ChannelFlip

Just watched all 7 episodes and gotta say - great job. The reviews seem balanced and yet pull no punches. Love the set and collections all about, but when are they gonna let you have a real desk and chair. Here’s hoping for a long and successful show. BTW, this viewing occasioned by Wil on TWIT, in case you care.

Agreed. It’s an amazing game and hopefully developers will put this much thought and effort into more shooters for PC/console. 5/5

Hmmm, I fear you failed to spot the fact that HL2:2 is dated, derivative and unimaginative. It’s the same old scripted, on-rails stuff with invisible switches, endless doors that don’t open and contrived gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the orig HL2, it was really polished and has glimpses of innovative gameplay, despite being fairly old fashioned in many ways. Frankly, it was actually superior with more varied gameplay than this new episode.

***Slight spoiler below***

A good example is the final battle sequence where it’s necessary to kill the hunters before the sticky bombs will destroy the striders. It’s just plain contrived platform-esque gaming where you must do A before you can damage B.

***Slight spoiler ends***

Overall, there was little new in this ep of note, the gravity gun has largely become a pointless gimmick and while it’s extremely polished it generally smacks of churn - ie churning out very samey levels that fail to take the promise of the original HL2 and really deliver.

Are you playing these games on a toaster? Why is the framerate so horrendously low? Also, I’ve been looking through a bunch of your videos. What HASN’T been rated 5 stars?

Didn’t one of the Soldier of Fortune games have you sprinting through the Middle East somewhere merrily decapitating soldiers, some of who bore a remarkable resemblance to Saddam? Then there was one of the Delta Force games that had you stomping around Mogadishu and shooting everything up, not forgetting the Desert Storm games either. It’s not really a new thing to have games taking place nearish the present day, though I am rather surprised that the developers have addressed the issue directly and thats probably more a reflection of peoples attitudes to the ongoing situation in the Middle East rather than anything to do with the subject matter itself.

Whys it always the bloody Russians though? They seem to be staple bad guys du jour for way, way too long now.

Does look to be quite fun, but my PC isn’t up to the job and I’m just not sure I could bear to play it on the 360 with a mouse and keyboard in the next room.