BlameThePixel!

don't get me wrong here, the game kicked the shit out of every other shooter I've ever played along the lines of gameplay, but that story line was HORRIBLE

I've not played the first one, but I know enough about it to know sort of what was going on. my complaint with HL2 is that the entire story line can (rather accurately) be described as "ZOMG BAD GUY KILL HIM" or if you want to go into details, I picked this much up: there is a bad guy, he's the head of an evil organization out to rule the world and make them zombies or some such. he's in league with some random alien things. he's trying to make the world a better place in a hitler-esque genocide routine, but instead of merely killing, he's transforming people into some sort of genetic alteration of the human species. he must be stopped, kill him....now, this wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for the fact that up until an hour ago I didn't know ANY of this aside from "ME NO LIKE BAD MAN! ME KILL!"

and then at the end I'm swept away from the brink of death by some time-god guy (who I assume must have been introduced in the first game as something significant)....talk about anti-climactic!

The story is fine, you really need to play halflife 1.

The reason why it gets .. bleh is because Valve made the game so your in the eyes and head of the main charater throughout the entire game. What you see and know is what gordon sees and knows.

The guy at the end is G-man, your boss used to hire you for jobs like this (old halflife games) and when the time is right, he picks you out and teleports you into some... odd world and has a 'meeting'. The game ends because gordons time has ended, but saying ended is wrong, because when his next job arises, g-man will 'wake him up' for it.

Theres newer halflife 2 expansions out but I can't play it because they wont come out for xbox...

Anyways, if the game continued where gordon and alyx were standing in the last part... they would have been both crushed by the falling pillar thingy infront, along with the singularity sphere explosion thingy


...and the bad guy... well, dunno but whats wrong with that? i mean the guy set a device that stopped all humans reproductive cycles and massive propoganda about an incinvible living (no death, evolution, etc.) when really hes Breen trying to give earth to the combine* (new planet for them, hence the ocean waters all drained..

Valve thought up a somewhat rich story for it's HL games, however, since you never leave Gordon's body since he enters Black Mesa, it isn't just delivered to you on a plate - a lot of it is in seemingly unrelated character dialogues, various "real-world" advertisements, and even newspapers. This is, by far, the most compherensive description of the HL storyline there is. As you will see, there is much, much more depth to the game than you think - it's considered that the HL games have the best storyline FPS games ever had...

HL2:E1 isn't out till june

If you want to read up on the plot, try wikipedia. There's a lot of info there.

Xen is where the zombies and vortigaunts and stuff come from. The combine are some big multi-dimensional empire that control a lot of stuff (not from Xen), and took over earth in the time that Gordon Freeman isn't around. They use headcrabs as weapons, but they're sstill 'enemies' of the zombies.

G-man is mysterious and unexplained.

This page is probably most useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_%28Half-Life_2%29

edit: yeh I was writing that post for like 10 minutes, started writing before ember posted.. heh

I agree with Pio, play the first Half-Life.

Over the next 3 episodes (codename: aftermath), all will be explained about the G-Man, Combine, Breen and Gordon's dissapearance between game 1 and 2.
All we can all do, is just wait to see when and how.

meh, I guess I'm playing HL1 now ...

It's out tomorrow! Which is June....Oh.

For those who have Episode 1 will agree with me on this.... WOW! Can't wait for episode 2! What an ending!

I just finished it about 5 mins ago prior to this post. If you haven't got it, buy it!

I've completed the whole episode in one sitting, and damn, it was as good, if not better than the original game, which was over 3 times longer.. Except, perhaps, that this episode has as many zombies as the original game had combine soldiers...

Spoiler (Click to Expand)


Looks like that unlike the SiN Episodes crap, Valve's EP1 is a fantastic first part of the episodic trilogy. I'm damn sure gonna get EP2 when it comes out!

Spoiler (Click to Expand)

Spoiler (Click to Expand)

well you have to finish the game to do that (nice spoiling btw). And you can rewind that one .

You can also now download it through the Media tab in Steam.

Also on sites such as Filefront and 3DGamers.

yea, it's the game of the year ^^

Hmmm half life 2, hmmmmmm good game, but prefere Far Cry

Ainsley *respect*