Half-Life 2 is a pretty decent game and I do recommend it, but I'm not here suck its d*ck. Even though it IS good, it's still fairly overrated and does have quite a few problems. This is not the best, most perfect game to ever be created in the history of anything ever like a lot of people seem to think. Everyone has already talked about what makes this game so good, so if you wanna hear about that just go to pretty much any other review of it. I'm rather going to do something different with this one list some flaws.


- First of all, Half-Life 2 tries to be a lot of genres in the same game (by basically trying to make each chapter have its own gimmick), but not all of them succeed. Some chapters, like Water Hazard and Highway 17, just drag on for far too long and end up feeling like filler, not to mention that the airboat/buggy controls aren't really that great.

- The AI seems like a real stepback from Half-Life 1. Fighting the Combine soldiers definitely doesn't feel as fun as fighting the HECU Marines. Watch [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsDM7GKb0xU]this[/url] video to have a better understanding of what I mean. They just kinda run at you in a straight line, one by one, with no self-preservation in mind, and it just feels boring sometimes. Also, the f*cking resistance members. They tend to be real dumbasses who most of the time don't last a minute during battles and just die by the dozens, and before that happens they're still annoying and block the player's movement a lot because they clinge to Gordon way too much and just keep getting in doorways and it's usually a real hassle to make them make way.

focuses too much on showing off its physics, feels like a giant tech demo

- The weapons aren't as interesting as in the first game, they feel somewhat boring and generic. Where are the satchel charges and the tripmines? I also really miss the alien stuff like the Hivehand and the Snarks and the experimental sci-fi weapons like the Tau Cannon and the Gluon Gun.

- Sucks how you can't shoot friendly NPCs anymore. That really added to the immersion and to the moral ambiguity in the first game, but now you're just hailed as a messiah who can do no wrong and if you try to shoot anyone your bullets just go right through and they completely ignore it.

- The crosshair is really bad. It's just five white pixel dots which are impossible to see on bright backgrounds. This may seem like a petty complaint, but I'm sure you can see how this could be very annoying and screw you over from time to time.

- The whole "auxiliary power" mechanic is pretty stupid. Why would the sprint function, the flashlight and the oxygen supply use the same thing? It's just annoying.

combat doesn't feel all that good or impactful, where's the gore?, the ragdolls just fall to the ground in a very unsatisfying way, the weapons kinda lack punch and the enemies don't really react to getting shot

speaking of bad combat, fighting the striders is not fun at all and it's just a pain in the ass (or, talk about: difficulty is somewhat inconsistent. i found the game to be ridiculously easy for the most part, but then at the final chapters during the battles at city 17 against the combine and the striders it just becomes b*llshît hard)

- The game is fairly easy when it comes to the fact that doing horrible during a gunfight and losing a lot of health doesn't really have a lot of consequences. Those little supply crates that are everywhere are programmed to always give the player exactly what he needs, and even if you take those out of the question there's still plenty of health around to get you going. This contrasts a lot with the way Half-Life 1 worked, where health packs and suit chargers were fairly uncommon to find, which meant that screwing up heavily and letting yourself lose a lot of health would actually have fairly big consequences. This is just not the case in Half-Life 2.

waaay too many cutscenes. the way the story flows in HL2 just doesnt work very well with a silent protagonist like gordon, since it feels very weird to just be standing there during the many cutscenes the game has while the characters dump exposition and you say absolutely nothing. black mesa east is a perfect example of this, and it can really kill the replayability of the game. i'm not suggesting they should make gordon speak for the next game, good heavens no, but rather that they should put less of an emphasys on standing in one place while npcs dump the narrative on you and focus more on gameplay and game flow and deliver the story through different means.

- The graphics haven't aged incredibly well and some places can definitely look pretty bland due to poor, blocky lighting and low res textures. I'd recommend playing the game through the "Half-Life 2: Update" mod for anyone who hasn't played it yet since it does help to alleviate the issue, but it still doesn't fix it entirely.

- Dated graphics aside, I just found the setting to be a little bit blander overall compared to the first game. I much preferred to fight my way through the Black Mesa Facility compared to the places in HL2. City 17, Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt and the Citadel are pretty good, but everything else is kinda eh. (or: kind of uninspired)

- The game has a smaller number of enemies compared to the first. Where are the Bullsquids, the Houndeyes and the Icthyosaurs?