LogFAQs > #911109291

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I dug deeper and harder I'd find way more smaller examples. Anyway, the main thing that sets HL2 apart from other games is that it never actually weakens the player. So many games take away abilities or equipment or impose some form of debuff on the player, but HL2 lets you keep everything (Aside from the final section, which flips this philosophy on it's head in the most brilliant manner by stripping you of all your weapons only to make you absurdly OP). The challenge comes from the player learning to adapt to these situations, rather than being forced to play the game in a different way. It's incredible stuff for how basic the gameplay actually is. How fitting that this is all accomplished in a classic tale of rebellion against a brute alien force.

Then you have the story and aesthetic, which also serve to set the game apart. In HL2, you don't just scurry through grey hallways and battlefields, you have a massive waterway to open things up, followed by a razed city filled with zombies, then you hop onto this wide-open highway with little waypoints scattered about, then a BEACH, then into an abandoned prison, then youre back in the city you started in, but now you have all these gunz, and then you're in some giant evil villain palace and then you think, "Why does this have to be over?" Every part of this game is memorable. No location bleeds into the other because they each feel totally different, not only visually, but mechanically as well. As I said in my bulleted list, the levels explore their own concepts while managing to dip back into the primary philosophy when all is said and done. There's always some new gameplay element being pushed onto the player, and it's always so simple to pick up and satisfying to use. So many games keep throwing complex ideas at you, and you wonder if you're using all of your tools properly, and sometimes the segment will even end before fully realizing the potential of such concepts, but HL2 doesn't try to amaze you with it's ideas. It just wants you to have fun in the easiest manner possible. It's not an easy game at all, at least for me, but the player can literally save at any moment, allowing one to create their own checkpoints. It doesn't want any battle to feel unwinnable to even the weakest of players, because it knows what it is, and it knows it's a god damn blast.

I just love Half-Life 2 so much. So many of my other favorite games have pretty chunky flaws. The Wind Waker is made for 4-year-olds. Metroid Prime has the artifact hunt and Impact Crater as it's last hurrah. Dark Souls has a number of dumb, dated mechanics. Dark Cloud has existence. I legitimately cannot think of anything I would consider to be a major problem in HL2. Everything about the design is fine-tuned to cut as much bullshit out of the experience as possible. Maybe it has a few minor problems here and there, but it all gets swallowed by the sheer amount of quality it oozes from every fiber of it's being. Half-Life 2 is a fucking masterpiece, and if I had to state something dumb like what the objective best game ever is, it would be Half-Life 2. It's that fucking good. It's more than that fucking good. It deserves to be on the Switch.

I've never played it on PC tho.
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