Half life 2 Boring and underwhelming. Thoughts?

[Overkill Is Underrated]

I have to ask as I just finished this but why is this STILL so popular. I realise it was great for back in its day but nowadays I just cant see any redeeming features. It has a very generic story mediocre puzzles and the gameplay is all around boring, aside from graphics many games of the same or older age surpass it in nearly every way. So what is HL2's redeeming feature to you guys?

Ignoring graphics as while they might have been good for then as they have no particular art style they simply look bad now.

Also I do read a lot of Sci-Fi so I may be ignoring the lore as its nothing special or new to me but may be just because I have a lot of exposure to it.NOTE: lore is different from writing which was pretty generic and predictable.

HL2 not the episodes.

I made this post as its one of the few games where I found the game unpleasant to play. I do like other Valve titles.
Edit: current list of bad features which are irrelevant to age.

Forced to use the machine gun for long range or shotgun for close as you never have enough ammo to use most of the other guns.
No recoil.
Takes 10 seconds for squadmates to move out of your way which is incredibly annoying, could be done in those days as Kotor demonstrates.
Linear also demonstrated as not necessary by Kotor.
Large parts of it seem to exist solely to demonstrate the physics engine.
I thought the companions were very 1 dimensional.
Judiths betrayal and redemption were very obvious. Might be explained more in HL1
At some points, the only way to proceed is to wait for the AI to destroy a section of wall in a scripted and predetermined manner.
Very limited opponents, but it fits with the story
Its really easy
The basic story isnt original its "The Hero's Journey" which is from ancient greece.
For all that people say the story is told fluidly there are plenty of times where you are forced to stand around for Alyx or the scientists to spout unskippable exposition
The Game relies too much on having played HL1 for character motivation.

Edit: some of you have good points but just saying its good is unhelpful.

Good points: Other games are based on it so the systems are more refined since then
It has a lot of lore but as I addressed I find that lore quite generic.
Well spread out tutorials but not perfect as it has plenty of areas which are just for tutorials like the bug bait.
Good use of affordance for navigating
The Strider fights are really basic but do a good job of creating a panic kind of situation at the end.
Breen was a pretty good character with reasonable motivation

[asd]

I've yet to find an FPS game as immersive as HL2. Everything about the world is just believable, even though you are fighting aliens all the time.
Also, I don't think the gameplay is boring. Sure it has some boring moments (I don't really like the airboat chapter for example) but most of it was fun. I really like the level design too!

[Overkill Is Underrated]

While stuff like the airboat was annoying I was much more referring to the gunplay which might be the worst i've ever tried excluding some early access games.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Half-Life 2 to me just seems extremely hand heldy it always seems to discourage exploration of the maps even the intro has no means for exploring around but I'll leave some examples one being after the jump with the airboat when a dropship drops off some cps in front of a pipe and another is after the Hunter-Chooper fight with the bridge allowing your airboat to get where you need to go and this area is also where the singing Vort is but you wouldn't know that if you didn't explore of your own diriction

[Rafael Freeman]

Does everybody who you interact with thinks you have a great personality? Or do some people think you are boring and underwhelming?

HL2 is widely praised for its minimal but imaginative storytelling and its atmosphere. People have praised the developers' attention to detail. The things that make HL2 great are quite subtle and not everybody picks up on that. It’s the way alien technology is inserted the landscape, the use of color, the sounds, the moments of quiet offer a chance to reflect on what happened before.

HL2 set out to do specific things very well. It was never intented to be an exploration game or have a loot system.

Go read the original IGN review to understand what an impact the game had when it came out.

If you don’t like the game, fine. There are plenty of other games out there.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Does everybody who you interact with thinks you have a great personality? Or do some people think you are boring and underwhelming?

HL2 is widely praised for its minimal but imaginative storytelling and its atmosphere. People have praised the developers' attention to detail. The things that make HL2 great are quite subtle and not everybody picks up on that. It’s the way alien technology is inserted the landscape, the use of color, the sounds, the moments of quiet offer a chance to reflect on what happened before.

HL2 set out to do specific things very well. It was never intented to be an exploration game or have a loot system.

Go read the original IGN review to understand what an impact the game had when it came out.

If you don’t like the game, fine. There are plenty of other games out there.

have you seen HL1 that game was 10x better then HL2 in more ways then one also the magic it had is gone people don't want to play something thats as bland as this they want their moneys worth out of it you're not going to get that when you fight only two different enemy types

[Rafael Freeman]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Does everybody who you interact with thinks you have a great personality? Or do some people think you are boring and underwhelming?

HL2 is widely praised for its minimal but imaginative storytelling and its atmosphere. People have praised the developers' attention to detail. The things that make HL2 great are quite subtle and not everybody picks up on that. It’s the way alien technology is inserted the landscape, the use of color, the sounds, the moments of quiet offer a chance to reflect on what happened before.

HL2 set out to do specific things very well. It was never intented to be an exploration game or have a loot system.

Go read the original IGN review to understand what an impact the game had when it came out.

If you don’t like the game, fine. There are plenty of other games out there.

have you seen HL1 that game was 10x better then HL2 in more ways then one also the magic it had is gone people don't want to play something thats as bland as this they want their moneys worth out of it you're not going to get that when you fight only two different enemy types

In a perfect world people use ‘then’ when they should use ‘than’ and know how to showing possession by using an apostrophe when that is appropriate. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

[MaKerL1fe K9]

Half Life 2 is just different, in a good way, graphics are awesome for my point of view, and if it something, it sure is not boring, there are people that have more than 1000 hrs played of the game, story has no cutscenes, you see it from gordon freeman's eyes, if you think this game is boring, you're just a cod kid...

[starboy]

I'm pretty young and grew up with way more advanced games than HL2, but it's still one of my all-time favorite games

[Blackdahlia]

Games dont need to be justified man. If you didnt like it, you didnt like it. Good and bad doesnt exist, its all perspective. If you are unhappy with the money you spent, perhaps change you're source of gaming info that lead you to buy this.

Also KOTOR (cool game) does NOT do squad movements better. I have thought through why you would say this but it would be too lengthy to point out all the differences and i really cbf as you're mind is made up, not lookin to debate it. I played both games in the passed 6 hours coincedently.

its the old coke vs pepsi debate. No ones right

[Overkill Is Underrated]

Originally posted by Blackdahlia:

Also KOTOR (cool game) does NOT do squad movements better. I have thought through why you would say this but it would be too lengthy to point out all the differences and i really cbf as you're mind is made up, not lookin to debate it. I played both games in the passed 6 hours coincedently.

Because I didnt say it did squad movements better, I said its not hard for them to make it so they dont block your path for 10 seconds before moving, and I am looking to debate it, Thats why this post exists.

[Overkill Is Underrated]

Originally posted by MaKerL1fe K9:

Half Life 2 is just different, in a good way, graphics are awesome for my point of view, and if it something, it sure is not boring, there are people that have more than 1000 hrs played of the game, story has no cutscenes, you see it from gordon freeman's eyes, if you think this game is boring, you're just a cod kid...

As I have a public profile you could actually look at my games same as you. Mr COD owner. Also cutscenes are not neccessarily good or bad so that point is irrelevant as it entirely depends on the narrative and how they choose to tell it.

[Goosey]

If you have a favorite song from the 90's, do you suddenly no longer like it because newer music has progressed??? (In some cases in both gameing and music, its actually simplified)

And can you name me 1 game from 2007 onwards that is better than half life?

[Goosey]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Does everybody who you interact with thinks you have a great personality? Or do some people think you are boring and underwhelming?

HL2 is widely praised for its minimal but imaginative storytelling and its atmosphere. People have praised the developers' attention to detail. The things that make HL2 great are quite subtle and not everybody picks up on that. It’s the way alien technology is inserted the landscape, the use of color, the sounds, the moments of quiet offer a chance to reflect on what happened before.

HL2 set out to do specific things very well. It was never intented to be an exploration game or have a loot system.

Go read the original IGN review to understand what an impact the game had when it came out.

If you don’t like the game, fine. There are plenty of other games out there.

have you seen HL1 that game was 10x better then HL2 in more ways then one also the magic it had is gone people don't want to play something thats as bland as this they want their moneys worth out of it you're not going to get that when you fight only two different enemy types

Opinions, i like half life 1 and 2 just as much as each other. Both offered different things, had half life 2 stayed like half life 1 that could have ended up being boring.

[Overkill Is Underrated]

Originally posted by ๖ۣۜDrK x ๖ۣۜﮎHUR1K3N>:

If you have a favorite song from the 90's, do you suddenly no longer like it because newer music has progressed??? (In some cases in both gameing and music, its actually simplified)

And can you name me 1 game from 2007 onwards that is better than half life?

Borderlands 1&2,Bioshock,Portal 2, Dark souls 3 are better at what HL2 is known for from just what I have installed right now, for just gameplay id include Tom clancy's shooters. Writing a good story and designing guns,puzzles and game balance was no different then than it is now so your first point is irrelevant as I even stated in the OP that I was ignoring graphics AND this post was about why it is still popular and recommended not whether it was good for its day

[rewb]

You know why HL2 seems boring to you now? Because almost every other game uses the puzzles/story/gameplay that was already in HL2. It's basically a reference sheet to all games of the same genre, IMO.