1st time playthrough difficulty choice?

[Sodie Popping]

This is my first time playing Half Life 2, I'm pretty good at games but don't know what difficulty to choose for Half Life 2, At first I was going to pick hard but then it says my weapons are less effective, so I'm asking what diffculty will offer challenge but also fun ??

[Turambar]

Hard.

[🍅]

For the first run I think normal, but if you're confident then go with hard.

[Kolibria]

Normal.

[Sovereign]

It's not a super hard game, if you consider yourself a good FPS player then go straight for hard.

[Ghidrah1]

Go hard mode 1st, whatever works in hard works in all modes. Train yourself to conserve ammo and weapons use. Learn when and how to confront and when to run and you'll save med use. Don't spend time maneuvering rebels, almost all end up dead and then you feel bad or mad.

[GDZ]

Look for BigMacDavis half life 2 walkthrough on youtube, he makes it look so easy even in hard mode, with 100% achievements.

[Campos_PA]

the AI is not so "I" so combat is relatively easy, the real downside is fighting zombies and some other creatures because some are naturaly hard to hit, now imagine a hard to hit bullet sponge....
You can go hard as you wish, if anything feels more stressfull than fun in some part of the game you can change the dificulty without losing the progress.

[Ghidrah1]

As for the uglies, all crabs and spiders can be slammed with an object from the GG, swatted with the crowbar or just side stepped/ran around. I prefer the last option when I played, it saved time.
My pet weps in order are SG, GG, PR, SMG . Basically keep running, only shoot what's in front of you, unless something prevents you from exiting an area.

[Bananana]

I think that easy makes the game too unrealistic so normal is the best

[PNG]

I usally finish a game at normal frist than hard on second time