Forum Overview :: Reviews :: It isn't the worst thing ever written for the site (unfortunately).

[quote name="Bill Dungsroman"][quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Any editing suggestions appreciated.[/quote]Firstly, if you posted this elsewhere for a lark on Fark or PlanetInsertDerogativeAngstyNounHere or any somesuch, and an industrious MysteriAtor See 'n' Peed it here, and now you're all butt-hurt because it's fairly abysmal, neither I nor anyone else cares. However, I will be as fair and brutal as I was for Wormsie, and you can bitch all you want about in on the other site, like a gutless coward, if you so desire. You can also call me a fag and cry for trying to help you instead of coming up with an NT that cleaves diffidence and scathing wit together the most apt. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Anyone want to do screenshots/captions?[/quote]I lack the ability. Sorry! [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]A rant.[/quote]A fag. Kill this. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Killo ergo sum, as Descartes might have said if he spent more time playing Quake and less being the philosophical equivalent of a Big Mac with fries.[/quote]Jokey Latin is a literary crime of the highest magnitude, surpassing even clumsy crotch-joke puns. I have taken my due lumps for "Nostro-dumbass," you would do well to note it. Also, shitting on Descartes' philosophy because it's accessible and ubiquitous to 101-level Philo classes the world over doesn't earn him your scorn and fast-food analogies. It just makes <I>you</I> look dumb, not him, is what I'm sayin'. Avoid mentions of popular philosophers or psychologists, and phrases such as "Algonquin Round Table" or "Gettysburg Address." Anything you've heard a million times before isn't going to magically come off as fresh simply because you threw a half-assed coat of paint on it, Earl Schieb. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]As we all know, it's a great time to be alive if crawling down ducts and shooting big guns is your bag. What Freud[/quote]Oh, <I>shit</I>. Well, you didn't know, yet. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]might say about the psychosexual implications of taking a shotgun down holes and shooting scuttling toothed vaginas with it is uncertain. 'Ich bin ein pervy kancervictimen' perhaps.[/quote]We've learned this, we've learned <I>from</I> this, haven't we? [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Probably, though, he'd just be wishing he was still alive so he could play Halflife 2 and Halo 2.[/quote]Brah, you just can't say, in sum, "If (famous person X) were alive today, he'd be playing (Game Y)." That just leads to Z(zzzzz) and furthermore, it's the most motherfucking inspirational-bereft statement extant. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]I haven't finished the former[/quote]Man, even <I>I</I> have, and I suck at FPS's. Just, just fucking <I>lie</I>, okay? Read a walkthrough, fake it, anything. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]and only reached the end of Halo 2 last night, although I got both shortly after they came out; I've been playing them both on 'hard' difficulty. To one of my awesome and cybernetically augmented skillset this seemed the only possible route, particularly since both games are a touch on the easy side. Halflife 2 even <I>defaults</I> to a ' hold my hand and let me know to close my eyes at the scary bits' level of hardness, tch ptah.[/quote]What the hell was that right there, Klingon? Lose it. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Anyway I was concerned there <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=halo+2+vs+half+life+2&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8"> weren't enough comparisons of the two games on the Internet</a>, so I've decided to throw my guts into the ring. We'll let the Mexicans clean it up, it's what they're paid for.[/quote]I'm not exactly wetting myself over this bit, but it could survive if something better were prancing merrily around it. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Starting with the sound, because it's the blind man's television.[/quote]Another not-entirely awful quip, but it's just hangin' out there, for no real purpose. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]The sound in Halflife 2 is visceral and perfectly judged,[/quote]An awkward phrase, this. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]its music restrained, spooky or rocking as required. The first Halo had brilliant sound too, every thunk, boom and kachunk fitting perfectly into place like a spiked collar round the neck of a paunchy homosexual.[/quote]Sigh. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]The music was ace, cranking up and shifting down in intensity at the drop of a hat. Of course there were no hats in Halo 1, whereas there are in Halo 2. This might explain why the sound is also a bit poo.[/quote]Is this for GameFAQs? [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]The voices are muted, the gunfire less rocking, the music more generic. There are still many moments of glorious insanity, but I'm not doing this to be reasonable, so Halo 2 loses this one. It also has Steve Vai in it, so it sort of double loses if that's possible.[/quote]Steve Vai isn't a shitty guitar player. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]The graphics on both are much flashier than their respective originals, as they should be giving how much I spent chipping my Xbox and modding my video card. Both Halo 2 and Halflife 2 have done sterling work in holding on to the good parts of their predecessors, including the latter's relative low-speccedness[/quote]That's quite simply the worst fucking mishmash, marble-mouthed, slurry of a word I've ever read. Despite what every stuttering moron on the internet tells you by example, no word is made more clever or precise, nor even remotely intelligible, by adding suffixes such as "-ness," "-a/ible," or "-ity." If you <I>ever</I> type the words "fucked-upness" or "kickassity" I'll fucking <I>kill</I> you. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]and the former's fluidity and lack of loading screens. A side effect of Halo 2's seamlessness is that you'll see people in cutscenes start out crudely textured then quickly self-assemble into 21st century bump-mapped pretend people with wrinkles and warts and stuff. It's odd, clumsy and not entirely successful, but doesn't affect play. Nor, really, do the graphics. They're darn pretty though.[/quote]The graphics don't affect gameplay but are pretty <I>though</I>? Re-write. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]The Halflife 2 jump[/quote]There's a better word or phrase for what you're trying to say here. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]is more noticeable since the original came out so long ago, but both are impressive. Halflife 2 wins because Halo 2 has a definite feeling of more of the same. Still good, pretty, fun, but we have been here before. Halflife 2 by contrast is the most gritty and coherent realisation of a realistic near future,[/quote]"Fully-realised realism," ladies and gentlemen. That's going on the GotY Edition box. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]with a slight surfeit of ducts and sewers, I've yet seen in my imaginary career as an alien-hunter/mercenary/armed sociopath.[/quote]"Mild surfeit" is more common. And this sentence is free to die at "...I've yet seen." [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]There are greasy pools of water in which bob discarded plastic bottles, whose bobbing is disturbed by the downdraft of the alien insect-o-copter[/quote]Oh yeah, none of these, either. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]as it gravitates past overhead. I've never seen that before. That segues me nicely[/quote]But does it wanna segues you up? "That segueways nicely" is better. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]into the physics model which I'd argue, were any fool wack enough to diss my dope styles,[/quote]It's "stylings." It's also awful. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]is integrally linked[/quote]If it's already integral, you don't have to say it's linked. "Integral" is all you need. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]to the graphics in that both go towards creating a believable environment.[/quote]Never mind the integral edit. Just kill this boring sentence. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Halo 2 has pseudo physics, whereby bodies, vehicles and crates fly around but everything else is static, apart from the occasional window. Halflife 2 has a completely realised environment in which the physics act as a minigame all <STRIKE>of</STRIKE> its own. It has delightful little puzzles, toys really, like the bit where you drop a rusty Lada on to a group of staggering zombies (and who hasn't wanted to do that?) or pick up a shipping container with a magnetic crane and fling it over a river onto a gun post. Also you're constantly being surprised and delighted by some little quirk like taking cover behind a filing cabinet and having the subsequent sniper fire knock it over onto you, or throwing cans of paint at zombies to create gruesome, shambling party-zombies, or finding a floating body in a cellar and shooting it a little to see it jiggle around. The last one works in real life, too.[/quote]We know. Knock this down to one sentence composed of something entirely different. And don't ever say something is "delightful," you screaming queer. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]So Halflife 2 wins, though Halo 2 doesn't care - Halo 2 is about combat and flying bodies are the cherries on the cake, while in Halflife 2 you'd probably have to say physics based gameplay is the icing as well.[/quote]Worm has forever perveted the term "physics" in relation to HL2. The stuff about H2 not caring is okay, the cake metaphors are lame. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Which brings me to the Halflife 2 Gravity Gun. Damn that's fun. It only works because of the physics model described above, but it's a total hoot. The first time you realise that you can grab a circular saw blade and use the Gun to slice a zombie literally-in-fucking-half you'll be giggling like a paedophile in daycare, you sick fuck. It's a bit too clumsy to use much in regular combat, for this fumble fingered virtua-warrior anyway, but this is also a clear win for Halflife 2. Though as Halo 2 had no Gravity Gun nor any intention to include one, this is sort of like a limbless man declaring himself winner of the Can't Run a Step Cup.[/quote]Two sentences max on this. Again, we know. That last sentence earns you a special place in hell, incidentally. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Both games have linear and slightly disappointing stories, but I'm going to give Halo 2 points for narrative drive and Halflife 2 points for style. Halflife 2 has the marvellous Dr Breen ranting away on enormous screens in the first thirty minutes about how Earth's new alien overlords have shut down our reproductive ability for our own good, which strikes me as a snarky dig; most of its players won't have too many problems imagineering themselves into this new world-without-sex.[/quote]Adequate. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Halo 2 has lots of great scenes, and much gigglesome tactical tomfoolery. Against this is the confusing two-pronged narrative toasting-fork of a story in which the characters exposit very quietly like they're sitting in a drawing room taking tea, rather than in some kind of futuristic kids' playground with shotguns and plasma swords instead of swings. The Internet advises me there is an <a href="http://rampancy.net/halo2story">interesting backstory</a>, but they said that about <a href="http://www.decentfilms.com/reviews/matrix.html">the Matrix</a>. Again, tch ptah.[/quote]Was <I>The Matrix</I> terrible? Some digs, you know, some digs are <I>too</I> easy. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]And that brings me to the end scene of Halo 2. Which, though commendably exciting in the buildup, is disappointing with a capital GAY. It is a letdown of "nice beach holiday on phuket" proportions.[/quote]Oh, how timely! How topical! Kill this. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]I've given them the benefit of the doubt and decided they simply ran out of time, because tacking a dull, pointless and un-fun boss battle on a game series which has distinguished itself by its lack of all of these elements is worthy of the most baroquely overwritten synonym for "bad" you care to develop. I understand Halflife 2 has an anticlimactic dribble of a final scene as well, but not having seen it I'm free to decide that it can't be that bad and award it the ending trophy on points.[/quote]Jesus, the game isn't that daunting in its playing length. Go fucking finish it and rewrite this mess. Or, like I said, read up on it and lie. It's only hip and cool if the game was so awful you couldn't bear to finish it. Not finishing a great game everbody on the planet has finished and writing a review about it is a pointless fucking exercise. You could have spent the time finishing the game, the time it takes you to write a review about how you <I>haven't</I> finished it. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Of course it's the play that matters, and they've both got that down smooth as an Irishman's drinking arm on payday.[/quote]Mexicans, now the Irish. Oh, what won't he skewer next? Airline food? [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Dynamic, fluid, brutal, exciting, it's all there. So despite the whinging caveats I feel obligated to provide, you really can't go wrong.[/quote]Do you know what makes this review fundamentally terrible? This part. We <I>know</I>. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Except in one aspect, which is why I'm going to give the overall victory to Halo 2: Steam. Say it low, slow, and with plenty of hoick in your gob for the requisite foetid bubbling sound. Let's be perfectly clear about this - Steam is a pain in the ass of barbed-wire dildo proportions. And we aren't talking that genteel fits-in-your-purse size, neither. No, we are referring to 'The Black Intruder', an artificial shlong of such mammoth proportions that it blocks out the <I>sun</I>.[/quote]Yeah, except after the initial install (at worst) it's not, really. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]Of course, it's only a fucking video game, right? Who cares, right? The answer, as you well know if you've read this far, is: 'I do'. Halflife 2 is a piece of consumer entertainment. Its only purpose is <I>to be fun</I>. What other item of consumer entertainment do you have to plead with in order to get the right to use it? To nursemaid for hours while it ambles around the net, downloading this and that? To be hostage to for your fix of fictional firefights?[/quote]Steam was a problem the first week of HL2's release, notoriously to anyone who bought the CDs in a store and did the whole isntall at once (as I did). I have really no complaints about it now, which means nobody does. It updated to remove the stuttering bugs awhile back. It's biggest remaining knock is, if you don't feel like bothering with Steam connecting itself, you ought to get a pre-emptive prompt to enable offline mode, which you only get if your connection is disabled. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]I understand it's better with broadband. And that, once you've put in the requisite eight hours of pissing around, it all works quite smoothly. It's also better, apparently, if you didn't bother with the box/cd and slurped it straight off the net. It'll get better with time. I know all this stuff.[/quote]Then, no offense, shut the fuck up. [quote name="Harry Crews, Motherfucker"]But, quite frankly, fuck it. Vigorously and painfully. I don't care. The thing that annoys me most is that I <I>know</I> that this is the wave of the future. Publishing companies are watching through their D&G specs, tapping their jazz-fur bedecked chins and nodding thoughtfully, the fuckers. "People <I>like</I> being 'visited' by the Black Intruder? They will <I>pay</I> for the privilege? Exxxxxxcellent." The future starts here and we are the only ones who can stop it. Luckily, our wits are keen, our skills honed and our trigger fingers locked into firing position by OOS induced tendonitis. Pass the flamethrower and crack some health and ammo out of those crates - it's time to get serious. [/quote]Wow, what a finale. I mean, wow. [/quote]