Here’s a mirror of a forum post I just made regarding Half-Life 2, as I just beat it about an hour ago:

I was looking forward to Half-Life 2 with all my heart, and now that I’ve finished it, I’m actually a bit let-down. I found the story to be kind of… empty. I also was disappointed by the lack of enemies to fight (huge disappointment here); the biggest and most fun enemies to fight were the fewest in number. I was also disappointed that the game only introduced three new weapons from the original (though the gravity gun was fun), and took some of the coolest weapons from the original out completely (all four of the alien weapons, the satchel charges, and the trip mines).

The game’s graphics are the best I’ve EVER seen, the audio is fantastic, and the feel of the game owns any others out there, but I was just disappointed by it. I kept hearing that the game is the “Best PC Game Ever,” and that just wasn’t the case for me, despite the fact that I LOVED the original Half-Life endlessly.

Half-Life 2’s story also leaves much to be desired; I only found one or two big twists: Judith betraying the resistence and Breen hinting that the Combine forces were a race entirely of their own (he said that there was a portal that would “blow their minds,” but we NEVER find out what the fuck he was referring to, I mean, what the hell?). It’s like the story-makers were trying to make the story in HL2 a lot more “deep” by being overly ambiguous, and the one thing they don’t realize is that gamers don’t want deep (Metal Gear Solid’s story, on the other hand, manages to be deep, but still relatively easy to grasp the gist of), ambiguous storylines. A certain level of depth is fine, but make some overall cool plot points that reside on the surface.

That said, while people felt that DOOM 3 was overhyped, I thought it was an absolute BLAST to play through (I also had tepid expectations for it, nothing huge like Half-Life 2). I was always on the edge of my seat, always surprised, etc. Sure HL2 and DOOM 3 are completely different games, but I’m talking about enjoyment alone here.

While I’m not going to compare the two in a formal statement (ie. saying HL2 is better than DOOM 3, or vice versa, since they are different games), I just think I had a lot more fun playing through DOOM 3 than I did HL2. I’m going to replay it in a few weeks, and see if my expectations were what got in the way of my enjoyment of the game.

That all said, I’m really enjoying Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines right now, which is based off the HL2 Source Engine.