Below are user reviews of Half-Life 2 and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Half-Life 2.
Column height indicates the number of reviews with a score within the range shown at the bottom of the column.
Higher scores (columns further towards the right) are better.
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User Reviews (231 - 241 of 513)
Show these reviews first:
Doesnt meet with all the hype.
3
Rating: 3,
Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User
Ive heard so many people say "oh, HL2 is hands down the best game ever." give me a break. I had more fun with other Valve products like Sin Episodes: Emergence.
I guess my biggest gripe was the game itself, instead of the installation problems. I mean, it had awesome graphics, cool weapons, but the important things weren't there. First off, the story was kind of bland. The ending wasn't all that great either. I guess the ending sucked because it was leaving it open for the following 2 episodes of HL2. Anyway, the story wasn't all that in depth. It was alright, but not as great as other games, like Sin, Halo, or Far Cry.
The game play was alright. You spend quite a bit traveling in the stupid airboat and car. Both of which, are a pain in the a$$ to control and you always have several people shooting at you or a gunship on your butt. I spent much of the time on these levels saving and reloading just to progress. I really wished they didn't have these levels. The car wasn't fun at all. It never wanted to go where you were turning the wheels and you always had a dozen antlions chewing your head off or something throwing you off the cliff. If they did without the vehicle levels, it would have been so much better.
A lot of the weapons were good, but there were a couple that were just crap. Mainly, the grenade and the rocketlauncher. Neither one were all that great unless you hit the enemy directly with either one. Got a room full of enemies? dont bother with a grenade. You may get half of them if youre lucky and they manage to congregate on the grenade. Other than that, its just easier to shoot them up with a rifle or something.
Good game i guess, if you like having your a$$ handed to you all the time. After a while it just gets tedious. Shoot, jump, shoot, save, get hurt, shoot, die, reload. Thats how it was for me the whole time i was playing. Either that you had some enemy, that you never seen before, that somehow managed to sneak up behind you and waste you away. I only struggled through this to see what the ending was like, and that was about it. Granted, the graphics were great, the engine was great, but these annoyances can really kill a game. There are several other games out there worth playing more than this one. Sin Episodes, Far Cry, Halo, any of these would be better. Dont get me wrong, i play several games, but this one definitely didn't live up to all the hype i kept hearing. If it wasn't for the graphics and engine, i would have given it only 1 star.
Doom 3 and Half-Life 2
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 4 / 11
Date: August 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User
Doom 3 and Half-life 2 are not comparible because they are two totally different games. First of all, doom 3 is meant to be fun and intense, not have the deepest storyline. Just look at doom 1 and 2, did they really look story focused? Doom 3 is a single player focused Blast The Living Sh** out of Demons From Hell kind of game.
Half-Life 2 is a story/action based shooter where the real pull is the multiplayer. Half-life is the slower paced of the two but also had a better story, Doom was fast paced and had great action but almost no story. SO END THE ARGUEMENTS!!!
Half-Life 2 will revolutionize the PC gaming.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 9 / 36
Date: July 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User
If you have been to E3 of 2003, you will probably think this game is the best thing ever, but the truth is, a lot of events in the tech demo shown in E3 are entirely scripted, so the game is probably not going to be 100% as good as in E3...
maybe only %60, I would say...
But is that %60 enough to make Half-Life 2 the best pc game ever released so far? Oh--yeah! Definitely!
Half-Life 2 emphasize greatly on physics, realistic physics, but that doesn't mean this game is played like Counter-Strike (CS some people prefer to call). It doesn't kill you with a head-shot or two mere shots from a pistol; the realisim of Half-Life 2 is not at its difficulty, but the interaction with the enviroment.
Imagine a game world that let you do a variety of things to counter your enemies, open the doors and unlock the triggers with almost unlimited solutions, instead of just have a gun in front and kill things that moves. This is what Half-Life 2 will offer! Every single objects are useable and the terrain can be deformed, and things behave the way they should! (Metal, wood, water...)
The game does require a very high-end machine to play, though, in order to see the absolutely realistice graphical presentation, but the game is very scalable and can be played on low-end machines as well. This game is the most anticipated game of 2003, and you will not be disappointed!
HURRY UP SIERRA!
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 21 / 110
Date: February 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User
I'm getting tired of the promises. Sierra has pushed back the date SOOOOO many times that it is getting rediculous. A while ago I was really looking forward to this game, but now all I feel is irritation with Sierra... MY GOD MAN, GET YOUR STUFF TOGETHER AND RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY!!!!
Perfect.....oh no here comes STEAM...HORRIBLE
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 3 / 7
Date: November 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User
This could be a Terrific game,if there was no STEAM activation WDF..there
are many companies that invest millions in software and they don't get
you through Damn Sh... activation thing.PERIOD.
Worth the Wait
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 7
Date: August 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User
First and foremost, I'm sick of people writing about how powerful their computers are and they are having the hardest of time trying to play the game. Listen, I have a GeForce FX/MX graphics card, very ancient yes, all I did to play Half-Life 2 is download a updated driver for my graphics card, I have a lousy 20G hard drive, and yes, I deleted Freelancer and MS Money to make some room for it. My motherboard, a MSI KM4M-V Via Socket A ATX Motherboard and AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Processor
,didnt even sound intimidating right? I have a 512mb memory, a dull 1.2 ghz and guess what? I turned every visual to minimum detail, turned sounds to the lowest detail and wala! The game works great. As far as Steam, I only use it to play CS 1.6 online, I dont play the Source part. I have no problems with installation, or needing to have internet connection to play single-player. This game is awesome, I'm not saying its perfect but the story line is good, gameplay is great, graphics even when everthing turned to the lowest is wonderful. I do get a occational 1 second freeze but it doesnt happen all the time and not during intense fire fight. I was intimidated to buy Half-Life 2 because almost everyone reviewing the game is complaining about their computer specs, well, believe it or not, my specs are 2 year old technology. Plus, I got the game for only 10 bucks in a military base. I recommend this to anyone who is into, FPS or Sci-Fi or just a good long game to kill time.
THE GREATEST GAME EVER. PERIOD.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 7
Date: November 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User
By now you don't need much in the way of basics, story, graphics, etc.
Like some others, I had some initial issues with Steam. Steam is the software system that Valve uses to authenticate the game and prevent piracy. Once that minor snafu was resolved, I started playing. The plot, graphics and voice acting meld together to create an immersive, compelling story worthy of any Hollywood movie I have seen all year. If you love Sci-Fi, this game is for you.
I have played every major shooter in the last 5 years and this game is on level of its own. The graphics, physics and gameplay are simply stunning. It took 6 years and it was well worth it. I wrote off the early reviews as hype when they consistently called this the greatest game ever written for the PC. Now that I have played, I know what they meant.
I think it's unfair to rate a game that you have never played. Steam may have it's issues, but it's immaterial once when the game is running. I highly, highly recommend this game.
Hold your horses
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 16 / 79
Date: October 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User
To all the people who are complaining about the release date errors for half life 2, you need to understand that it is totally Valve/Vivendi's fault and has nothing to do with Amazon.
After some of the HL2 source code was nabbed from valve's systems last year, there have been both technical set backs and legal set backs between Valve and Vivendi. However there have been so many murmurs within the company recently, that it seems highly likely that HL2 will be available before Christmas, and while no official release date has been set, Nov 14 2004 is probably a good, but perhaps slightly optimistic guess.
Just get Valve's Steam software and buy the games steam release online, that means that your computer will download all the source files for the game now, and when HL2 hits the shelves your copy will be activated straight away, allowing you to play it the minute it is commercially released.
The wait is almost over....
Freakin Sweet
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 5 / 16
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User
First off I would like to say...all of you who say it takes a year to download the game...grow up and get into the game....no gamers use dial up anymore I for one am running on Comcast and the game has never run more smoothly...now my computer is low
under todays standards....Dell Dimension 2300 Windows XP Intel Celeron 1.7 ghz 80 gb hard drive and 512 MB ran with a Geforce
FX5500 256 mb card....however I sped right thru everything and
got to the game. I was playing in a matter of 2 hours...(thats
with me picking up a headset wit microphone)Everyone complaining bec they hav dialup. Get a clue. All gamers should
seriously consider cable,DSL, or T1
What a frickin pain in the neck...
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 5 / 16
Date: February 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User
First, Steam. Steam is probably the most annoying piece of software available on the market today, second only to Windows itself. You need to be online to play the single player game.
Next, I ordered Half-Life 2 from Amazon. Disk three had a minute scratch on it that prevented the game from being installed.
After my physical pain subsided, I decided, "take it to EB and trade it in". No dice--This game is not allowed to be traded in because of the coding on it. This game cannot be installed on more than one computer, and if you reformat your hard drive, then you are out of luck and HAVE TO BUY A COMPLETELY NEW COPY OF THE PROGRAM.
Bottom line, I would probably do better playing Yahoo! solitaire, and it's FREE.
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