Half-Life was the same. The game doesn’t spoon feed you a narrative, the same way real life doesn’t have a narrator (at least one outside of your head).

You need to pay attention to your surroundings, listen in to NPCs talking, read posters on the wall, etc to piece together the story.

It was and is one of the cooler ways to do storytelling in my opinion. Cutscenes etc are fine but for a first person game, I love the immersion of the story happening around you rather then being loredumped on you while your agency is taken away from you.

Idk, of all the ways you could criticize Ubisoft, dragging this random guy just because he didn't care too much for HL2 (and then took the time to write down his thoughts instead just going "game bad 👎") feels silly.

I have to agree with him, honestly. HL2 was novel for its time, but if you're playing it for the first time in 2026 then yeah, it really doesn't hold up to modern game experiences. I also dislike games that end ambiguously or on cliffhangers, and the lack of closure provided from sequel-bait endings like HL2's can be annoying to people who just want to play a complete story. I want to see it through to the end and get the feeling that my actions had any sort of consequence to the world, and HL2 really doesn't provide that.

And narratively, the fact that Gordon is a silent protagonist really doesn't make the player feel like they're a real part of that world, and rather they're just going along for an on-rails carnival ride. The player has no real agency to affect anything that isn't a part of the singular route offered by the game. This would be okay if it was a role-playing game, and the player is intended to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, but HL2 is a wholly linear game where characters just bark commands at you from start to finish.

Honestly, for being a negative review, I think he was very fair about it. It's an important part of gaming history, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great experience for modern players.

Not to play the devils advocate but they do have an argument. Not in the physics point because physics haven't been done to death so that part of Half-life 2 IMO is still fresh. But the rest of Half-life 2 can be dull and boring and nonsensical if played today. Half-life 2 was such a cultural shift that everything great about it has been dissected, analyzed and improved upon wherever possible.

Much like Half-life 1 the things that made the game great are industry standard now. You're used to the greatness so all you see are the flaws. The boat section is too long, the car section is poorly paced, the story is too cryptic, the list probably goes on. But anyone who played it at launch knows how fucking sick the game is because there was nothing else like it.

is the time shown on steam reviews accurate? cause i'd guess that it takes more than 12 minutes for a casual player to finish half-life 2

in fact i checked and the world record in speedrunning is around 36 minutes lol

The bridge crossing level and using the crossbow to crucify combine soldiers were about the best parts of the game as I remember it.

Reading the comments aged me more than anything

Okay but like, Half Life 2 is similar to Citizen Kane.

A revolutionary piece of media for its time that brought the medium as a whole forward.

And kind of a slog to get through now because we learned a lot of lessons about the medium since then.

Like I'm sorry, but you're not going to convince me that the strider fights on your way to the citadel were actually good and definitely not a painful chapter that soured a lot of people ln the game. And Water Hazard is infamous for being very uninteresting to the point that people that play half life now joke about it.

Yeah gameplay wise the game basically leaned a lot on novelty. But they are wrong to say that it lacks world building and lore because it’s scant on narrative. That’s like saying “the Quiet Place lacks world building because there is barely any narrative”. The game is excellent in using game mechanics to tell a story. Instead of relying on the storytelling mechanics of film.

I expected a really bad take, but this is not it. HL2 has strength, but the story is not it. It's okay, but I want you to remember that the ending of HL2 is just not good - neither to 'boss fight' nor the deus ex machina ending.

Even the gameplay gets boring when you have the "op" gravity gun.

I prefer HL1 to HL2. The physics riddles are not hard either and I think Stratholm is only "horror" for people with no xp in Survival Horror games.

I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.

Bro spent hours playing HL 2 and then had to turn on godmode? Does he only have 1 hand or something? What happened?

As someone who hates open-world ubisoft style games, I'm personally not much of a fan of HL2 either. I tried it multiple times at different points in my life and each time found it to feel like a slog that I end up giving up on a few hours in.

I enjoyed the 1984 aspects of the world at first, but I ultimately can't get past how bullet spongy enemies are. Virtually every weapon feels extremely impotent except the revolver, which has very limited ammo. I began to dread every encounter with enemies because it rarely felt fun to fight them.

On my last playthrough I cheated and gave myself infinite revolver ammo, which helped me get farther than before, but even then I was struggling to push onward after a certain point, just because it felt like endless waves of enemies being thrown at me with some mildly enjoyable physics puzzles tossed in between them.

Never felt a connection with any of the characters, and without that the gameplay itself just becomes repetitive to me, I stop having fun, and stop.

I have yet to play half life 2 (waiting on my son to get the motivation to help me beat decay, I’ve beat the other expansions)

But I can’t imagine that half life 2 doesn’t hold up when the first game is a masterpiece that holds up better than pretty much any FPS released after it

truly dull sections - yes I'm looking at you the vehicle sections ... makes playing through HL2 a slog. Just a few hours in, I didn't want to play any more. I was done.

Totally agree with this. HL1 is one of my favorite games ever but HL2 was just boring. I tried it a few times and never finished. Opposing Force and Blue Shift are my Half Life 2 and Half Life 3.

Tbh, that's just the difference between someone who has nostalgia for a game and someone who doesn't.

I played Pokemon Red as a kid. I replayed it dozens of times since and it's always really fun. Just feels good.

I didn't play Pokemon Gold as a kid. I tried to play it quite a few times and never got throught it. Objectively, Gold is a much better game than Red in every regard. But I don't have nostalgia for it, so it's just an old game with bad UX, outdated gameplay and weak graphics to me. Can't get through it without getting bored and quitting.

HL2 was revolutionary, 22 years ago. Nowadays it's just woefully outdated in every respect including gameplay.

As OOP says e.g. about physics: That stuff was amazing in 2004, but it really isn't in 2026. Almost every shooter includes physics and in many cases better physics than HL2 did. In part because game designers have learned from HL2 and other games and improved upon it.

If you have nostalgia for HL2 because you played it as a kid, it's still going to be amazing to play. If you don't, then it won't.

I played this game twice, and tried to get to the end twice, and in both times I just WALKED AWAY. The original was actually playable and beatable in comparison.

One moment it's a shooter, then it becomes a driving game, then it becomes one of the earliest walking sims with long stretches of nothing, then a horror game, then a tactical shooter, and it wasn't good at any of them - it was all just cobbled together. Valve would have had a much better game if they sold just Ravenholm, the only part that actually evoked strong feelings in me.

And by this point in time I can't help but think the funny letter G guy is just a Mary Sue to glue the game together with very little character or substance besides "man in black".

I firmly believe the only reason this game is "beloved" is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them. (And also because of this game every fucking company that breathes has an online DRM launcher)

Fear by Monolith and its expansions on the other hand, they were so much better despite the aiming system being unintuitive in comparison to HL the 2. Everything just clicks. I just loved Fear. But I'm sure this won't save me from "Ubisoft target audience" allegations.