Since Half-Life 2’s release, I have played through it exactly once. I tried playing through it again recently, but it was too dull. I have played Half-Life 1 many times since 1998. In fact, I’ve played through it 2-3 times since I’ve finished Half-Life 2.

I am also one of the few who like Xen.

Weapons:
This has been said before but I think Gordon’s ABILITIES in HL2 made him WAY too strong. They gave him the sprint ability that allowed him to go pretty much anywhere and dodge through so many fights that are otherwise not possibly had they gave him the HL1 HEV suit that didn’t sprint. On top of that you had a lot of uninspired weapons that didn’t have the punch of the HL1 weapons. The guass gun/tau cannon was 10x more fun than the Gravity Gun, which near the end when the Combine accidentally supercharged it, felt more like this toy that they FORCED you to play with rather than allowed you to choose to play with.

Xen:
I for one LOVED Xen. I loved how in the middle of some of the most tense battles of Half Life, Valve suddenly decides to send you up to an Alien world where all the rules were bended and all logic were re-written. Especially for its time, Xen was AMAZING to behalf. The sound, the atmosphere, the “wild life” and other odd things like little eyeballs coming up from the ground (and retracted when touched/scared) which lighted up things like a light bulb, human corpses in HEV suits, dead scientist (and ONE hidden alive scientist in the final level) really made me feel like “wow I might live through this to tell the world about these aliens and what I’ve seen”. In the beginning I disliked Xen but since then I’ve played HL1 many times and REALLY APPRECIATE what Valve tried to do and the SHEER amount of imagination they had put in those levels. In the beginning you saw those Alien slaves as nothing more than scared creatures but once you got to one of Xen’s “factories” you saw the Grunts were CONTROLLING the slaves which didn’t attack you unless you attacked them first. It was like human scientists being controlled by human grunts. Great concept.

Combines:
horrible AI, did not feel like a threat, everything including their gunships felt like toys/cartoons from a kids show. Marines were hardcore GIs that needed to contain Black Mesa at all costs. What’s the point killing a bunch of masked alien drones that had no personalities? Valve so strongly wanted people to be wowed by its facial expression system in HL2 yet they made their enemies more faceless than ever. It would have been better if they were smarter but the AI in HL2 was so easy I bet I could kill and dodge every combine with just a crowbar!

Hero:
HL1 put you in the middle of a freak accident while a fight is being bled out on 3 factions. HL2 just completely ruined everything for me. It was you vs the combine. The Xen creatures were not a factor at all. It felt like the world of City17 was a lame broadway show that was made up for Gordon Freeman, unlike Black Mesa where Gordon went to places that he was not supposed to go into. As a protagonist, the fictional world of HL2 felt pre-discovered and everything was staged. Between the boring enemies, you also had to deal with numbskull NPCs that all had the same voices and cheerful tone whenever they saw you (”OMG IT’s FREEMAN LET’S ALL BOW TO HIM!”). I can’t stand being the center of attention. Seriously, how in the world did all these fockers got to know Gordon Freeman and ALL praise him as a god? That’s just lame. Too much hero worship.

Too much self awareness destroyed the possibility that one felt in HL1 when they played it the first time, that you MIGHT end up crawling out of Black Mesa alive and live to tell the world about it. In HL2, there is none of this feeling, it was just one melodramatic set piece, then a long boat/buggy ride through repetitive NPCs, then another melodramatic set piece. The sense of SURVIVAL was strong in HL1, and there was NOTHING like it in HL2.

Forced:
In HL1 you were forced to go through some scripted sequences. But they felt legit, choatic, if not humorous at times because throughout the whole time I felt giggly knowing EVERYTHING around you was falling down but you had JUST the right amount of vents and boxes to get you through an otherwise NON PASSABLE AREA in which you’ll be stuck in forever. After you’ve finished the game you couldn’t hep but laugh at how one little table top that allowed you to jump into a vent, and literally, allowed you to save the world from a Xen invasion.

HL2 on the other hand had too many areas where it was obviously staged for you to fight “another large lame boss” where you had to do certain things to take away from its large hitpoints. The “mission” was too transparent. Add to that, the lame friendly NPCs that just kept respawning and coming to your aid until you kill the enemy, telling you what to do (”Come on Freeman!”…). It was like Valve was giving you a hand and telling you “hey don’t worry we’ll help you beat the game!”. At no point in HL2 was I really taken by the fact that the story progressed to where it did, it was all very predictable.

If they made HL1 and HL2 into two movies, HL1 would definitely be the better one, being less “epic” and “grand” yet very intelligent and VERY concise and cohesive. HL2 would a movie that is all over place trying to encompass everything and really accel’ing at very few things.

There is hope though, EP2 near the end REALLY brought back some good storytelling elements that were missing from HL2. Parts of Black Mesa East reminded me of HL1 and hopefully Valve will move more into that direction with EP3. They need to make a shorter game with less “stretch pieces” like boat rides and car rides but make everything more intense and more about discoveries. Less is more.

Though, I have to ask, what’s really the point of comparing the two games to choose which one’s best? From what I’ve read in this article a lot of people have mixed feelings about both games. Things they like/didn’t about one and others that they liked/didn’t about the other. Both games stand on their own as good games during their time and as unique experiences despite their shared franchise.

It’s fun to think of what HL2 would be like if Valve stuck to their HL1 themes. I don’t think the “shlocky HL2″ would have been as well received. Games had moved on in narrative depth. I really gotta hand it to Valve for trying all the things they did with HL2’s story, rather than falling back to what they knew how to do with HL1.

I mean just look at the Kleiners and Barneys from HL1 and compare them to Kliener and Barney in HL2. Funny, though, how Kliener and Barney are the remnants of those olden days.

Oh, and my first vertigo feeling was Castle Wolfenstein, having to clamber about on the top of that cable car!!

In fact, Portal did this slightly better than Half-life 1, the last few levels of Portal really stood out and made it all excellent.