GameBanshee Forums

I was wondering if anybody that had played HL2 through could say how long time they spend on it completing it. I hate short games, and will not think of purchasing this game yet (but wait for a sales bin) if I deem it to short

No spoilers about the game is to be given in this thread - other then time issue

I have never played it, but since it comes with Half Life: Source and Counterstrike: Source, I would say... 5 years?

I am not interested in CounterStrike.
I am interested in the single player part of Half Life 2.

Really depends on whether you've played the original Half-Life.

But I'm quite certain that there will be mods for Half-Life 2... many mods.

Just to finish it on the easy difficulty without dooing anything fancy took me at the very least 15 hours, searching for everything and playing a higher difficulty would increase that segnificantly because some parts of the game become rather difficult. I do spend a lot of time playing shooters though so that might affect how hard the game was for me to finish. Its nothing of RPG lenght proportions, but as far as shooters go i found it to be an enthralling experiance.

[QUOTE=Volk]Just to finish it on the easy difficulty without dooing anything fancy took me at the very least 15 hours, searching for everything and playing a higher difficulty would increase that segnificantly because some parts of the game become rather difficult. I do spend a lot of time playing shooters though so that might affect how hard the game was for me to finish. Its nothing of RPG lenght proportions, but as far as shooters go i found it to be an enthralling experiance.[/QUOTE]

Okay - thanks for the input

I rushed it on medium in 1 1/2 days, but now I'm going through it again on hard at a normal speed.

I've played for nearly 5 hours and im only in Ravenholm (chapter 4 i think) Medium difficulty. This game is awesome (although the loading times are really long if you got only 512mb RAM). There are 15 chapters i think so it means maybe 20 hours to finish...when you dont know the game.

Trust me when I say switch the diff up to Hard. You'll finish the game to fast and easy otherwise.

Bleeech!!

I just finished HL2(12/7) and I personally feel scammed...Oh! The Hype!!! I bought the game 11/28 and, in between work, I raced thru it...it's much shorter than the first and not as...hmmm...I need a word...GOOD as as the previous...not worth the the 55 beans I let loose...It looks great but, ah , I fell let down by it..I don't have an exact time as to when I completed it but , in my deranged opinion, its worth waitng for(i.e. bargin bin) Sad, 'cause I really enjoyed Half Life but I think I'll stick to the RPG's...

Switch the difficulty to hard and dont race through it, HL is NOT AND RPG do NOT exapect it to play like one, its labled an FPS for a reason, therefore it wont have as much gametime as an RPG, or the same kind of gameplay.

***SPOILERS****

*
*
*
*

I just finished the game and I must say I have mixed feelings. Most of the game was great (except for the annoying buggy-driving parts). Commanding the antlions felt like leading an army of Zerg, and the urban warfare parts were just brilliant, especially the last fight, with 2 striders and dozens of soldiers on either side, all slugging it out over a ruined city block. After that, the game goes downhill.

[RANT]

The whole Ultra-Freeman-With-Mega-Gravity-Gun thing kinda killed the game and the entire citadel area felt empty, unfinished (I guess they were going for that impresive, monumental look but failed). And the ending was one of the worst and most unsatisfying I have seen in the past couple of years. Heck, the cookie-cutter getting the girl and saving the world would have been better than this "to be continued" patchwork. Maybe the story is good, but then again maybe it isn't. It's kinda hard to tell since somebody forgot to tell it! The only actual connection to the original HL would be Barney, the logo and the crowbar. There is no explanation as to where Freeman spent these past few years, what exactly happened during that time, nothing at all. I expected a few things would be cleared up in the ending, but boy, was I wrong. I can suffer a few plot holes, they can even be enjoyable (letting your imagination loose is nice from time to time), but the storyline in HL2 has a hole as big as Death Valley.

[/RANT]

Sorry about that, I had to get it off my chest and I didn't want to start a new thread. Basically, an enjoyable game, excellent action sequences, pretty long for a shooter (15-20 hours), with a bad ending and a poorly told storyline....

[QUOTE=Jandau]<snip>
Sorry about that, I had to get it off my chest and I didn't want to start a new thread. Basically, an enjoyable game, excellent action sequences, pretty long for a shooter (15-20 hours), with a bad ending and a poorly told storyline....[/QUOTE]

Sounds pretty much as a standard FPS then - just with better then average graphics.

The following post comes from the perspective of one who has not yet, to his shame, completed Half-Life 2....it is also horribly irrelevant to the topic of this thread...

[QUOTE=Jandau]poorly told storyline[/QUOTE]

I couldn't disagree more Jandau! Even if it is granted that the storyline is weak (which I don't believe) it is still an expertly crafted presentation. There are no other screens in the entire game, except for the first-person view from the perspective of Gordon Freeman. Additionally, there is virtually no plot presented through text. This means that every event is directly experienced by you, the player. If there is a street fight between the combine and resistance, you don't read about it or hear about it from an npc, you experience it. For me at least, this draws me into the game and the story. In my experience, when it comes to computer or video games, a well-told simple story is more enjoyable than a poorly-told complex story.

[QUOTE=Floyd_theBarber]I couldn't disagree more Jandau! Even if it is granted that the storyline is weak (which I don't believe) it is still an expertly crafted presentation. There are no other screens in the entire game, except for the first-person view from the perspective of Gordon Freeman. Additionally, there is virtually no plot presented through text. This means that every event is directly experienced by you, the player. If there is a street fight between the combine and resistance, you don't read about it or hear about it from an npc, you experience it. For me at least, this draws me into the game and the story. In my experience, when it comes to computer or video games, a well-told simple story is more enjoyable than a poorly-told complex story.[/QUOTE]

Reading about fights in an FPS would be... wrong. But these battles, no matter how well executed (and well executed they are, no doubt there) don't make for much of a storyline. Throughout the game I felt like I was being rushed somewhere and everybody simply forgot to tell me exactly what's going on. In my mind I constantly saw Freeman's face wrapped in a confused expression, his mouth half open, trying to ask ANYONE (including the headcrabs) what the hell is happening. You recieve occasional scraps of info, but these are terribly fragmentary and often easily missed. After finishing the game I read the story somewhere (pieced together from the scraps found throughout the game) and it is actually not bad, quite good for an FPS, and it's a crying shame they didn't include it in the game. Hell, one sequence in the game engine at the start of the game would have sufficed (or an intro). Or an exposition somewhere along the way. But no, you just wake up, with the G-Man spouting some random nonsense and the next thing you know, you're in a train. The question of how you got there shall be skipped, as well as the question of where you're supposed to be going.

The game tries desperately to be mysterious and to hook the player's curiosity, but IMO it comes off as simply annoying in that regard. This is simply my opinion and I don't deny that someone can enjoy a story (not) told like this. I just like to know what's going on

[QUOTE=Xandax]Sounds pretty much as a standard FPS then - just with better then average graphics.[/QUOTE]

Actually, it's a great FPS with better than average graphics

The storyline sucks from the perspective of a player, but in the end it takes Valve a LOT less time to make an expansion for the game and get even more money out of their fans.

The story dose NOT suck, its simply designed to allow an expansion for the game to be designed in a fraction of the time it took to deisgn the game.

[QUOTE=Xandax]I was wondering if anybody that had played HL2 through could say how long time they spend on it completing it. I hate short games, and will not think of purchasing this game yet (but wait for a sales bin) if I deem it to short

No spoilers about the game is to be given in this thread - other then time issue [/QUOTE]

I assume you're talking about the single player campaign....im still in the middle of it, but id say ive put in a good 6 hours or so already and im pretty far. theres tons to do in the game, so its kind of up to you as to how long you want it to be. i mean....just look at the prima guide in the store.....its like a text book.

[QUOTE=Volk]The storyline sucks from the perspective of a player, but in the end it takes Valve a LOT less time to make an expansion for the game and get even more money out of their fans.[/QUOTE]

You have to pay attention to the little things in the game and it becomes interesting. You should see all the obervations and theories on proper Half-life 2 boards.