Half-Life 2

The Good
It came in a sweet plastic box.

Seriously. That's the best I can say for it.

The Bad
First and foremost I dislike the concept of Steam. This game came out in 2004 and I didn't play it until 2008 because of Steam. In fact, the only reason I broke down and bought the Orange Box was Portal (which was totally awesome).

Steam is a smack in the face. Basically, Valve is telling their customers that they don't trust them. This is not the place for a full blow rant on game piracy and DRM, so in practical terms the impact that Steam has on the player is that it requires an active internet connection AT ALL TIMES. Not just for activation or online play, but every time you want to play, single player mode included. Forget that. I don't let my computer decide when it wants to get on the internet.

Linearity. This is about as linear a game as I've ever played. There is really very little thought involved in playing. There is very little opportunity for tactical planning and execution so that aspect at least isn't completely absent, but nearly so. Big picture though, in this game you move from point A to point B to point C and shoot stuff and "solve" "puzzles" on the way. The intention of the developers is pretty obvious; by driving HL2 in such a linear fashion they are able to control the pacing and mood of story presentation. Which can be a very good thing (Call of Duty 4, Soldier of Fortune, heck, even TIE Fighter had a good story) But that brings us to the next point in this list:

The story, what little story there is, is thoroughly incomprehensible (FYI, I did beat the original Half-Life shortly after it came out and was very impressed with it). In my mind, story and character go hand in hand. At no point did I ever feel a sense of commitment towards the other characters. I never felt drawn into the story to the point that I cared about what happened to them. They were simply speed bumps that had to be navigated over (because you sure couldn't just skip around them). I am hard-pressed to recall any of the detail of the story.... an apparently authoritarian society, freedom fighters, a big robot dog.... it just didn't make me care.

Game controls: maybe the lens of history is distorting this a little, but I am pretty sure that even in 2004 you could LEAN in most shooter games. It's kind of an important thing. Does it really have a tangible impact on gameplay? Probably not. But it is vital for immersion. Additionally, the physics of movement felt very mushy. There was no sense of weight or inertia to the player.

The Bottom Line
In deference to full disclosure, I did not finish Half-Life 2. I believe I got about half way through before completely losing interest. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed the story more if I'd played it to completion, but I doubt it. I don't need to watch a full season of a TV show to know it's bad. Personally, I think this is the most over-rated game of the last decade.

There are a wide variety of user mods out there, and perhaps some of my complaints (Steam and leaning around corners) could be addressed by them. But they didn't come in that sweet plastic box, did they?

HL2 and Far Cry came out in relative proximity to each other, Far Cry first by about eight months. In my opinion, Far Cry is a better game by every conceivable metric. Graphics, sound, gameplay, controls, replayability, story....... If you're looking for a couple-year-old FPS for cheap, ignore HL2 and get Far Cry instead.