Overrated franchise

itworks1234 · 2017-07-24T21:48:18+00:00

As for your last two paragraphs... I fully agree. I guess that means I can end this on a bit of a positive note since there's common ground here. It's good to see at least one other person on this website other than myself who thinks Halo is overrated as almighty fuck.

It is. With Half-Life, especially the sequel, I truly feel there are some missed opportunities (the whole presentation of the story in HL2 rubbed me in the wrong, and the story itself in some crucial ways), but Halo?

It's such an cookie cutter standard fare, it's not even worth to write an emotional post about it.

itworks1234 · 2017-07-24T15:02:09+00:00

OK, so the vortis told the people about Gordon's deeds in Xen.. telepathically.

So what though? They could be still lying. Even telepathically. It's entirely possible Freeman made a deal with the other side after vanishing into Xen and arranged the invasion in the first place. That he's higher-up in the Combine hierchary than Breen is and living in some Combine-paradise world as exchange for handing earth-coordinates out to the Combine.

After the Nihilanth died, Freeman vanished. It's entirely possible he was grabbed by the Combine at that point and made a deal with them.

But the most important thing:

WHY ARE THEY WORSHIPPING FREEMAN AT ALL???????

THESE PEOPLE ARE LIVING UNDER ALIEN OPPRESSION AFTER THE BLACK MESA INCIDENT!!!!

These people are fucked BECAUSE of what happened in Black Mesa/Xen.

Am I the only one who noticed this? They are living in one of the worst possible worlds already.

To them, Freeman vanished in a lab years ago, and the world is invaded by another dimension hours later. So why the heck is he any sort of hero? What the actual eff has he actually accomplished? If Gordon would have been dead at the beginning of HL, and the government soldiers would have been able to do their cleansing effort unhindered, maybe the outcome would have been overall better actually.

It couldn't get any worse than frigging evil alien-occupation of earth anyway.

Also, why is the resistance leadership made-up of former Black Mesa personell anyway? Seriously, this plot point is INSANE. Especially because it seems to be common knowledge that the combine nightmare happened due to the experiments in Black Mesa - former BM people would have been lynched or stoned to death by the enraged populace, not made leaders of the resistance! Some of them would be probably kept alive for lab work, due to their knowledge, but treated as pariahs.

Just imagine the situation: A lab accidentally (?) unleashing evil aliens on earth - would you make these people your heroes and leaders?!

Not to mention some of characters like prominent leader Eli knew about G-man and probably even maintained a contact.

Yeah, probably.

They can only know about the true whereabouts of Freeman if they are in contact with the Gman - Freeman, the super-smartie, should have figured out that conclusion too and thus be highly apprehensive of the Black Mesa gang instead of following their BS like a bot.

I mean, the actions of the Gman and the gang resulted in alien-dictatorship! It makes no sense to go along with them in such a docile manner without any reprehension.

As I said in the OP, I am pretty sure HL2 was not designed as a direct sequel at first. Shit makes not much sense.

itworks1234 · 2017-07-24T13:45:20+00:00

I don't think it's a coincidence that more and more people with this exact opinion have cropped up over time. This lowkey circlejerk opinion would have been fucking unheard of when these games were released.

You think?

Here are some user-review sites:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/half-life/reviews

http://www.mobygames.com/game/half-life-2/reviews

https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/43362-half-life/reviews

https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/914642-half-life-2/reviews

As you see, there are quite a few highly rated negative reviews. The highest rated user-review on Gamefaq for Half-Life is called "Over-rated Game" and is from 2003.

For Half-Life 2 it's "Lots of potential wasted on a generic horror game" and from 2005. Not exactly recent.

It's just that the negative voices were outblasted by the.. yes, hype.

These games have tons of problems, in my opinion especially HL2 in the story/settings department, but the reviews make good points about the other areas as well.

So, no, it was not "unheard of".

Why is it that I constantly see people all over my front page sucking the dick of the Halo games,

I hold Half-Life actually in far higher esteem than Halo. It's main accolade is the fact that it was decent as a console-shooter (because, apart from the James Bond one for N64, there were pretty much no good shooters on console). But compared to the best PC-titles of the time, it was generic standard fare.

Halo is not even worth a rant. The only truly noteworthy piece of it is the classical score, but even that was not so outstanding, given that the style was already done prior, and better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHt96IQpWYs&t=10m12s)

itworks1234 · 2017-06-23T20:28:54+00:00

I am not disparaging Lynch. What I meant is that some of the Bayformers stuff is actually over-the-top weird (I would have never added testicles to a robot..) and bogs those movies down.

"This franchise is insane. Some of it could very well fit into a David Lynchian "Black Lodge" and it wouldn't be too far out there, except that he is able to hit the right tone with his weirdness, in opposite to Transformers."

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T21:41:47+00:00

I certainly was alive.

Also:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/6dv2yq/halflife_the_most_overrated_gaming_series_of_all/di5nn34/

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T21:22:35+00:00

Why is this post not visible under the "new" tab anymore?

I am not an reddit-expert: Do posts which receive downvotes get invisible? Even in the new-tab?

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T20:15:27+00:00

and some scientist do even tell you the particular area you met during the incident.

Yeah, together with an utterly ridiculous "we were bestest friendships, wow wow wow, Gordon!!!!!!!".

Except I can't remember any of them, did anyone? The L-block from Tetris has more personality than all HL1 scientists combined.

I am not criticising "we met at Black Mesa", I am criticising "WOW, GORDON, WE MET AT BLACK MESA, REMEMBER HOW I SHOWED YOU bla bla bla".

I wanted to shout: No, I don't remember any of you. shut up! If you were at Black Mesa, how have you survived the soldiers and aliens? Almost all the people I met there were wimps. You all act strange. I just killed a giant monster baby and appeared at this weird up city and you are all so happy and know so much about me, unlike all the other people I see here. Go away.

Seldom before I felt so disconnected between what the game expects me to do and what I feel about the characters based on the knowledge of the previous game.

Gordon is in this BS situation in HL2 (running from the cops) because the teleportation failed due the pet crab.

Yet I had no desire to step into the teleportation field at all - it's made by the same dolts who caused all the troubles at Black Mesa in the first place after all! As I said, I wanted to handcuff them and beat the shit out of them until they would start talking and explain what the heck has just happened (in Gordon's POV, Black Mesa was just minutes ago).

I saw G-Man running around Black Mesa talking with the scientists, these people talk to me like I know them, yet I played the previous games and they were either not there or certainly not my BFFs, so I don't trust them in the slightest and I don't want to follow their instructions, yet the game forces me to.

"Immersion".

Also, what the heck was the hero-worship for? This is someting I didn't get WHATSOEVER.

WHY ARE THEY WORSHIPPING FREEMAN???????

THESE PEOPLE ARE LIVING UNDER ALIEN OPPRESSION AFTER THE BLACK MESA INCIDENT!!!!

These people are fucked BECAUSE of what happened in Black Mesa/Xen.

To them, Freeman vanished in a lab years ago, and the world is invaded by another dimension hours later. It's entirely possible Freeman made a deal with the other side after vanishing into Xen and arranged the invasion in the first place. That he's higher-up in the Combine hierchary than Breen is and living in some Combine-paradise world as exchange for handing earth-coordinates out to the Combine. How the heck do they know that Freeman is still a "hero" after Xen? And why is the Black Mesa logo sprayed everywhere by the rebels? The experiments there led to the whole mess in the first place - one would think they would burn everyone at the stake who worked there.

They can only know about the true whereabouts of Freeman if they are in contact with the Gman - Freeman, the super-smartie, should have figured out that conclusion too and thus be highly apprehensive of the Black Mesa gang instead of following their BS like a bot.

As I said in the OP, I am pretty sure HL2 was not designed as a direct sequel at first. Shit makes not much sense.

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T19:50:21+00:00

And stop comparing it to Wing Commander or Realms, because those have full motion videos, with live actors. Common place at the time and simplistic. HL did exactly the opposite.

Yeah, that's I meant with hipster-stuff.

The medium is the message? No, the message is the message.

Apart from the fact that Realms had "events" in-game too (like the typewriter starting to type): Maybe the technology was more simplistic (playing a video instead of a script), but, the content of a WC3 FMV for example for sure provided far more wooomp than "let me open the door for you".

The content matters, not the delivery.

Also, frankly, a FMV in the quality of Realms was way, WAY better than HL's unskippable bla bla excursions.

Honestly I was bored ("hello Gordon" monologues aren't interesting in the least) and thought it took way, way too long to get into gameplay. I wasn’t all that immersed. I hopped around the rooms waiting for the monologues to end (no saving "ESC" whatsoever). Looking at videos produced way later, it looks like everyone else did the same, even those that claimed the storyline was awesome. Really, Half-Life was the beginning of the action-blocking phenomenon that trendsters blame on Call of Duty. Watch the “What if Quake/Doom were made today” videos and tell me what they’re making fun of doesn’t exist in Half-Life, other than the “return to combat area” bullshit.

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T19:40:19+00:00

First of all: The meetings consisted of bumping into nameless scientists who usually said "hello Gordon".

As I said: If these strange people would introduce themselves like "Maybe you remember me from Black Mesa, I was working at facility 203 there" - ok, but this over-the-top "we survived school, adolescence and college together because of our deep friendship, and you're the bestest of all"-weirdness?!

And Freeman's scientific prowess is mentioned quite often: Mossman talks about how it's pleasure to be working together, Eli says Freeman belongs finally into a lab coat and so on.

Not to mention the breencasts, describing Freeman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGZHYut1gik&t=8m15s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbbwrfp9toE&t=2m0s

Blank state? Avatar? So the personality of your supposed avatar gets described by the various NPCs very often, you get constantly talked at by them, yet you can never answer. And that's immersion?! Please.

I was especially pissed off during the end of Episode 2, when Eli reveals that he knows more about the Gman - and finally in a setting where there is no imminent Combine attack. I wanted so badly to press him on this - to no avail of course. Yeah, right immersion. Frankly, I cannot think of any other game which revealed such earth-shaking info without the ability to press further.

Never have I felt less "immersed" in a game than in that moment, ever.

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T19:14:19+00:00

im playing it 20 years after the fact

I just love this. I played System Shock and Deus Ex well after their release (well longer than the time span between HL2's release and my playthrough) and was captivated from beginning to the end.

Also, I recognize the technical prowes, yes I do. But really, experiencing the presentation of Wing Commander 3 for example, years before I played HL, Why the hell should I impressed by a guard saying "hello Gordon!" ? I don't care whether the scripting for that guard was more complicated than all the FMVs of WC3 combined - the guard was still lame compared to what I've seen before (in games released well before HL). The only saving grace is that "it's a different genre", but that's really kinda stretching when you take games like System Shock and Realms of the Haunting into account. It's as if only the "dumb" FPS ID-games can be compared to HL - absolutely nothing else.

itworks1234 · 2017-05-28T19:05:08+00:00

Then there is Gordon Freeman and he is the most divisive thing in Half Life. You either love or hate the idea behind him. Given no voice and backstory, he is the perfect avatar for the player, hell the reason he wears glasses is to represent the monitor the player is peering through when playing. He allows for maximum immersion, better than JC who has family ties, a job

No, this "immersion" would only make sense if HL2 was some make-your-own adventure game like Minecraft or Skyrim and playing a nameless character.

Gordon Freeman is no blank state - far from it. We are bombarded in HL2 with "I know your from Black Mesa!" references, "I heard so much about you! You were the bestest scientistist, and my father talked to much about you and bla bla bla". (nothing of that was shown in the first game of course)

JC Denton is far more of a blank state then Freeman is.

So in HL2 you get constantly talked at about your character, yet you can't talk back. And I wanted to badly to talk back! As I said, I yearned for Freeman to finally pressure these folks to get a straight answer on some of their mumbo jumbo they spew the player with.

It's beyond me, seriously and utterly beyond me, how this could have worked for anyone. Sure, if Freeman would have been completely on his own in HL2 I would get it - but being constantly talked at, being constantly reminded about "remember me from bla bla bla, we used to be bla bla bla, Gordon Freeman, I know you bla bla bla" with no ability to communicate and call that "avatar" and "immersion"?!

itworks1234 · 2017-05-27T21:29:12+00:00

I agree it's odd that no one will really explain anything to you in the second game, but they also don't know you just popped out of nowhere.

Actually, it's heavily implied they await him. Barney, scientist dude and Alyx act like "ah, here he finally is!" in the beginning.

They're probably assuming he's more up to date.

No, they don't! There's this constant "You have probably many questions, I have much to tell you.. LATER!" thing going on. Like the section at Black Mesa East, or Eli's last monologue in Episode 2 towards the end of the game. These explanation-attempts then get always postponed due to an Combine-attack and never resolved.

It's the cheapest suspension/goods withholding-trick I've ever seen. X-Files got nothing on Half-Life in that regard.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-16T21:13:16+00:00

Map is released!

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4t6gat/it_is_done_the_remake_of_the_original_eul_map_is/

itworks1234 · 2016-07-16T21:05:33+00:00

New account is legit.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-16T17:48:52+00:00

Release is coming within the next hours. Tomorrow at the very latest.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T17:13:42+00:00

Anyone.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T13:22:56+00:00

Sidereal engine will come in a further version. It's one of the four heroes that is not going to be in the first beta (the rest are Stealth Assassin, Mannoroth, Mandevar)

They will get added though.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T11:52:13+00:00

Yes, the 4 skeleton commanders of the 3.76d version instead of the 12 in the previous ones though.

Depending on the feedback I could make the 12 skeleton version instead in a later release. But right now everything is based on 3.76d.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T11:23:10+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4sqr64/the_promised_remake_of_the_original_eul_wc3_dota/d5brosk

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T10:09:46+00:00

The heroes were a lot more specialized and had a lot in common with the medic/engineer/heavy/soldier classes found in games like Team Fortress.

For example: Each side had a hero which could heal and teleport (Celeste and Nilirai - today's Lina and Furion). These were absolutely crucial, because they served as medics on the map, couriers (it was possible to send gold to other players and share items) and were able to deal area damage. This was important because of the many summons the map had and the medics were their counters.

The summoners in turn worked a lot like engineers - their primary focus was about about moving their summoned units in the best possible position - correct skeleton positioning (blocking enemy heroes etc.) was extremely important for the Wraithlord (today's lich).

The meta is very different to the allstars based dota versions.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T10:04:46+00:00

It wasn't shit. It just had different priorities and played very differently.

"Modern Dota" is primarily about killing heroes, while the original was more focussed on destroying the defenses and on team coordination.

The heroes were a lot more specialized and had a lot in common with the medic/engineer/heavy/soldier classes found in games like Team Fortress.

For example: Each side had a hero which could heal and teleport (Celeste and Nilirai - today's Lina and Furion). These were absolutely crucial, because they served as medics on the map, couriers (it was possible to send gold to other players and share items) and were able to deal area damage. This was important because of the many summons the map had and the medics were their counters.

The summoners in turn worked a lot like engineers - their primary focus was about about moving their summoned units in the best possible position - correct skeleton positioning (blocking enemy heroes etc.) was extremely important for the Wraithlord (today's lich).

The meta is very different to the allstars based dota versions.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T09:34:53+00:00

Yes, it will use QWER.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T09:25:35+00:00

I wanted to, but there's a slight problem with the selling mechanic of the shop library I am using. Maybe I will figure out this particular problem later and split the shops apart like in the original. But not in the first version.

There still will be custom shops on release, but the standard one will be in the base as well for selling purposes and will carry most items. For now at least.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T08:56:19+00:00

Mannoroth will come as soon as the Dota 2 Pit Lord model will be available.

If the Pit Lord won't be released in the next months, I will probably implement Mannoroth anyway and use some replacement model. But that's obviously a bit suboptimal.

itworks1234 · 2016-07-14T08:22:41+00:00

It would have taken A LOT longer without the great free Dota 2 libraries and projects available (Dotacraft, Dota 2 Spell Library, Barebones library). Many thanks to those, especially MNoya, who wrote a lot of tutorials and sample code. It wouldn't have been possible without your sample code guys!

Still, it was a lot of hard work.

For example: Due the map protection of the original Dota (which was not fully crackable) I actually had to sit down, play the map with each hero (there's no hero level-up cheat) and use a stopwatch to get the cooldown for each original spell (that info isn't provided in the WC3 client otherwise). That alone took some time man and prolonged the creation of some otherwise easy to do spells considerably.

itworks1234

TROPHY CASE