The Great Ravenholm Debate

CreganTur said:
You can impale Zombies with 2x4's?

I never thought to try that!
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I personally enjoyed repeatedly nailing them with the paint buckets. Then there are funny looking white zombies walking around. Also O2 containers and the gravity gun are a fun combo.
 
In my opinion - the entire Half-life 2 game didn't quite fit into the Half-life plot :confused:

HL1 was a sci-fi action game. Inter dimensional aliens with Black Mesa. Wonderfully entertaining stuff. The second one suddenly sees you in the Combine controlled earth, post world war type scenario that just sucks. :mad:

The story is incoherent and lame at times. It's one of those games where you can't put your finger on where the hell the developer is trying to go with this. What's the point?

The success of HL1 can largely be attributed to one thing (amongst others) = BLACK MESA. The setting was perfect for the story. This City 17 crap is shit. Period. And now even the weapons are bad when compared to HL1. Not enough ammo, easy enemies, etc. The gravity gun is supposed to be the saving grace. It's nice, but it's not the be-all end-all, IYKWIM.

Let's face it, HL1 rocked, HL2 sucks. Six years developing, they should have tried another game rather. Piggybacking a tech demo on HL1's fame just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The engine is great, they should have hired better plot writers.

Pretty post, BTW :D
 
I enjoyed the level, especially the blades that can be thrown to behead multiple zombies. The car traps and fire traps with gas were also cool. I agree that it really didn't fit in well in that location, but I really never thought about it until now. hmmm. That is weird that I follow a game and enjoy it, yet whether it makes sense or not really doesn't seem to catch my attention.


 
I very much enjoyed Half-Life 2. I though it fit well in the series and did justice to the beginning of it all, Half-life 1.

Ravenholm I thought was a great level. Father Gregory and his religious fanaticism combined with a very dark and ominous environment made for a great level. I still remember one part where you are on a roof top and those black head-crabbed zombies attack you. It was great that the pipe on the side of the building shook as the zombie climbed up.

The dash through the cemetery was also cool. The ability to pick up saw blades and launch them at zombies was gruesomely fun.
 
I thought that Ravenholm was interesting...in that it demonstrated, once again, that Valve was making me learn to love their physics engine. I hated the gravity gun...it was a neat idea, and I liked using it every now and again, but it was by far my least favorite weapon in the game. It seemed as though I was forced to use the 'gun to see how things bounced in the game, which isn't why I play games; I play to be entertained, not to see a physic's engine at work. If they wanted to demonstrate their physics, they should have done it in a less intrusive way.

Concerning how "scary" the environment was....I'd already played doom 3, which is hats off better at maintaining a scary environment, in part because it's a consistant theme and atmosphere. HL2's tendency to jump around with the theme and atmosphere resulted in it seeming jumbled and thrown together, IMHO.
 
especially the blades that can be thrown to behead multiple zombies.
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Except that you couldn't actually behead them. No matter where you hit them with the blade, they always fell apart right in the middle. Everytime.

-Dave
 
tikicult said:
Except that you couldn't actually behead them. No matter where you hit them with the blade, they always fell apart right in the middle. Everytime.

-Dave
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I disagree with that. I've shot a zombie close up with a saw-blade, aiming at the neck. The head flew off, the headcrab detatched, and attacked me while the headless corpse fell to the floor.
 
tikicult said:
Except that you couldn't actually behead them. No matter where you hit them with the blade, they always fell apart right in the middle. Everytime.

-Dave
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hmm. I can't even remember what happened now. I only remember that I could throw the blades and it cut through several at a time. I guess I will have to go check that out. It would be disappointing if that was true though. The least they could do is allow for body parts to flail off and even maybe twitch while on the ground. hehe.


 
I honestly enjoyed it more when I chopped the lower half of a zombie off, and he continued his pursuit of me, by dragging himself towards me.
 
That level honestly scared me more then the entire game of Doom 3 did :eek:

I tell you what man, i've never been so close to shitting my pants hearing those zombies clambering up those drainage pipes sitting on a roof waiting for my doom.....
 
obyj34 said:
I personally enjoyed repeatedly nailing them with the paint buckets. Then there are funny looking white zombies walking around. Also O2 containers and the gravity gun are a fun combo.
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Cue Eminem - The Real Slim Shady

*rimshot*
 
IceWind said:
That level honestly scared me more then the entire game of Doom 3 did :eek:

I tell you what man, i've never been so close to shitting my pants hearing those zombies clambering up those drainage pipes sitting on a roof waiting for my doom.....
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I have to fully agree.

Everyone says Doom 3 was scarry, but I cant say it holds a candle to Ravenholm.
 
I found that when I was first getting into the level it made me jump a few times in my chair, however once I got into it, I loved it. My favourite part was when Father Greg was sending the lift over to me and those fast zombies were running up the drainpipes of the building just to have my shotgun pointing right in their face when they got to the top......BOOM......Splat. I was howling the whole damn time. I also must admit I enjoyed playing around with the traps. The thing that always got my heart pumping in HL2 was whenever I had to swim, something about being underwater always freaked me out.



Sejin
 
Wow, I can't believe so many people thought it was scary. Doom 3 had some parts that made me jump but definitely not HL2. My first time through Ravenholm I had a blast nailing head craps and slow zombies with buckets of paint, saws and hooks. To be completely honest I was a little disappointed with the traps in Ravenholm and most of them to be downright obvious and not overly imaginative.
 
Akuma said:
I thought Ravenholm worked very well for HL2. There is some good foreshadowing to it when Alyx says that they don't go there anymore and looks really freaked out. Even if you didn't see the E3 demos, you know you are going there soon.
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Notice how she pauses. Gives YOU (gave me) time to freak out. Hammers home the point, "Damn, something fucked up happened there."

I replayed the character interaction scenes several times, as I enjoy the story bit. It helps my immersion. One time just as she says it I ran madly for the door just to peer crazily at the other side (since I'd already played through I knew nothing bad would happen to me). To my surprise she followed me and had further comments that I would have missed had I not decided to mess around. I forget what she said though

Before this I was quite convinced her pause was purely for dramatic effect, instead of also being a way of allowing plucky players to decide, "well, let's have a look." So convinced that I might have missed out on this part of the game (albeit minor) forever, save for a walkthrough that I might idly glance at, a few years from now. It haunts me :( :D
 
Ravenholm was scarier then the entire game of Doom 3. I about shit my pants when I saw those water pipes clanging with those things screaming up the walls to get me.
 
Half-Life 2 just didn't feel right to me...the production values were top notch on almost everything ('Cept the AI), but everything felt slapped together (Which is confusing for a game that was in development for a freakin' lifetime).

Ravenholm was marred by the lack of variety in enemy models. The suspense is lost when you see three of the exact same enemies coming at you wearing the exact same outfit making the same weak-assed wails that sound as if they were acted out by the developers themselves.

Things like that in addition to the ridiculously long boat-ride and the ending make this a good, but not great, game in my opinion.
 
WickedAngel said:
Things like that in addition to the ridiculously long boat-ride
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Boat ride makes it sound too scenic and tranquil. I had no idea what you meant until I looked up Route Canal/Water Hazard. You should've called it "death drive in a boat", not the placid boat ride. Sounds like a ride at Neverland.
 
I loved Ravenholm. It was scary at first but I learned to love it. However, the abandoned houses with the mega zombies that throw the black headcrabs in Highway 17 were much scarier to me.
 
WSlyce said:
The fast zombies were the worst. I freaked out and spun around trying to find them everytime I heard them.
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it is the first, and last time ive ever truly been scared by a videogame
 
I think I agree with the general concensus here about Ravenholm.


I certainly found it interesting, though I didn't necessarily find it interesting. Things that I particularly noticed and didn't like were:


1. Lack of ammo.
Even if you get perfect shots off, you won't have enough ammo forcing you to use the Grav Gun. I realise that this is entirely intentional, but I just found it annoying. They should have made it that I actively wanted and chose to use the grav gun through some clever level design, rather than forcing it upon me.

2. It's the only level set at night.
And blatantly so. You get a bit of a transition into it. It's evening when you're playing with DOG in the scrapyard bit, and then when you get to Ravenholm it's fully dark. However, when you leave, it's just cuts straight to daylight again for the landmine level. That really stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

3. Definitely out of place with the rest of the game.
It's like they made it as a tech demo level to show off the game engine etc, and then later thought, "hey, let's turn this into a fully fledged level and squeeze it into the game". But frankly, I'm glad they did.

4. Infinite supply of zombies.
It didn't occur all the time, but there was at least one section where they just kept respawning over and over. Especially that fat thing which chucks the black spiders. I hate ANY game that has infinite spawning enemies. It's a lame thing and just serves to annoy.


Overall though, despite these gripes, I like it. It was definitely worth having in the game and served to break things up a bit. Having all the levels set in and around a 'normal' looking city would have got tiresome, and ravenholm certainly broke that up.
 
Ravenholm was like taking a quick step into painkiller, it was very awesome! :)
 
1. Lack of ammo.
Even if you get perfect shots off, you won't have enough ammo forcing you to use the Grav Gun. I realise that this is entirely intentional, but I just found it annoying. They should have made it that I actively wanted and chose to use the grav gun through some clever level design, rather than forcing it upon me.
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Never had a problem with that. Just use the crowbar for 1-hit kills on the headcrabs.
 
I think the lack of ammo was also to get people familiar with the grav gun since it would be your lifeline for the rest of the game.

Being an avid fan of Resident Evil, I loved Ravenholm. I think there was purpose behind playing through it to show the real side of the combine (shelling innocent towns with headcrabs until they are all dead....except the mad priests ;) )

Whoever dug this thread up makes me want to go play through Ravenholm again :cool:

d1town02a00171gz.jpg


couldn't resist :D
 
shadowbreaker513 said:
Never had a problem with that. Just use the crowbar for 1-hit kills on the headcrabs.
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Yeah, I did likewise. I didn't ever actually run out 'cos I'd use the grav gun or crowbar when I started to get low. I'd just rather shoot those little fuckers!
 
I think the lack of ammo was also to get people familiar with the grav gun since it would be your lifeline for the rest of the game.[q/uote]
Am I the only one that didn't find the grav gun useful except for getting bombs off the road in Highway 17, and picking up hoppers? Every now and then I would shoot a couch down a hall to get some combine, but I used shotty/pulse rifle most of the game.
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shadowbreaker513 said:
I think the lack of ammo was also to get people familiar with the grav gun since it would be your lifeline for the rest of the game.[q/uote]
Am I the only one that didn't find the grav gun useful except for getting bombs off the road in Highway 17, and picking up hoppers? Every now and then I would shoot a couch down a hall to get some combine, but I used shotty/pulse rifle most of the game.
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I used it any chance I could to save ammo.
 
The thing I didnt like about the first one was you hardly got to go outside. This game is an A+ caliber game. If it was just an original release (and there was no first half life) I don't see how anyone could have complaints. Beautiful, diverse levels, diverse missions, needs more story (hopefully the expansion will give us that) but I really liked it and was worth my 50 bucks. Not to mention CS Source was nice to have. I couldnt believe I still had my HL cd key sitting around.
 
huxley said:
The thing I didnt like about the first one was you hardly got to go outside. This game is an A+ caliber game. If it was just an original release (and there was no first half life) I don't see how anyone could have complaints. Beautiful, diverse levels, diverse missions, needs more story (hopefully the expansion will give us that) but I really liked it and was worth my 50 bucks. Not to mention CS Source was nice to have. I couldnt believe I still had my HL cd key sitting around.
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I have my Half Life, Counter Strike, Blue Shift, Opposing Force, and Team Fortress keys laying around (Platinum pack gave you one for each) :p
 
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