Did anyone else get this impression from HL2?

[Albuquerque]

GameStop had the HL2 Collector's edition box for $59.99, and still had the "normal" version for $54.99 so I figured I'd spend the $5 extra dollars and pick it up. Thank you to Valve for putting it all on a DVD; so much better than loading five or six stinkin CD's.

So, here's about how my first day's worth of impressions went:

Hey, nice lookin place. Great textures.
*loading*
Wow, that was a short level for all that load time. But no matter, check out the birds. Hey, and half-decent AI too.
*loading*
Uh? Well ok, no matter. Ooooh teleporter....
*loading*
Damn, that kinda sucks. Let's walk over here
*loading*
Suppose I could ramp this boat off this...
*loading*
Maybe if I went this wa..
*loading*
Wha? I needed to load for that?
*loading*
Dammit! This loading thing is really starting to...
*loading*

Ok so I exagerate a little, but only a little. As confined as some of these levels are (another gripe, but whatever) I would think they could get more "level" between all the loading. Perhaps we could blame it on a bunch of high resolution textures, but why can't they stream them in like several of the newer engines do now?

Generally speaking, it's a pretty cool game all things considered. Framerates are good at 1600x1200 4xAA / 8xAF and everything maxxed out. The "car" and the "boat" are pretty fun, as are making antlions do your bidding. The gravity gun is interesting, but not a mindblower IMO. A few of the levels seemed badly designed or at least badly thought out, example as the first "encounter" of the Sandtraps segment.

I'm still going to finish it, and then I'm going to play HL:Source too :) Is it worth the $60? Well, I paid around the same for Doom 3, and it's at least as enjoyable if not moreso. So yeah, it was still worth the pricetag. But for as much hype as it received (and as many mindless followers as it's obtained) I'm still not sure it's quite the masterpiece I've been hearing about.

We shall see, I do have a few levels left :)

[Radical]

Well it did load frequently but I thought it was worth it. It was really a great game, one of the best.

[jenko]

One of the great things about Halo2 which people dont talk of is it loaded during the cut scenes so no loading between levels which i thought was great.
While Doom3 was loading a level i could have a shave make a cup of tea and read todays newspaper before it was finished loading.

[Panzerknacker]

LMAO then there is something terribly wrong with your computer because on mine every Doom 3 map loads within 30 seconds as far as I can remember. And I agree with Albuquerque that HL2 didnt live up to all the hype. Actually the only thing I liked about it was Garysmod, I only played the singleplayer untill just after the teleporter accident in the beginning. Don't know why, I believe I had to stop playing at that time and never started the game again.

[austinbmxnig]

maybe he shaves quick

[XunknownX]

Yeah, I thought there was a lot of loading, but damn those graphics and gameplay kick ass!

[Needitcooler]

Some of the load points were very poorly placed also. I remember coming to a t-junction and wanting to explore both directions, so I went left first. All of a sudden I hit a loading zone and had to sit there for like 30 seconds waiting for it to load. I realized that I still wanted to explore the other direction so I had to walk back - another 30 second load. Once I explored the other side, I had to walk back to the load point again - another 30 seconds. That only happened once or twice though. I was fine with all the other loading.

[doublejack]

This is one of the aspects where I think Doom 3 shines over HL2. It's a tradeoff really. In HL2, Valve tries to give a larger - more immersive world experience, whereas Doom 3 has a definite segmented / compartmentalized feel.

However, I find the HL2 approach interruptive to game play. I found it frustrating to be walking along and suddenly I'm waiting for a load without warning, right when I'm enthralled with the game. It really hurts the experience IMHO. With Doom you know when to expect the next zone loading, so the game plays smoother.

I think Valve got ambitious with level design and obviously the graphics. They did the best they could at achieving their goals, but the result wouldn't have been my choice. The original Half Life is laid out exactly the same but it loaded almost instantly. If they could have done the same with HL2 then this would be a different story, but as it stands I think Doom 3 flows far, far better.

[Joe Don Baker]

Load times in HL2 are pretty ridiculous. Farcry had those massive levels and only had one long loading time. I also thought some of the HL2 levels were extremely boring graphically, Highway 17 comes to mind. And the vehicles were cool, but the boat level was way too long it got annoying after awhile. City 17 though I thought was very cool, I enjoyed those levels the most. And the gravity gun was very cool. Overall its a good game, but in my opinion it didn't live up the hype.

[Albuquerque]

However, I find the HL2 approach interruptive to game play. I found it frustrating to be walking along and suddenly I'm waiting for a load without warning, right when I'm enthralled with the game. It really hurts the experience IMHO. With Doom you know when to expect the next zone loading, so the game plays smoother.

I think you nailed exactly what I was feeling :)

It's one thing if I can see the level load coming: end of a corridor, big honkin door that must open, some big cutscene, whatever. But if I'm staggering down a hall or running for (what I think is) my life, I don't want to get stuck in a level load.

I still like the game, I'll probably go back through again later and play it at the hardest level... I'm on normal now, and it's pretty tough in places, but I"m sure I could deal with more :) And when I do, I'll pay a lot less attention to graphics :D

[Slimmy]

Depending on you computer i didn't think the loading was that bad unless you had to turn around and had to load the last level again. My computer in sig loads it in a decent time, but my bro playing on his 2.4 p4 lappy and man that damn thing takes forever. No wonder he hasn't finished the game yet.

Guess these kinda things can make make or brake the game for some people.

[Albuquerque]

I don't think my rig poses any problem to load times... :) And unless the load is near-instantaneous, that gap of 10-15 seconds still completely breaks the gameplay if you're into it.

[eab]

All I know is I can play HL2, while if more then 3 guys apear on the screen in Far Cry I can not play at all. Load times did not seem to bad to me.

We are talking move two steps, wait 30 seconds, shoot two bullets, wait 30 seconds, shoot again, repeat.....

[ozzlo]

I don't know about you guys but the loading screens where a perfect opportunity to down some more caffine or slam an energy drink or fetch a snack or run to the bathroom or get up and stretch... see where I am goin with this? it's not healthy to be at a comp for 6 hours straight anyways.... I say that they are strategic little breaks placed by valve so that people don't die from playing HL2 for 16 hours straight with no breaks :)

also I noticed that the loading screens for the most part where inbetween the action sequences.... at least you can fight a boss and not have it load when you run to the other side of the room!!!

[Albuquerque]

I don't think a forced loading screen in the middle is any sort of "break" except for wanting to break the legs of whoever put it there. A standard LEVEL load would be a break... Not an incremental break between twenty feet of hallway... (after you teleport back to whats-his-face's lab a week later, you meet "dog", you walk out into the hallway, and you load AGAIN? That level was all of two rooms and the entrance to a hallway...)

As for FarCry hanging on three people? Pretty sure there's something wrong with your system then. Even my P3/550 box with a TNT2 could "play" it far better than that. Maybe the 486 in my signature would perform about what you're describing...

[q149]

your sig is a joke... right?

[jenko]

I also hated if i back tracked to check something out it loaded the previous level again just to turn back and load where i came from again lol.

[veryhumid]

hahaha, yes there wad quite a bit of loading, but considering it is so pretty I can understand. plus it gives you time to go refill your mountain dew ;) but they were really consistent. one time i accidentally went back to the creepy village with the zombies after I had left the priest in the cemetary, and he was still there shouting and blasting away :clap:

[Albuquerque]

your sig is a joke... right?
Certainly not, I have that machine in my collection, minus the watercooling though... My actual rig is a 3.0C at 3.7ghz / 247FSB with the ram at 1:1 and a pair of WD 250gb 8mb drives in hardware RAID 0. It's the one that uses the watercooling parts :) Funny that someone finally mentioned it, as it's been there for-stinkin-ever.

[TheGreySpectre]

load times are a pian, but i will trade loading for gameplay and graphics anyday

btw, theproblem with loading during cutscenes like Halo2 is that there arnt cutscenes in HL2

[squads]

I found the loads bearable the first time through along with the menu screen. Now that i've played through it the 3-4 minutes it takes to actually get into playing the game from windows just annoys me and all the load times are just too much for a game I've played through already. Not to mention the stuttering...

[J2T]

lol, its ok to criticize HL2 now? :D

[Erebos668]

I think the game wasnt brought down be the frequent loads. I think they did so people with slower computers wouldnt spend 30 mins loading up a level so instead is a load point about ever 10 to 15 mins.

[the adam]

Im not done with the game yet cause this KN8 freezes every 5 mins. ARRRGGGG!!!! I played it at my friends but his computer is two years old and he has integrated graphics so that didn't help much. Also with this KN8 it wouldn't just freeze sometimes but give me a memory error and shut the game down. Anyone else had this problem cause I have heard random freezing with other ppl that have the KN8 mobo. I also wish i got the dvd version cause those cd's were a pain. The load scenes also got annoying cause my comp would freeze every 5 mins and when it finally didnt freeze for 5 mins i would hit a loading checkpoint

[[G]ing'Killah']

Gr8 game 4 me, did not had really annoying issues.

[Erigon_Sean]

Yeah, your not really exagerating.. There were TONS of loading... and I got sick of it, and haven't played HL2 for a while...

[Aurora40]

Some of the load points were very poorly placed also. I remember coming to a t-junction and wanting to explore both directions, so I went left first. All of a sudden I hit a loading zone and had to sit there for like 30 seconds waiting for it to load. I realized that I still wanted to explore the other direction so I had to walk back - another 30 second load. Once I explored the other side, I had to walk back to the load point again - another 30 seconds. That only happened once or twice though. I was fine with all the other loading.
I had the same feeling. Some points were kind of annoying for a load spot. All in all though, I thought the game was great.

One thing I did notice was when I had one stick of 512MB ram, the load times were annoyingly long (I thought my nicely defragged RAID 0 would help a lot...). Once I popped in the second stick, they were dramatically reduced.

[Albuquerque]

I finished playing the game last night while recovering from my bout with pneumonia. I liked it quite a bit, except for the insanely horrible (IMO) ending. People griped about FarCry's ending, or even Doom3's ending, and somehow let THIS slide? What in God's green earth posessed Valve to make an ending like this? Maybe I'm missing something from not playing the original HL? I'll be remedying that next with HL:Source, so maybe I'll understand by this time next week...

Great stuff:
Fantastic textures. Good level design on many of the maps. Fun vehicles. Good looking and well animated characters. Fun physics engine to play with.

Indifferent stuff:
So-so AI -- I thought at the beginning it was gonna be good, but as the game progressed, my eventual thought was "bleh". Storyline -- has it's good points and it's bad points, they average out in my opinion.

Not so good stuff:
Levels still feel pretty confining to me :( Never ending *loading* screens, the worst of which was right before the 2nd time you teleport (the one where it took a week?). Game goes into *loading*, you walk off the teleporter with Alyx, meet the scientist dude, meet dog, and go down the hallway. All in all, I've moved probably 50 feet, and then *loading* again! :bang: The ending was abysmal, as already mentioned.

I still liked the game, I'm still happy that I purchased it. But as much hype and accolades and whatnot as it's received, I don't think it lived up to all of it.

[Smokey21]

LMAO then there is something terribly wrong with your computer because on mine every Doom 3 map loads within 30 seconds as far as I can remember. And I agree with Albuquerque that HL2 didnt live up to all the hype. Actually the only thing I liked about it was Garysmod, I only played the singleplayer untill just after the teleporter accident in the beginning. Don't know why, I believe I had to stop playing at that time and never started the game again.

And your judging a game based on playing about 10% of it? Nice one. :bang head

[Albuquerque]

And your judging a game based on playing about 10% of it? Nice one. :bang head
With the molehill-gone-mountain that everyone hyped about this game, maybe it should've been more engaging to make him WANT to play more than 10% of it?

Just a thought...

[DerekDRP]

hl2 loads in like 30 seconds for me but thats just me ( try new memery )

[Smokey21]

With the molehill-gone-mountain that everyone hyped about this game, maybe it should've been more engaging to make him WANT to play more than 10% of it?

Just a thought...

Heh, hows that the game fault?

Thats a personal problem. Maybe he'd be better off with Halo 2? :-/

It was plenty engaging, it has its faults, but there far and few between and certanly less than 99% of games out there.

As for the loading, yes it's anoying, it's not the time, but the amout of loading there is.

[Slackfumasta]

The loading doesn't annoy me at all, but I can say for sure that the game isn't all that exciting. Best part about HL2 is CS:S.

[Albuquerque]

hl2 loads in like 30 seconds for me but thats just me ( try new memery )
Again, I have enough computing horsepower behind this game to completely rule out any hardware limitations. If ~110mb/sec of sustained disk read capacity isn't enough to load a level in a reasonable amount of time, there isn't much else in the public sector left to be considered.

The computer I'm running isn't the problem, the game is. And I'm not talking about the initial load time when you click on your steam menu, I'm talking about the fourty-seven load points arbitrarily strewn throughout the game. Those load points take about 15-30 seconds each, and are so unthoughtfully arranged that it detracts from gameplay in my opinion. It seems that it's not ONLY my opinion, as my comments were echoed by others in this thread too.

Heh, hows that the game fault?
If a book is too boring to continue reading, who's fault is it? The writer, or the reader? If a new reality show on television is too inept to gain an audience, who's fault is it? The writers, or the viewers? If a video game is too disenchanting to play, who's fault is it? The writers, or the players?

In every case, it's the writers. That doesn't mean you can please all people all the time, but lack of interest is driven by the source material and not the oft-hoped audience. Had it been written differently, it would have captured a different audience. Panzer happens to be a segment of the population that wasn't interested, and you have zero room to question his taste.

It was plenty engaging, it has its faults, but there far and few between and certanly less than 99% of games out there.
This is your opinion. It is not mine. It is also obviously not Panzer's. You are welcome and entitled to express your opinion, but you are not welcome nor entitled to forcing them upon others. If he disagrees, it is not your place (or anyone elses) to "call him out" on it.

[Pickle]

The loading was fine, graphics are amazing. doom3 was boring and nothing impressive about it, wow lighting effects :-/

[Albuquerque]

The loading was fine, graphics are amazing. doom3 was boring and nothing impressive about it, wow lighting effects :-/
Having said nothing about Doom3 except for comparison of pricetag, I'm still unsure why everyone has been bringing it up in this thread. I don't consider Doom3 a better game than HL2...

[eab]

I finished playing the game last night while recovering from my bout with pneumonia. I liked it quite a bit, except for the insanely horrible (IMO) ending. People griped about FarCry's ending, or even Doom3's ending, and somehow let THIS slide? What in God's green earth posessed Valve to make an ending like this? Maybe I'm missing something from not playing the original HL? I'll be remedying that next with HL:Source, so maybe I'll understand by this time next week...

Great stuff:
Fantastic textures. Good level design on many of the maps. Fun vehicles. Good looking and well animated characters. Fun physics engine to play with.

Indifferent stuff:
So-so AI -- I thought at the beginning it was gonna be good, but as the game progressed, my eventual thought was "bleh". Storyline -- has it's good points and it's bad points, they average out in my opinion.

Not so good stuff:
Levels still feel pretty confining to me :( Never ending *loading* screens, the worst of which was right before the 2nd time you teleport (the one where it took a week?). Game goes into *loading*, you walk off the teleporter with Alyx, meet the scientist dude, meet dog, and go down the hallway. All in all, I've moved probably 50 feet, and then *loading* again! :bang: The ending was abysmal, as already mentioned.

I still liked the game, I'm still happy that I purchased it. But as much hype and accolades and whatnot as it's received, I don't think it lived up to all of it.


Havn't seen the ending of HL2 but I am gettting there. My guess is its a giant cliff hanger. The guy in the suit comes and gets you and the screen goes black and some text apears saying "Awaiting deployment"



SPOLIER for HL One:















At the end of HL one after you beat a giant mega boss you are on a tram with the G-Man. You can either step in a teloporter and get killed by alliens or you can work for the G-Man.

If you chose to work for the G-Man the screen goes black and text appears saying "Awaiting Employment"

This way you HAVE to buy HL3 in 3-5 years!

[doublejack]

Having said nothing about Doom3 except for comparison of pricetag, I'm still unsure why everyone has been bringing it up in this thread. I don't consider Doom3 a better game than HL2...

Probably because it's the only game you can really compare HL2 to at the moment. That and Far Cry. Anyway, sometimes the easiest way to critique a product is by comparing it to another. There are generally (always?) some things that one product does better, and other things that it's competitor does better. So rather than saying how something should be done and explaining everything, you can just say "it should be done like product X did it".

I guess the bottom line is it's a natural response.

[Albuquerque]

Havn't seen the ending of HL2 but I am gettting there. My guess is its a giant cliff hanger. The guy in the suit comes and gets you and the screen goes black and some text apears saying "Awaiting deployment"
Fortunately, you haven't guessed the ending so I haven't spoiled it for you :) Your explanation for the ending of HL(1) at least makes a little more sense in the grand scheme, but it doesn't make the ending of HL2 much more paletteable in my mind. At least the ending of HL1 seems to make partial sense...

[theELVISCERATOR]

what load times? heh.

[Binman_UK]

It had been at least 3 yrs since I played a computer game coz my PC was so crap..then my PC blew up (literally...smoke and everything!)...so I was forced to upgrade just before Xmas (see sig).
HL2 was the first game I decided to play, and I loved almost every minute of it - apart from the last few levels, which I thought were pretty crap. Amazing graphics and superb gameplay - I wasn't too bothered about the levels loading (although yes..they were very frequent) coz I'm sure Valve did the best they could with them.

I've tried playing Doom3 too, but it's so damn dark on my ATI gfx card - changing the contrast etc doesn't seem to make much difference. I've heard it looks ok on Geforce cards :/. I know it's off-topic, but has any1 else had this problem?

Binny :).

[_l4st_chanC3__]

what load times? heh.

lol, just what i was going to say. then again with two raptors raided together, there really is no such thing as a load time, heh.
:attn: