Portal is the game of the year

[Asher]

And man, are those MP/RE4 scores inflated or what. I think they got huge benefits out of the comparatively awful Gamecube software lineup. When a decent games come out for it, suddenly it looks a lot more than decent.

[Solver]

I should have said PC game. I don't really count console games as games

[Asher]

Should it be the other way around, considering the list of great games is dominated by console games?

[Solver]

No

[Vesayen]

I did not like Half Life 2 because it was to be honest, too easy. Half life 1 was tough at times. At the hardest difficulty, half life 2 was waaaaaay too easy. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too easy. Physics? Cool. Graphics? Cool. Sound? Cool. Gameplay? "Eh"....too many areas where you just run and gun with no plot advancment. It felt more like serious sam or the original wolfenstein compared to the "smarter" trend in some FPS games.

I was also unhappy with the lack of multiplayer at the date of release.

Solver: Half Life 2 is not the "best rated" game ever.... and even if it was, by whose measure heh? "Best games of all times" lists come out all the time, I've seen half life 2 near the top, but never ontop.


Ironically, replayability is the #1 issue I look for when I buy a game. I expect good gameplay, I demand long play time or replayability if they want my gaming bucks. Portal was not a long game, but every moment of it was phenominal. I'm not sure I've ever played a game I enjoyed so much each moment before, besides Thief 2, the pacing is genius.

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by Asher



Half-Life (1) was good.

Half-Life (2) is bad.

Halo 1/2/3 are good.

Why is HL2 bad? Because the pace was too slow, the plot couldn't get me interested, EP1 had EXCESSIVE amounts of "plot" given how boring it was, all of the "puzzles" involved using the physics system to solve, etc. Gabe Newell is a bit of a child in a lot of ways, he gets fixated on one aspect of something and beats it to death.

Half-Life and Halo are not to be compared. Half-Life is more of a platformer FPS, Halo is more of a social FPS. Very different games, something that is obvious if you've ever played them both at any reasonable length.

What's so great about Halo 1 then? To me the pace in that game was insanely slow, and the repetitiveness is horrible.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Vesayen
Solver: Half Life 2 is not the "best rated" game ever.... and even if it was, by whose measure heh? "Best games of all times" lists come out all the time, I've seen half life 2 near the top, but never ontop.

I'm not talking about "best games of all time" lists, I am talking about the average review score. According to Metacritic, HL2 held the top spot for a while along with the original HL, now it's been joined by Bioshock.

In a somewhat rare situation, I agree with the critics myself. HL2 is the finest game in action genres that I have ever played, matched only by Deus Ex.

Ironically, replayability is the #1 issue I look for when I buy a game. I expect good gameplay, I demand long play time or replayability if they want my gaming bucks. Portal was not a long game, but every moment of it was phenominal. I'm not sure I've ever played a game I enjoyed so much each moment before, besides Thief 2, the pacing is genius.

I also love replayability. That's part of the reason why TBS is my favorite genre and Civ my favorite series. There's room for literally thousands of hours of gameplay. With FPS games, though, I am not directly demanding replayability. If the game is good, I'll play through it many times anyway. Say, HL2 is as linear as they come, but I've been through it 5 times. Non-linearity in itself doesn't, for me, guarantee replayability. I liked Stalker, for example, may play it a second time, but probably not for a third time.

On Portal, though, I am actually overall in agreement with Asher in the sense that I think the IGN review sums it up best. I found the concept very interesting. But my problem with Portal is that there wasn't much of a game to it. It was a total of 3 hours. Of the 19 test chambers, the first 15-16 were really just basic tutorials. They could have been condensed into less, with maybe a bit more guidance to compensate. There was humour during these levels, but hardly any story, also no sense of a goal. You were just moving forward.

Then the game picks up, the last 2 test chambers actually feature some more interesting gameplay. And then, of course, after chamber 19 itself ends, it really picks up. That last level is like one third the length of the entire game, but I'm saying more could be like it.

And I can't agree that the graphics are good. Well, they are, technically, but they rather suck artistically. You spend the entire game in fairly bland, similar-looking areas. You start in a well-lit area with light colours, and that's how it continues up until the last part, where it changes to metallic-looking industrial areas. I mean, look at Episode 2 in the same context. You have a forest, a research facility, normal houses, mine shafts, antlion caves - a visual variety of environments.

Portal could be the year's most innovative game. Better yet, the implications are excellent. Portals could be used in many future games to great effect. The game itself as is, though, is quite solid, but not OMFG fantastic, to me.

[DrSpike]

I haven't played Portal but will get the Orange box on the Xbox for sure. It's been a while since I played HL2 (which is up there with the best by the way) and will be fun to play it through again on the Xbox. Combined with Portal (which sounds fun but short), TF2 and the HL2 follow ups it's really a no-brainer.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
I'm not talking about "best games of all time" lists, I am talking about the average review score. According to Metacritic, HL2 held the top spot for a while along with the original HL, now it's been joined by Bioshock.

Again, wrong. If you're going to cite metacritic you can't just say "I'm going to throw 70% of the games out."

[Solver]

How so? Metacritic has a distinct top PC game list and I'm not throwing anything out of that one.

[Asher]

You're throwing most of the games out by being platform-specific. Games are games, regardless of which instruction set they use...

[Solver]

Doesn't mean that PC games don't make their own category, though. Just like PS or Xbox games do. So "best rated PC games" is absolutely a valid measure, just like "best rated Xbox games". It's not like the category is too narrow.

I acknowledge that games running on something else than IA-32 are games, although I am highly prejudiced against those, but that's a question of taste.

[Asher]

You said best rated games, ever. Now you're squirming. And I don't like squirming.

[Solver]

Yes, I said best rated games ever. Then I made a correction saying that by "games" I meant "PC games". It's not like I ended up making contradictory statements, you know.

[Quillan]

You're debating semantics anyway. Even counting all systems, and comparing apples to oranges, I'd say #8 is still "one of the highest rated games of all time". The problem with ratings is that they are based on standards of the time. While gameplay tends to hold up, the other matters age quickly. Civ 1 gameplay is still good, but imagine someone releasing it today.