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| I just finished this by Bananadine 02/03/2011, 8:11pm PST | ||||
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| What a messy story. It almost made sense for Gordon Freeman to become an action hero in the first game--he just happened to be the guy in the suit when things went to hell, and then he got very lucky in a fight between disorganized aliens and confused soldiers. Or something. But why is he still an action hero? It's very silly, yet the story is presented realistically and seems to be trying to make a serious point about fascism. That conflict annoyed me. Also, I don't remember him actually being mute in the first game--I mean, he wasn't heard to say anything, but he didn't seem to be keeping any secrets either. Dudes seemed to get from him what information you'd expect them to get. In the sequel, he never bothers to tell anybody about how some weird guy who controls time and space seems to more or less own him. He never asks his teleporter-building scientist buddies for help with this! Is it because he knows he has to keep quiet, lest the G-Man punish him somehow? Is it because he's really mute? I think it's silly, regardless. But maybe the G-Man is secretly providing him the power to rewind time every time he dies, and that is why he can go on being a superhero? That would actually make sense! But it would help for the player to be told about it.
Fortunately the game is an FPS and not a movie. The driving parts were awesome and the bug-army parts were awesome and I liked it a lot! I was impressed when they introduced the all-terrain buggy by lowering you onto the antlion-infested sand via a crane--only to have the crane operator accidentally drop you partway down, so that all at once you get to learn three important things: that antlions are actually as dangerous as you've been told, that you can turn the buggy right-side-up with your gravity gun, and that cranes of that type can lift the buggy--without ever breaking the fiction! That was really slick. Later, they introduced the city-eating alien walls by dropping me next to one of them and letting it crush me. I had no way of knowing what the moving wall would do, because I'd never seen one before, but it appeared to be full of gaps, so I figured I'd have to hide in one. Only after I'd died a few times could I know that the gaps were magically not big enough for me, and that I'd have to search elsewhere for the real exit. It's weird that they'd try so hard to keep you in the story in most places, and then occasionally make you die in order to learn essential information. I felt the same way whenever I'd blunder into a big firefight, and die, and then breeze through the same area on my second try because that instance of Gordon Freeman had unexplained memories of future battles. Also the Citadel section was embarrassing and when it turned out to actually be the end of the game I was surprised and disappointed. But this argument is mostly covered in prior Caltrops threads. |
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I just finished this by 02/03/2011, 8:11pm PST  |
