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Wednesday 5 March, 2008
GAMELOG #5
ENTRY # 2
GAMEPLAY
After roughly an hour and a half more of gameplay, the action has finally started to pick up. I am, more or less getting to shoot things on a regular basis now. However, I still feel like the game is lacking that certain magic that makes a good game great.
But before I get to that, I’d like to to just say that I really hate the sound in the game. In a game they is story driven and about character just as much as it is about shooting, you would think that they would have the option to just turn up the volume of character’s voices without turning up all the sound effects. But for whatever reason this feature is lacking. So I have the option of not hearing anything anyone is saying during a fire fight, turning my TV up and angering my neighbors because the have to heard gun shots blasting, keep the remote close by so I can rapidly turn the TV volume up or down, or turn on subtitles. All those option suck and really take you out of the gaming experiment this game offers. It wouldn’t even be so bad if this little problem only affect narrative comprehension, but more often then not other character give you hints or objectives during battles (stuff like “fix the elevator!” or “enemies coming from this tunnel!”, you know really important stuff you would like to hear about) and it can cause a great deal of frustration (and sometimes death) to miss these audio queues.
And now back to that lacking magic…At this point I honestly feel like playing this game is more of chore than a rewarding experience. I think that it is a combination between the “same-old-same-old” levels, the disconnection from battles when you have AI controlled team mates, and the lack of consistent rewards for playing.
I generally don’t feel exciting or, in same rare instances, interested while exploring new areas because they are all starting to look alike. A dank and dark cave/underground rail rod/subway is about all you get. In fairness I think that I am about to finally get some outdoors action, but I can only comment on what I have played so far. And so far I have become pretty bored with the repetitive nature of the level themes and atmosphere in the game thus far.
The AI controlled team mates offer another layer of interaction and gameplay options, but they also limit and in same cases exclude you in battle. The prime example of this occurs when ever there is an epic battle and you have an AI controlled team mate. They are pretty much invincible and take no damage. They also have what I can only guess is an unlimited supply of ammo. So not only can they pretty much handle the entire epic battle by themselves, but in some cases they box you out from participating at all because they are crack shoots as well. This has actually been an issue with FPS a lot lately (at least for me), where it is easier to just let teammates do the fighting since you probably won’t do as well and it waste your own ammo.
Lastly, and this is probably why it feels like a chore at this point, I feel rather unrewarded for my efforts thus far. I have gotten one little nugget of honest-to-goodness narrative development (within context to the series and not just plot development for this game) and that is pretty much it. No power-ups, no super powerful weapons, no stunning moments of disbelieve or epic battles (that my teammates didn’t steal from me). I don’t even get that much satisfaction from shooting things with heavy weapons (like shoot guns) because most of the enemies react as if I had just hit them with a spit ball until I unload two or more shoots into them. Then they just fall over in a most unsatisfying fashion.
DIESNG:
Half Life 2: Episode 2 is an amazingly designed game on pretty much ever level. However, as I have expressed above, great design doesn’t automatically mean it is a great game.
Despite my issues with the audio design, it is still pretty impressive (it would be almost perfect if I could hear what the hell everyone was saying). I honestly can’t tell if there is much music in the game (I could but I would have to turn it back on and check), if there is it blends in almost seamlessly with the background. In addition every sound effect, whether it be a zombie charging you or the sound of a bug being squished under your feet, is spot on. The sound always sets the perfect mood and is almost as much of a character as any other “actor” in this game.
Repetitive tone aside, the level design is also quite well done. I have never felt completely lost or disoriented while playing the game. Even though there is rarely any clear marker for the direction that you should be going in, you as a gamer always “know” which is the right way. The down side to this is that the level feel very linear, even though they are far less so than other FPS on the market today. They are open and there is a good variety to them, but you cannot help but shake the feeling that you are on a track and that leads to feeling contained and restricted on the part of the player.
The way that the narrative is presented and advanced is also very well done from a design point of view (though you can tell from my previous entry that I am not always a fan of it). Rarely is the story ever advanced with a non-interactive cut-scene. Instead, other characters talk to you and each other to advance the story in real time via pretty scripted events. All of which are usually very well (voice) acted and staged for maximum dramatic effect. This aspect more than any of the other design choices in the game really brings the world they developers have created to life.
Other nice design touches include the way that hints and objectives are given to you. It is always a good design choice to have as little HUD clutter, pop up box hints/objectives, and anything else that might remind you that you are playing a game on a screen as possible. Especially in a game that is striving to be intense and suspenseful such as this one. In the sense it is great that all of this information is delivered to you, by in game characters, in real time…if only I could hear them. Also worth taking note of is the pacing of the game. It is generally pretty spot on which action slowly escalating towards the climax, then slowly settling down again before hitting bottom. There are of course the occasional issues here and there, but they are rare at best.
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