Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

I'm still playing the game at the moment, but I thought I might kick off a thread gathering peoples thoughts and comments about the game. So far I've seen some people praise it and others give it really negative comments.

Please explain your reasons either way

PS: I'll be coming back to this thread to comment fully once I've completed it, but I'm waiting until I've got people to play with because I fear playing with Bots is a very sub standard experience.

I personally quite enjoy it even with bots although it's not a fraction of the fun. Even joining a random lobby and playing with randoms off the internet is awesome but it really comes alive when played with people you know.

The Zombie AI is magnificent. Granted it has a simple task but I have never played a game where the AI could cross terrain so effectively.

The director is subtle at times but once you play a fair bit you appreciate it's actions more and more. Sometimes it will 'fake' you out with music cues to expect something and then not produce anything only to start ramping up again to an even louder criscendo later on and then completely unleashing hell on you. It has so many little things it does that are immensely subtle but infinitely effective.

Yesterday me and a mate took a detour to find some stuff because we were both really low on health and our players started chatting in the most disturbing manner about how messed up they were. Freaked me right out. Bare in mind that the conversation was completely fluid but would have been different with any two combinations of players! Awesome.

This game a bloody hard on expert. It's so rare for me to play a game where I actually die that I'm so happy every time I die on this game. When you play with people that aren't very good you really feel like you need to protect them and it's well fun trying to keep em alive. The other two difficulties are MUCH too easy for anyone who's played any competitive FPS games at all though so jump straight in with advanced and ramp up to expert quickly.

I can't tell you how much I love this game. I'm not sure why people feel so let down by it but I guess it has something to do with high expectations? I've yet to hear a decent criticism of it. Waits patiently...

as crazy as it sounds Im going to wait to play it untill my buddy gets a copy to...
but anyway I hardly ever played a demo as much as left 4 dead and it was just two maps!

me and my buddy always played zombiemaster together and it was so fun! but I like L4D 100x better
the only thing that lets me down a bit ATM is the server shit.. it doenst always work!... I have to wait until the stupid message pops up "connecting failed after 10 retries"... that really pisses me of
but I had that in the demo to and it got better after a while so I hope some updates are comming.
I know that you can bring up serverbrowser by typing it into the console but I still think they should include a button to get the classic stuff... I wonder how its done with custom maps? how can you join a server with a custom map if you can only select the 4 movies or not search for it.

and the achievements? aren't there going to be unlockables? I really really really hope they put in the same sort of updates that they did with TF2.. so you got something to look forward to and keep the game interesting in the future

these are my thoughts for now... after I finished the game I will probbally be more excited

I just got the full game and finished "No Mercy". The thing that struck me most (even after the demo, but even more now) is how much content is reused from older games. Around 20% of props, 10% of sounds, 30% of all textures are OLD. Srates form H-L2, LCD screens from CS:S, grenade bouncing sound... the list goes on and on. Seriously Valve FFS couldn't you at least have changed the skins on those models? This was a big disappointment for me. Sometimes I felt like I was playing a half-finished HL2 mod.

I love it so far, the only problem i've come across is trying to find a dedicated server. Sometimes it just keeps searching forever but thats not really part of the game.

Funnest moment so far was when i was playing no mercy for the first time with one friend and two randoms. We were doing the finale and we had almost made it. I see the chopper fly in and my comrades high tailing it to the heli pad. I decide it is time to dismount the mini-gun which i was on. I Turn to the right to jump over the side to get to the chopper only to be met by the hulking meat slab known as the tank. It hit me so hard that i cleared the ENTIRE rooftop and fell screaming to my death.

This was followed by much laughter and a slight sadness that i was so close to making it out alive.

Great stuff and some great memories so far

Playing with random people is fun, I think.

I also learned how to wall-jump with hunter. Wall-jump = win.

xoqolatl wrote:I just got the full game and finished "No Mercy". The thing that struck me most (even after the demo, but even more now) is how much content is reused from older games. Around 20% of props, 10% of sounds, 30% of all textures are OLD. Srates form H-L2, LCD screens from CS:S, grenade bouncing sound... the list goes on and on. Seriously Valve FFS couldn't you at least have changed the skins on those models? This was a big disappointment for me. Sometimes I felt like I was playing a half-finished HL2 mod.

Valve tends to re-use a lot of things, but if you notice, they only re-use things when it fits. Everything in the game fits into the atmosphere, there would be no point in remaking models and such if they fit right into the universe of the game. There would be no point in wasting so much time making completely new content that could easily be replaced by things from previous games. It all looks good, so really, who cares?


Alright, here are my thoughts:
Good
-AI Director, always has new suprises for me
-Facial expressions and voice commands, makes it much more cinematic than any multiplayer game I've played.
-Weapons, only a few, but they work out just fine
-OMGZOMBIES
-Other, music, lighting (which I cannot apreciate until I get a new graphics card)

Bad
-Weapons, can be a little too powerful sometimes, especially the shotguns.
-zombies climbing, sometimes it looks like they're climbing in midair, while at other times it looks like they're merged to the props.
-Zoey... why heal her when I need it the most?!
-Sometimes I hate the bots, when I need them to pick me up, they're right there near me, just running around waving their guns about like idiots, also, when someone needs to heal, they don't do it, its only when they really REALLY REALLY need to heal they do it, and someitmes during a heated battle.

HILARIOUS
The scout doing the voice of the priest in the church's safehouse, "DING DONG DING DONG DINNER IS SERVED, COME AND GET IT!!!"

In terms of gameplay, the game is fun. The environment is a spot on representation of what a zombie apocalypse would look like. The zombie AI is spot on, although occasionally, they climb objects when they shouldn't. At first, I was disappointed when ten weapons meant two shotguns, two assault rifles, the hunting rifle, pistols, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and the mounted minigun, but the more I played, the more I felt the weapons were balanced. Multiplayer is fun, especially versus mode. Nothing says I love you like dragging a survivor across the map while a tank is beating up on the others.

My biggest complaint is with the survivor AI. They are either incredibly stupid (one time I was playing, two of my teammates just fell off a roof to their death for no reason), or they shoot things from miles away before you get a chance to see them. The AI also has a tendency to remain outside of safe areas for too long a time, and will always heal you before you want them to. They also seem incapable of using pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails.

Overall, the game is great. But right now my biggest issues are that the AI survivors cannot use grenades, there's no simple way of hosting a dedicated server for private use, and the Tier 1 SMG really doesn't compare to the pump shotgun. It runs out of ammunition too fast, and doesn't have the stopping/penetration power needed to make it a decent counterpart to the shotgun.

there's no simple way of hosting a dedicated server for private use

Make a private steam group and put the following in your server.cfg:

Code: Select all

sv_steamgroup *GROUP ID*
sv_steamgroup_exclusive 1

There you go. Now your server won't participate in matchmaking, but you can still easily access it from the main menu. Just invite users to your group when you want them to have access to your server. I've been doing it since release day and it works great.