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Games Inbox: Is Half-Life 2 a bad game nowadays?


Half-Life 2 artwork of Gordon Freeman and Alyx

Half-Life 2 – everything ages (Valve)

The Tuesday letters page tries to predict The Game Awards winners, as one reader looks forward to all of the Nintendo Switch 2’s third party support.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The half-life of Half-Life
I was one of those thousands of people playing Half-Life 2 over the weekend. It was the first time I’d played it since it first came out and… can I be sacrilegious and say I didn’t really enjoy it all that much? It was very clever, and surprisingly modern in many ways, but it also felt very badly paced and kind of… boring.

Everything seemed to go on for too long, from the open world vehicle bits to the Ravenholm section, the headcrabs bits, the stuff on the bridge and in the facility with the human opponents. Everything just stuck around for so long. Even the antlion section, which I remember as being amazing at the time seemed very repetitive and overly long.

I also found it to be kind of a bad shooter. The gunplay isn’t very good and the AI for the enemies isn’t great. To be honest, I found all the dystopian stuff at the beginning, in the city, the most interesting and a lot of the action the worst bit.

Not a snub on the game but the number of games which can stay fun for 20 years is very small. If you’re not Tetris or Super Mario Bros. I don’t think you’ve got a half-life (do you see?) of more than a decade. But that’s fine, just one more reason to make Half-Life 3.
Tacle

Late night reveal
Even as a great fan of Elden Ring I’m not sure I agree with making Shadow Of The Erdtree eligible for Game of the Year at The Game Awards. I don’t think it’ll win, but I feel it would be kind of silly if it did. My bet for the winner is Astro Bot. I feel that has more momentum and it’s more recent than Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, so fresher in people’s minds and has had less time for people to pick it apart.

Personally, I think Rebirth is the better game, but a lot of people have complained about the open world being bloated and I think all those months of complaints are going to count against it. It is what it is though, and I’d be happy for any of the three to win really (I haven’t played the other nominees).

Not that I’m staying up to watch it or anything. It always seems silly to me that it’s on so late. I know it’s for America’s sake but there has to be a better compromise than 3am in the morning.
Mogul

A month of Fridays
I think we may be looking at a good Black Friday this year. We’ve had a cheap PS5 Pro, just weeks after it came out; some decent Switch bundles; and now Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is cheap from …read more

Source:: Metro

      

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