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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 (spoilers included and required )

10:58 / 31.12.05

So I've just finished half life 2 on th xbox...what was all that about then?

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Dr Breen? Vortginauts? The Combine?

I'm afraid that I only played a few levels of the first one on a friends ps2 so I knew who barney was but thats it..

Can some one help me out with a quick synopsis of the plot of the first game so I can get my head round this one?
Who is the creepy guy in the suit at the begining and end?
Is that really the end or is there any kind of more satisfying conclusion?

After all the hype I feel slightly cheated. I never really got into this game the way that everyone else seems to have.
The much lauded gravity gun only comes into its own half an hour before the end and its still not a patch on the physics and onbject moving found in that game psy-ops which gave you much more control over objects in your "grasp" including the ability to move the object around you , as opposed to holding it in front of your face the whole time.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game but Now I'm left feeling.. i dunno.
I gues I expected more.
Anyone else finish it?

11:21 / 31.12.05

Can some one help me out with a quick synopsis of the plot of the first game so I can get my head round this one?

Wikipedia is your friend. Details on:
Original Game
Dr Breen
Vortginauts
The Combine
G-Man

The much lauded gravity gun only comes into its own half an hour before the end
Only if you choose not to use it creatively, of course. A good chunk of Ravenholm is dealt with using the Grav Gun and circular saw blades, pretty much all of Highway 17 and Sandtraps requires it's use on numerous occassions, and - IIRC - I spent a good deal of time using it in Nova Prospekt to grab Combine grenades and throw them back.

Anyone else finish it?
Finished the game three or four times, including the Lost Coast expansion, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. I think a great deal of the pleasure I got from the game is the utterly seemless way in which it's put together. Everything about the world it's set in just seems right, and the standard of the audio/visual content is simply breathtaking.

15:45 / 31.12.05

e-n: there's very little you need to know from the first game specifically to understand the second, but Wikipedia will help. In short: there was this accident at a research lab; Gordon Freeman survived it, found a crowbar, and shot the hell out of everything in his way. At the end, he defeated the aliens single-handedly, and was made an offer he couldn't refuse by the guy in the suit.

Most of the plot in HL2 is there for you to find out - there's a lot of background detail, and a lot of implicit things going on that you'll have to work out. Two things to bear in mind, though. The first is that you are playing the intro and the ending - the game doesn't just stop - the last half hour IS the ending, full stop. The first twenty minutes, likewise, until you get the crowbar, are basically a convoluted intro sequence. There's a lot you can choose to ignore during it, but it's worth exploring, poking your nose around, and talking to everyone. In the first game, you were constrained during the intro; here, it just looks like the "game" proper.

The other thing to bear in mind is a little more complex:

Half-Life 2 begins the moment Half-Life 1 finishes.

For Gordon, anyhow. It's a direct sequel. And yet...

10:40 / 04.01.06

Thanks for the pointers.
Have now read all background info on the whole thing.

Adds a little more to the story thanks.

I still can't help the feeling though that it didn't build up enough for me. It seeemed like minor set piece followoed by another minor one.

I think I need to re-play through halo2 and see if that was the same , seeing as its supposed to be 30 seconds of fun repeated ad nauseum.

Still, thinking back now I didn't want to hurl the controller across the room at the end of hl2 like I did wioth halo2.