Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Yes, it lives up to the hype
Published on November 21, 2004 By Draginol In Action

When I was PC Gamer give Half-Life 2 a 98% my hype alert meter went off.

But now that I have it and have played it for a couple of days, I have to agree, it's pretty fantastic. The graphics are really good but more to the point, the physics of the game really lend themselves to making the game more enjoyable.

My only pet peeve are the # of puzzles that have to be solved. But it's forgiveable since if you have an engine like they have, it makes sense to use it.

I also have DOOM 3 and in my opinion, this is a far far better game than DOOM 3.


Comments
on Nov 21, 2004
HL2 definitely deserved the hype a lot more than Doom 3. After my first impressions article of Doom 3 was posted (and featured) here, my feel for the game went downhill fast. It was fun, it was tense, but it was also stale and overdone. I've been done with HL2 for a few days now and I'm feeling just as good about it as when I was playing it. In fact I'm replaying parts of the game several times because they were so much fun.

I posted a rather long review of sorts of the game earlier in the week. I tried to keep it spoiler-free, so check it out if you feel like it.
http://zoomba.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=35375

Glad you're enjoying it so much... and the puzzles are part of the Half-Life experience (and none of them are particularly difficult or obscure).
on Nov 21, 2004
I am not a fan of puzzles in games but I have had no problems so far solving them.
The engine is amazing, I have gone skydiving, am Air Assault qualified, (Rappell out of a Helicopter, etc.) and I got vertigo playing the scenes on the railroad bridge. Amazing.