This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Half Life 2 Feed Title: Michael Lucas-Smith Feed URL: http://www.michaellucassmith.com/site.atom Feed Description: Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Michael Lucas-Smith

Wow. I mean, double wow. What an amazing game. I've just gotten up to gravity gun - I'll not be doing any spoilers.

The games graphics is amazing. One thing I can fault them on is the load time between scenes. GTA: San Andreas solved load times by making the game continuously load new data as you play. This means you can traverse the entire map seemlessly from one end to the other without ever having to stop and wait. This is the sort of tech that HL2 needs.

But the graphics are stunning. Putting the graphics aside, the sounds are magnificant and the map level design is brilliant. It keeps you on the edge constantly, making you feel as if you're finding the way - not being led.

Using the vehicles is mad fun and the weapons are nicely balanced. The AI is unspeakable. They duck, they aim, they shoot, the interact.. it's fantastic. There's even a bit of humor through in during safe times. What you'll notice is that the interaction/scripting of the story parts is very 'loose', you can go and talk to the people at any time and they'll play out their role as if you were really there to know what's going on, not because you were forced to sit through it.

The physics engine is fantastic. I would have liked to have seen weaponry and collisions affect walls and ground more though - that would have added a realy good feel to the game, ie: the world truelly is affect by you being there. At the moment, you definitely get the sense of affecting the world around you - like grabbing a barrel and hiding behind it as people shoot at you.

There are even twinkles in the characters eyes as they look around and talk to you. It's uncanny how good it looks and interacts. It's all so 'lively'. This game really does change gaming forever. There's no turning back at this point.