition, even if here is not one bit bad at all) or the elevator rain in Ep1. It's this really fantastic FPS, but not really what made other half-lives the unbelievable games they were (for instance, all the climaxes or big moments are really just shootouts, or high pressure heavier -- really heavier -- shootouts).
But is really fucking great, I tell you.
Now, I had a go at Team Fortress 2, that I was REALLY excited to play. And then it reminded me the many reasons I just fucking hate multiplayers of this sort, and why I don't play them in years. It's basically just a good looking (with just fantastic design and really cool graphics) Counter-Strike in its mind-numbing fastness and come-and-go in two bases, no? Very little difference in gameplay in the different classes (really, I expected the Spy and Sniper to have at least a little more nuanced elegance, slowed down charm and joy to the style of play than the usual GET ME FRAGS FASTFASTFAST frenzied gameplay).
And from the little I've played, it felt as though that even if the game had a very different and new style to multiplayers, the gamers would still bring the couter-strike/ Halo to it make it into them.
I was hoping at least the Spy, for instance, could be a bit like playing Valve's "The Ship", or something.
It has an odd fun saturday morning cartoon feel in its gung ho shorthand 'characters' and in the overall design. It feels great in what appears to be a mind-blowing contrast to the military real frenzywank of joyless button mashing and frag numbers of Counter Strike and Halo. But there really isn't. The different aspects doesn't matter to the gameplay at all. All that matters are the numbers when you hit Tab. It could be green squares fucking bunnies and making them shoot the letter "i" from their mouth at 1 mph at each other, and the only thing that would matter is the scores (yes, they have to be the most important thing, but they're usually a mcguffin so you end up realizing you absorbed and experienced a lot of things in the pursue of that score, not just spawn->kill/die and spawn->...).
And of course, it really didn't fucking helped that in my first 5 minutes, a teenage voice screams at me for doing some newbie mistake -- I didn't knew my sniper-crosshair could be seen by the enemy like laser-pointing (there wasn't none of the usual hate-speech -- at least that, apparently Valve/Steam must ban them or something -- but two years ago the tone would be obligatory to be completed with the usual "f#g"). This sort of thing and other factors end up contributing to turn the game into this boring dead wall of just one possible interaction availabe (one that only constant CS multiplayers gamers are accostumed to), this alienating (lack of rich) experience to gamers who are rookies or are just trying to interact with it in any other sense than the most mindless version of winwinwinyoulose (really, it could be any other graphic or design. It just doesn't fucking matter to these people. The only thing that have any input on their experience with those places, actions and character are the numbers that appear when you hit "Tab" -- a flighty explosion, a invisible killing, a brainless slaughter: all makes no difference, it's just the fucking numbers! Jesus Christ!).
And that irritating multiplayer thing of people jumping speedly! How I hate that... God, how that... I could really go on about that particular thing for pages, but I'm already being too ranty.
Really, the biggest gaming cold shower. I thought it was a game from the same people of Portal, supposed to be more elegant, friendly and acessible to many varieties of gamers and more suave and joyful than just Counter! Fucking! Strike! Argh!) |
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. I played it for a while and it's incredibly immersive if you in one of the corporations fighting in the 'Great War' that's currently going on. I used to hang out with the Penny Arcade corporation MerchI.