Meh. Methinks Valve overestimates the desire of gamers. While I’m sure folks will be excited at the release of Half-Life 3 or Episode 3 or whatever the hell they finally publish, the Half-Life franchise is not quite as dominant as it was. Personally, I’d be more excited at the release of a new game engine rather than the game itself. I’ve always found the Half-Life games to be fun but nowhere near worth the hype people apply to them. That’s not to say they’re bad games, but they’re not the ZOMGBESTESTGAMEEVAR!!!!11!! that people seem to treat them as.

Valve does a great job making games that are amazing for their time. Half Life became the templete for the FPS as we know it. Half Life 2 insured that a full physics model would become standard. I think Valve knows that HL3 can’t simply be HL2 but with new features stapled on like AssCreedRev. They can afford to take their time and make it something new, something that will likely become standard, just as the others have done. When you don’t have a publisher riding you to get a sequel out in a two-year time window, you can make sure it’s steeped in the special sauce just right. That’s why I trust Valve to make HL3 more then just a fun ride.

Solo4114, I think it’s rather you who underestimate the Half Life series, both games (HL and HL2) were extremely well received by both gamers and critics. I think they’re lazy **%¤%¤ for not putting out EP3 already, but I have no doubt that Half Life 3 will make a major part of the gaming world a bit wet in the pants when it comes and that it’ll be an experience to play unless they REALLY mess it up which I don’t expect them to do.

It’s unfair to put them in the same boat as ID which haven’t produced any games worthy of mention since the original Doom and Doom 2 more or less (MAYBE Rage, but I’ll wait until that is budget priced to check it out, it’ll hopefully be a finished product by then as well). ID is only good at making engines, Valve makes really cool games imo. I really enjoyed playing L4D and it’s sequel with friends and headsets as well…

Well, here’s the thing.

To me, Half-Life 1 wasn’t that great of a GAME. It was visually really impressive, and it did some cool things that nobody had done at the time (IE: “continous” areas, rather than key-based levels), and it did sort of tell a story interestingly as you played through it. At the time, those aspects of it were revolutionary. But while there were cool set-piece battles, I didn’t think the game itself was mindblowing, even at the time. It was definitely cool, and a nice change of pace, but people treat it as this “OMG the entire universe changed after Half-Life” event, and I just…don’t.

Half-Life 2 was even less of an “innovation,” in my mind because it stuck to the same storytelling techniques that Half-Life 1 ushered in. The in-game storytelling was largely the same. They didn’t really do anything — storytelling-wise — all that differently. What was different was the physics and the graphics, both of which were really impressive.

But then, I thought FarCry was really impressive too — visually and technologically. It was also a crappy, boring game. I distinguish between “impressive tech” and “impressive game.”

By contrast, L4D was an impressive game, to me, even though it used the same Source engine that Valve has been using since 2006. Storytelling-wise it wasn’t exactly fantastic, but the gameplay wasn’t really about the “story.” It was about the “experience,” and I thought the experience was impressively structured and delivered. It was also different from what I’d experienced before, and I was impressed at the ways in which the AI director kept the game experience “cinematic” AND challenging gameplay-wise throughout. That was a far cry from set-piece battles triggered by crossing point XYZ on a map.

I dunno, I just think Half-Life 1 and 2 get treated as these quantum leaps in gaming, in addition to being over-the-moon-fantastic games, and I just don’t see it. I see the first one as doing some innovative things that build on what came before it, rather than TOTALLY REVOLUTIONIZING the genre. I see the second one as doing what the first one did with more spit ‘n’ polish, and adding in a solid game engine that a lot of other people have done a lot of interesting things with. I’m sure Half-Life 3 will be entertaining, and I’m sure it’ll be a solid engine. But as far as it living up to the insane hype people seem to lavish upon Valve games? Nah, probably not. Not for me, anyway.