October 19, 2007

I was having a great time with it, and then, in today’s final play session, it filled me with anger.

I think I must be missing something in Half Life 2. Seriously. Because every time I complain about things that bother me in the game, someone tells me I’m completely fucking insane. And I just really don’t get it. I really don’t get how my complaints aren’t valid. What I’m talking about certainly ruined sections of the game for me as I yelled in frustration. Bleh.
(Note, I talk about the end of Ep 2 here, so there’s probably spoilers)
Anyway, I finished Half Life 2 Ep. 2 a moment ago. It was better, overall, than Ep. 1, very much so. I only got seriously frustrated at the end sequence, which, sort of ironically, was when the game tried to do something different… I appreciated the change in pace. I did not appreciate having to kill 2 Hunters around every Strider while giving me no ammo to do so. If I tried to not kill them, then I couldn’t throw the stupid bomb because they’d shoot it out of my hands. It was maddening. I ran out of everything but pistol ammo over and over, and it got to the point where if I missed with the first bomb, I’d just die and try again, as opposed to attempting another go. And then I turned it down to easy, and it affected almost nothing of what I was being frustrated by (which is why I never did it in episode 1 when Brer suggested it… Easy doesn’t change the environment, it just gives your guns more punch and you more life, and it was the environment that was making me angry) I ended up with barely enough ammo until the very end, so I guess it helped, but it still drove me mad every time I’d hit the striders and then the fucking sticky bomb would SLIDE OFF while I’m trying to pull out my pistol. Fuck.
The ending was completely idiotic as well. “Well, we best kill off a character.” Well, then do it while they’re doing something interesting instead of having a guy pop in a window and kill him. That’s just stupid. The battle had been over for a long while, and then, magically, these two things appear, break a window but nothing actually important in the room, and kill the guy. That is just a waste of killing a character. Completely. Yes, to make you really FEEL a character’s death, it shouldn’t be drawn out, it should just come out of nowhere… but making it come out of nowhere in a situation where there IS NO DANGER is retarded. The fact that these enemies just fly away afterward makes it even more random. Sure, you can start a battle with this random death, why not? But there is no battle. They just go “Oh, we killed one guy, see you later!” Bleh.

Anyway, that’s what I think of HL2 Ep.2, but apparently I’m insane and don’t know how to play video games, so you’ll probably adore it. I think Half Life does SO MANY things right that it makes me mad when it does things I perceive as wrong, more so than if some shitty game did it.

While I’m reviewing, I also beat Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
It’s Zelda. It’s very by the formula. It does a couple really neat things with the grappling hook, but otherwise it’s pretty well just as you expected. I’m satisfied, but more creativity like with the hook, and maybe two more dungeons with the new sword you get at the end of the game while giving this sword a power… that would have been appreciated as well. But if you like Zelda and you have a DS, there’s absolutely no reason not to pick this up… well, unless you’re under Zelda fatigue… like you just beat Twilight Princess or something. Then don’t.

Finally, Megaman ZX, you would be so amazingly perfect if you JUST HAD A FUCKING MAP! Every DS game has a map on the second screen! HAVE A MAP! HAVE! A! MAP! It’s still pretty good Metroidvania action, though… After dying on the first easy tutorial boss, though, I switched the game to easy mode. I still die, so that was probably the right choice.

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