I'm not a person who usually plays FPS, but when I first tried, I did it with Half-Life 2. I think I couldn't have picked a better option. The atmosphere and story got hold of me very soon in the game, and the good level design kept me going. Later on I bought Half-Life, as I heard frequently in the past years that it was a very good game. I was prepared for lesser graphic detail, and feared that the levels would look more the same than as they look in HL2. Not so! the environments were well developed and the graphics detailed (thanks too to the downloadable High Definition pack). The levels were very well developed and varied, even though most of the game takes place in one facility. A recommendation from me!
This October, the Orange Box was released. Containing Half-Life 2, plus Episode One and Two (besides two other smaller games). While the episodes are a bit short on length, the content that is there is better developed than in Half-Life 2 (HL2 had a bit slow mid-game play)
Episode Two is excellent. I feared, after seeing previews, that it would be too much cruising around in the forest in the car and battling the newly introduced Hunters. This is actually only a small part of the game. The linear levels are still there (nothing wrong with that, I usually don't like it when I have to keep backtracking), but the fact that they are linear is better masked. Antlions are no longer a nuisance (killing them used to be a waste of munition, as their numbers were always infinite), but now you come to enjoy battling them. The Combine no longer rely on their world dominance, but have become tricky and very dangerous. There is more emotion, and NPC's get more meaning to the story.
So... has anyone else played a game in this series?
