Has Gaming Progressed Past Half-Life 2?

Author’s Note – My laptop is still causing a helluva lot of problems, namely my weapon of choice for cBlogging Word 2016 keeps crashing constantly. It’s really annoying me actually! Sorry this is so late and kinda short. There is good news though, I found a bunch of old gaming articles from 2013 in my old school cloud server so I’ll repurpose them into MS Word articles, fix ‘em up and publish them later this week! I hit a few snags with my SLW Mod Retrospective, should come soon though.

Half-Life 2 is one of the best games of all time, honestly. It seamlessly combines platforming, epic action and storytelling into a well-made package. And the best damn thing is that the gameplay still holds up well in 2016. 

The sheer scale of the game is epic even now, a brutal fight between humanity and its enslavers. The amount of ambiguous writing keeps you thinking about the game events, as to who the G-man is, and how the Combine took over City 17. The well-written and well voice-acted characters in HL2 incite a ton of emotion in me even on my 2^nd playthrough, and the amount of backstory of Alyx.

The triumphant feel of taking down a gunship in Nova Prospekt or Highway 17, or taking down that damned Attack chopper in Water Hazard (one of my favorite levels in a game ever), has yet to be topped by a modern game. 

Enjoying the show much?

The graphics in HL2 hold up okay, some textures look pretty low-res but luckily the grimy artstyle, fast paced gameplay and beautiful skyboxes don’t make that a problem at all. The framerate is also perfect even on my challenged laptop, running at a constant 200fps and even higher with rare dips. It’s awesome to see a game this optimized for AMD CPUs and lower-end devices. Valve really struck gold with its source engine, and the physics engine and puzzles are also exceptional and hold up great today.

The soundtrack is also really awesome! I had CP Violation on my iPad a few years back, when I used to carry the thing around with me everywhere. The composers for it did a great job at capturing the feel for it.

Also, can we talk about Ravenholm? There’s SO much content packed in there, with plenty of flesh eating headcrab zombies, Father motherfucking Grigori, hard to find collectibles, and the challenge of getting that achievement of having to only use the Gravity Gun while in Ravenholm. Freaking’ carnivorous zombies, they hate me. 

Overall, with how groundbreaking and influential Half-Life 2 is, I’d have to say that gaming has progressed maybe a tiny bit past Half-Life 2 since its release. Just being realistic as it’s one of my favorite games, but games like GTAV and Metal Gear Solid V have surpassed it in terms of scale. Still, I’m very hopeful that someday, sometime, in the future Valve will release a worthy successor to the not-referenced-in-this-blog cliffhanger ending of the also-stellar Half-Life 2 : Episode 2. All in due… time?

I enjoyed writing this cBlog even if technical issues nipped me in the ass a bit. I’m thinking of switching back to my desktop for writing duty from now on as my laptop is starting to get a tad bit unstable. Welp! However, you can expect more content from me, I have several ideas in the works personally and will be happy to share them in due TIME, Mr. Freeman. 

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CoilWhine   

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