Half-Life 2 Complaints

Yes, Half-Life 2 is a master-piece. But even such games as high calibur
as this have their flaws. I want you all to tell me what problems you
saw in the game - whether they be design flaws, gameplay flaws, or just
something you thought stood out.

Three problems with me:

The AI: Alright, the A.I. isn't bad. Nor is it revolutionary. I was a
bit disappointed by the fact that most enemies in the game rush to your
posistion completely disregarding any thought on safety. The A.I is
still good, but it really could use a touch up here & there.

Squad-mates: Yes, they are suppose to be your helping hand in City 17,
but for me it was a different story. I saw Squadmates as more of a
distraction rather than a helping hand. They constantly got into my way
when I was trying to move things around (like making a bridge to climb
over a fence :smile: ) and usually they didn't help me in battle (they
either died or got lost). However, they did help sometimes, like when I
was bombarded by manhacks in the tunnels.

The Loadtimes: Yes, I know that there isn't much Valve can do about
this. Long load times are to be expected seeing how the Source engine
supports double sized levels than Half-Life 1, and Valve had every
intention on using that power. However, with great saved space and
optimization comes a price - the long load times. They are bareable,
but I say we kill the guy working the controls inside your CPU.

Those we're my only complaints, seeing how I thought Half-Life 2 was
nearly flawless. I loved the story, gameplay, weapons, characters,
sound, design - Basically, I loved every damn moment of this game and
cannot wait to see what the new mods for the Source engine.

Do you have any remote clue of how difficult it is to create the simplest of AI? In the terms of actual AI and not a choice tree or something as such.

However, I'm not sure what techiniques they used (Fuzzy Logic ... maybe). To put it shortly, for the AI to be better then it already is (which is fairly good because it is dynamic, try playing it through a few more times, chances are, they won't act the same) the development time for AI would be pushing 5 years.

Right now it looks like the HL2 AI system has about 2 or 3 main decisions for overall AI and 2 or 3 sub decisions. To have true AI those decisions need to be close to the hundreds (if not thousands). Then you could probably watch the same sequence 10 times and not see the same actions. But that takes time, more time then any developer will spend on a game.

The load times will get shorter as you get faster hardware, or when there are more optimized patches for HL2.

I haven't completed it yet, so I'm not going to list complaints I may have with one of the best games I've played to date.

[edit]
I don't know why I quoted you when I made the first reply

You're also forgetting the huge performance hit your computer would take if it had to run complex AI for several different agents in the game... or maybe that's not the big factor I think it is? Anyway, the AI was pretty good I thought. Maybe only a little improved over HL1 but still better than most anything else on the market. My only gripe with the game are the few flaws where you can break a sequence (like throwing DOG's ball outside the map).

I had squad-mates?

I would usually use the squadmates as distractions for striders or
something. I felt bad when they died at first, but after a while I get
desensitized to it and began using them like the meat shields they
were. IMO, the rocket-wielding ones and medics are the only useful ones.

But Tracer brings up a good point. The game runs very / quite well,
like 30 FPS, on my pretty crappy system (GF4 MX). While there aren't
any of them purdy shaders, it's still a marvel to behold. I think the
biggest reason for holding back would be scalability across their
fanbase, which is, uh, a good reason. :smile:

Tracer Bullet said:
You're also forgetting the huge performance hit your computer would take if it had to run complex AI for several different agents in the game... or maybe that's not the big factor I think it is? Anyway, the AI was pretty good I thought. Maybe only a little improved over HL1 but still better than most anything else on the market. My only gripe with the game are the few flaws where you can break a sequence (like throwing DOG's ball outside the map).

Not as big of a performance hit as you'd think. It all depends on how you write the searching and choice algorithms (this is where logic and operation effciency comes in).

There are so many ways you can do it. Such as you can have a tree of initial situations (possibly as a subtree under something like emotions) and each situation (generally grouped of course) would lead to a subtree of choices. and each choice would lead to a subtree of actions. Now, this is the area where the more tree nodes would come into play (the more noticable area).

I'm not entirly sure about the overall runtime efficiency, but I think if you manage the code well and test the hell out of it, it should run pretty well no matter how many options you choose. Simply because those options aren't all used at once. A new path is made every time, whether the final subtree has 2 leafs or 200 leafs doesn't matter as long as you're using proper functions to decide actions. (violent actions could be even and divisable by 2 for example <- not efficient, just an example). Logs are actually the most efficient opperation times.

I hope that gives a little light on the subject.

Try looking up information on Fuzzy Logic and really be confused (I don't understand much of it, I've barely scratched the surface)

My only real complaint is that the game isn't that much harder on Hard, especially when compared with HL1. I was playing a bit of HL:S and I was near death many a time, especially when I was fighting the grunts, whereas HL2 on hard was barely any more difficult, although I did notice that there were some welcome differences (combine would release manhacks during combat at times instead of grenades, more rollermines, etc). Yes, I already beat the game on Normal and Hard, I've got nothing better to do. The problem may simply be that there's way too much health and ammo all over the place, I dunno.

I am not pleased with the way HL:S turned out. Ragdolls and fancy water are good and all but there are too many missing sounds, no gibbing, and random weirdness. Good thing I still have my original HL :biggrin:

snif, i still havent played it. im waiting for the ce in store...

My complaint is that I was not mailed a free copy.

I thought the AI was pretty good, at least not as bad as most games. If there was a group of combine soldiers they would charge me, but if there was on or two they were more catious, on many occaisions moving back behind cover, particularly once I'd blasted some of them.

The squadmates did tend to be a mixed blessing. They were great for taking enemy fire and creating multiple targets, particularly when fighting strider. Their usefullness tended to disappear in close quaters combat, blocking movement and fields of fire. More often than not I had to blast through them myself to get out of the way of a grenade or mine, when they were blocking a doorway. But thats what we have shotguns for.

My only complaint would be how easy some supposedly "hard" areas were, particularly that first big battle with the striders. At no point was that difficult. I only died when someone ran in front of me when I fired a rocket. That first huge battle outside the prison was pure madness, a beautiful example of what a hard area should look and play like. absolutely beautiful.

And the end battle, make that the entire last chapter, was a walk in the park. I found earlier chapters to be so much more involving, so much more difficult, and so much more well constructed. It was somewhat of a disappointment to be built up throughout this entirely awesome game then be let down by the last, lack lustre chapter. It felt like they just slapped it together because they'd had enough.

And that ending, do I smell a sequel.

I'm playing through it on hard, but unfortunately haven't had much time
to play due to uni coursework so I've still got some distance to go
(doing anticitizen one for the time being). It started out easy but at
this point in the game its quite tricky, as were some of the parts in
Nova Prospekt (the fight with two gunships and crap loads of grunts
comes to mind).

I echo the complaints about squad mates - I've not had them long but
trying to keep them alive is quite frustrating, I tend to send them
into a corner and rush the enemy myself before calling them back. They
are particularly annoying during some of the tight interior sections,
where they just stand in your way going "sorry freeman" as you
desperately try to shunt them away :sad:

Underuse of bumpmapping. It's a fairly standard and not-too-performance-crippling thing, and although it is used throughout the game, I think the bumps need to be a bit more pronounced and used a bit more.

My complaint is the hell of validating the damned thing. Just trying to
restart my Steam client now. I validated. I even stayed online whilst
decrypting. I am now told "offline mode os unavailable" even though I
have done everything to activate it, when actually the problem is that
I just have to check for updates (which takes another 20 minutes) Very
infuriating. All I want to do is play the game OFFLINE! Steam is in
theory great, but needs the whole world to have broadband before it can
become a viable method.

Only complaint:

Stuck in an area called "ravenfolk", I think. I walk up to a door, press use, and I get a door opening sound, but it won't open!

Its called Ravenholm, and chances are that means something is on the
other side of the door blocking it. You probably have to find another
way around and then you can use the manipulator to unblock the door to
simplify the route or something.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting G.Ballblue</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Only complaint:

Stuck in an area called "ravenfolk", I think. I walk up to a door, press use, and I get a door opening sound, but it won't open!

</DIV></DIV>
I just finished that part, just keep looking for the fat guy with the shot gun.

The AI did it's job, I think. If it was too taxing, i think it might
have been too much of a distraction and ruined the pace a bit. Plus, I
prefer it when I don't have to keep reloading a battle against the most
common enemy in the game, just because the AI is too advanced. :smile: I
liked how the zombies threw stuff at you though, rather than just
lumber towards you groaning.

The squadmates were occasionally annoying, and a few more commands
rather than "go here" would have helped. This is only in small areas
though, in large areas like the courtyard with the striders, it's a
very cool sequence.

The coast sections went on a bit long as well, I think. A bit of trimming here and there would have helped.

scary_jeff said:
Underuse of bumpmapping. It's a fairly standard and not-too-performance-crippling thing, and although it is used throughout the game, I think the bumps need to be a bit more pronounced and used a bit more.

Some parallax mapping in areas would be nice too.

Still the best game I've ever played :smile:

complaints:

AI was alittle lame like everyone says.

only four saves at a time... or five (dont remember) so you cant go back and play certain areas if you wanted to. unless I'm missing something...

This could be a DM issue... you cant strafe off the ladders like in HL1. You have to look in the direction and hit your "use" key to get off of a ladder.

The ending while cool and open to a sequel, was way to easy. I couldnt believe that was it...

Agent Smith said:
I only died when someone ran in front of me when I fired a rocket.

Haha, same thing happened to me - luckily I swirved the rocket before
it hit his head, so I lived. Although I sent his ass to fight a pack of
combine which he unsuccessfully did. Take that; bitch.

The really wierd thing is that HL2 has far less repetition than Halo 2,
and yet Halo 2 gets away with it more. I think its just because HL2 is
of such high quality that if one section takes a while then it feels
like a let down, while in Halo 2 its expected. I tended to think "hmm
this section is a big long winded" in HL2 and wish for a change, while
in Halo 2 I can still feel quite happy going through long sections of
familiar environments.

The ladders are both good and really frustrating at the same time...I'm
glad you can shoot while you're on them now though. It helps when some
guy is camping you in CS:S from some tiny loft. But if you don't go on
and off the ladder in a fluid movement it tends to get really buggered.

My only complaints were: why wasnt it longer than doom 3? And this is more of a stylistic preference, but why didn't the g-man give us a choice this time at the end? (it didn't feel like Half Life when the game ended).

Umm, the truth is that you never actually had a choice in HL1. You
could either live and work for him or die to all the Xen. G-man even
mentions this, saying "Rather than give you the illusion of a choice,
blah blah blah." Nice allusion to HL1, I think.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting omegaslayer</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Why wasnt it longer than doom 3?</DIV></DIV>

Probably because Valve knows when to stop instead of creating lab map after lab map.

I can see it now: "We don't go to Ravenholm...", "We still don't go to Ravenholm...", "We told you not to go to Ravenholm...", "It's full of zombies, that Ravenholm..."
The real question should be why wasn't Doom 3 shorter?

omegaslayer said:
My only complaints were: why wasnt it longer than doom 3? And this is more of a stylistic preference, but why didn't the g-man give us a choice this time at the end? (it didn't feel like Half Life when the game ended).

Doom 3 really isn't that long if you bust through it without crawling through the entire game. Probably about the same length as HL2 in some aspects.

A couple of oversized textures and thats about it really, oh, also sometimes the sound went really wierd, like a constant radio.

Actually, another thing I don't like is that the Gman looks far too young and healthy in HL2. Of curse he looks far more realistic, but the gman of HL1 was somehow more mysterious and harder to relate to because he looked frail...

but the gman of HL1 was somehow more mysterious and harder to relate to because he looked frail...

A big reason for that is probably the out-dated Quake 1 engine :smile: .

Oh, and another complaint. The zombies with those new head crabs that they carry around are undoubtedly the most disconcerting creatures you'd want to encounter in a dark alley. Firstly they throw the damned things at you, and secondly the new headcrabs don't need to be f**king thrown, seeing as they already have nice pairs of long, healthy legs capable of running and jumping without taking half an hour to turn around and try again :biggrin: .

My complaint is that you couldn't shoot them until they were thrown at you. So once they'd all taken of a nice chunk of health and wasted your ammo, you still had to deal with the zombie. I would have loved to have been able to blow the f**kers away while they were still attached with a couple blasts of the shotgun. :ar15firing:

Oh, and not a complaint, did everyone figure out that the best weapon to deal with those flying razors, besides the shotgun, was to grab them from the air with the grav gun and hurl them into the nearest wall. It made them easy to take care of and saved a s**t load of ammo. Just wondering. :smile:

Wich is why G-man looked out-dated too... :razz:

I find him now less mysterious and a lot more mysterious in some way...
He's really not at liberty to say more, let's hope he is in HL3...

I really don't have a lot of complaints about this game, except that I
encountered a bug that caused Alyx to spawn next to me in 1 or 2 Nova
Prospekt maps, or the sometimes oversized textures on some far away
buildings. And perhaps the abrupt twist at the end, although after
hearing the credits music I felt comfortable with it again. That music
so rocks! :biggrin:

New complaint: All the icons and the crosshair are replaced by letters!
The crowbar by C, the crossbow by G, the smg by a lambda etc. The
crosshair is also replaced by a Q. Anyone know how to fix this?

Did you happen to install any Half-Life or HL2 related fonts before installing HL2, or possibly after?

Living in a pretty small town in The Netherlands can be pretty crap
sometimes. Like.. now. Europe is always a bit behind when it comes to
releases, nothing wrong with that. But it usually takes about 7 weeks
before they actually sell it in my place. I can't buy it over steam
since I have no credit card. So I'm forced to wait.

I've heard that it's coming around the 26th so I'll look around when it's that time.

:sad:

My PC can't run HL2 (pretty much everything else as well), and my new
PC hasn't arrived yet. So my copy of HL2 (along with D3 et al) sits
here redundant whilst everyone else enjoys it :sad:

So my complaint is that they put the minimum specs too high. Way too high. It SHOULD run on 7 year old boxes. SHOULD.

Recently I got to listen to one of my friends complain about how bulls**t it is HL2 requires a 3d card...

Hahaha. I can't imagine the horrors of "SOFTWARE MODE" on HL2, not that it's feasibly possible.

I think it's bs that you need a processor better than a half gig PIII.
Utter travesty, how dare Valve treat their customers in such a way.

Oh shut up Gwil, you're going to have some kind of 64bit monster that makes us all look cheap in a few days

Complaint: That bit with the player first driving the buggy is absolute... ass. I mean, I know Gordon has bad luck and all, but does the crane really have to lose its magnetic pull at that moment!?

That wasn't the real problem -- my complaint was that it took me about half an hour to figure out how to flip the damn thing over :razz:

I've noticed some of the scripted sequences have a fixed amount of steps, instead of actually walking to the point they're suppose to perform the action.

Such as when you first get the Grav-Gun, in the lab before hand, Alyx's father (I don't know why I can't remember his name right this moment), got pushed out of the way by me, and started typing in mid air.

Another thing was during the grav-gun course, I dropped a box on Alyx and she disappeared. I found her at the beginning of the next section. And once the training was over DOG got stuck outside the airlock and magically appeared inside the airlock.

So, I think some of their timing is off. (I didn't try launching the ball over the cliff though.)

Jezpuh, perhaps you should get a ride to a bigger city nearby. HL2 is
already being sold in our country, though I haven't seen it in a lot of
shops. Might be because of it's 18+ rating.

I found the last two chapters a bit too easy for an end-game part. They
might've thrown in a few more hard puzzles or something interesting
with the combat. It felt too easy with that gun... although it was fun
and had a nice pace, I must admit. :smile:

The end part had a certain 'Jedi-esque' feel to it :razz: I suppose it was to make you feel like you're the all-powerful Gordon Freeman, an unstoppable killing machine with glasses. If you look at it like that, it's every nerds dream! So I think it did it's job :biggrin:

(I loved the rides in the metal coffin things btw) ^^

Did you happen to install any Half-Life or HL2 related fonts before installing HL2, or possibly after?

Nothing like that whatsoever. Installed straight from the box, and
that's how it's always been. Haven't modified or done anything to any
fonts. Any other suggestions?

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Crono</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I've noticed some of the scripted sequences have a fixed amount of steps, instead of actually walking to the point they're suppose to perform the action.

Such as when you first get the Grav-Gun, in the lab before hand, Alyx's father (I don't know why I can't remember his name right this moment), got pushed out of the way by me, and started typing in mid air.

Another thing was during the grav-gun course, I dropped a box on Alyx and she disappeared. I found her at the beginning of the next section. And once the training was over DOG got stuck outside the airlock and magically appeared inside the airlock.

So, I think some of their timing is off. (I didn't try launching the ball over the cliff though.) </DIV></DIV>

What's this? I can't hack apart the quote for length!? Bah!

Anyway -- I actually launched the ball over the cliff the first time I went through the chapter -- I, erm, did it by acident :biggrin:
First time I used the gravity gun, I dropped a paint can on my head :biggrin:

G.Ballblue said:
What's this? I can't hack apart the quote for length!? Bah!
Anyway -- I actually launched the ball over the cliff the first time I went through the chapter -- I, erm, did it by acident :biggrin:
First time I used the gravity gun, I dropped a paint can on my head :biggrin:

Okay ....

I was playing once more and aparently, HL2 didn't feel like lighting the maps properly anymore. Ravenholm is full bright. I can imagine having those cajin head crabs after me in the dark. Yikes. I've also been noticing some re-spawning for NPCs :\ something that wasn't in HL1.

Heh, first thing I did with the gravity gun was pick up a nearby sink, toss it directly
above me, and tried to catch it. I missed, and it hit me. I died
instantly.

There are some bugs associated with moveable objects. I found that sometimes whilst crawling over them, or trying to push through, I'd suddenly die. From 100-0 in a second. I don't know if anyone else experienced similar instant death bugs relating to physics objects, but it happened to me 3 or 4 times and was very annoying.

I had it happen a few times - Annoying when you haven't saved in quite a while :/

I found the G-man suprisingly poped out in a few places. When I was in my fan boat thingy he was on a dock above further down the stream. Just standing and starring, I went up jumped on the dock climbed the stairs and walked towards the door to brutaly get hit in the face with a barrel from a zombie. That was kinda wierd. Later on He was spoted above me in front of a overpass. Thats about all that stood out to me. The game was nice and all but the ending was not as i had though. I have no complaints though better than anyone i know could do.

I found the G-man suprisingly poped out in a few places. When I
was in my fan boat thingy he was on a dock above further down the
stream. Just standing and starring, I went up jumped on the dock
climbed the stairs and walked towards the door to brutaly get hit in
the face with a barrel from a zombie. That was kinda wierd. Later on He
was spoted above me in front of a overpass. Thats about all that stood
out to me. The game was nice and all but the ending was not as i had
though. I have no complaints though better than anyone i know could
do.

Yeah, he's supposed to be. :smile: It happened in the original if you didn't notice.