Ok don't have a go at me for my opinion...
The game had crap AI, the grunts don't run away from grenades on normal hardness, which seems kinda odd... They have no strategy and don't flank you like in HL1 (maybe that was fluke that they did that).
The story was way off in its own world from the original, seems they just made it set in a European city because they were too lazy to create an environment that involved not taking photos for textures.
The story was poor. The game ends badly. Its like Matrix 2- it seems to just be some random action thats plonked to fill space in the story just so you don't get too lost. On that note, the game gets boring very quickly. Its incredibly repetetive- same enemies over and over. Any part with a devistating action scene is never something you control. In HL1 i remember using mortars or doing cool stuff to wipe out loads of people. In HL2 its an NPC that does that. Also its a very very linear game- 1 path for everything. In most games theres at least a little 2nd sneaky way round.
Although I do say quite alot of bad stuff the game has a very good engine, and some nice effects here and there. Also had some cool enemies and ideas, but as a whole I thought it was a poor Single Player game. HL1 was far superior- and wasn't hyped up with all this stuff it never had (see the hydra and the strider lab attack scenes, also the traps scenes in that scabby part of City 17 with the monk). There was so much stuff shown in the E3 and near to none of it was in the game! Thats poor/false advertising I say...
[addsig]
