A Great Upset

Alright, when I played and completed the original Half-Life, and heard that Valve/Steam was launching a new version, an add-on, sequel, if you will, to their original masterpiece, I was like, wow, another great game to add t my collection, and boy was I ever disappointed.



Game play

Nothing special here, same as the original, except with a pointless story, and very dumb/useless AI, and not too mention the hackneyed use the same types of puzzles, and action sequences found in both games. Let me just say the first game much better game play, because it came before this very disappointing and, well awful game, and because it also didn't involve the use of repeated and trite dialogue sessions, which plagued this game throughout.



Graphics

At first I was amazed at the graphics of this game, but then only realized that they only slowed down the games playability, by making my average frame per second rate drop by about 75%, making the game unplayable at times, and even freeze when it was trying to load certain effects/objects. I guess if you have an Alien-Ware, you might actually be able to enjoy the graphics with a decent frame rate, but for the rest of us, you will have to settle on the lowest graphic settings as possible, just so you can actually suffer through the game itself.



Sound

One of the only parts of the game I actually didn't cringe at while playing the game. Not only did it have a well put together score, the sound effects were pretty realistic, and during the "action" sequences, played intense music to actually awaken you from your deep slumber, to alert you to some kind of "danger," because we all know the AI in this game was equivalent to a second grader at best.



Multi-player

AWFUL, I really don't understand why my friends enjoy playing this over Valve's other multi-player games. This game is just bad for multi-player, unless you use a god-like connection, your games will be "laggy" no matter how many people are in the game, and the fact that the guns are nowhere near balanced, it just makes acquiring kills near impossible, unless you spend all day playing/practicing, getting kills seems more like torture than fun.



Replay-ability

NONE, unless you enjoy the horrible multi-player option, or enjoy getting pissed off because your fellow "rebels" decide to blow themselves up in the middle of "combat," there really isn't anything to more to derive "enjoyment" from.



Overall

If Valve had put more time into making this game playable, I would understand why it got good ratings, but since this game in my opinion was utter garbage, I refuse to accept that this game is anywhere near as good as the original.

Rating: 4

Product Release: Half-Life 2 (US, 11/16/04)