With its heavy 1984 allusions and authoritarian post-Soviet Eastern European dystopia setting, is Half-Life 2 devious anticommunist propaganda? Discuss
With its heavy 1984 allusions and authoritarian post-Soviet Eastern European dystopia setting, is Half-Life 2 devious anticommunist propaganda? Discuss
It had a much, much, darker tone. Might get some flack for saying but I prefer the prototype to the finished product, but retail HL2 is not bad by any means. It's easily one of the best fps games of all time. Sadly though, there was more money to be had with Steam, hence why Valve is known for it's digital release platform and not really games anymore.
Alyx was genuinely the best game I've ever played. I absolutely adore that game and it was 100% worth the price of a quest 2 to play it . Valves been gone for a while but they seem to have a lot in the pipeline right now and some big plans for VR in particular. The steam deck is basically a stepping stone for a standalone VR headset capable of playing triple a titles. Either way I rather they continue how they are than become another publicly traded shit hole of a studio like so many others have become.
Yeah it feels like Alyx is finally that mythical "good" VR game.
I have to imagine Microsoft tries to send some lackeys with increasingly bigger briefcases full of money to Gaben's house every couple of years
I do wish they’d show a little more concern for their bread and butter platform. Steam is stable and usable, but basically hasn’t changed in years. It feels like every feature they add just stagnates. Review system has been the same for a decade, “early access” has become a near-meaningless term, client browser has always sucked, etc. I agree that it could be worse, but it seems odd that it’s not way better.
At some point if you aren't wanting to grow any bigger you're going to have a lot of stuff like that fall through the cracks. I'd rather have a stable working platform than something that's constantly reinventing itself and therefore breaking itself. It's pretty amazing how much stuff valve manages to keep running considering how small they really are. Definitely better than the chasing non stop growth bullshit the rest of the industry is about. Early access is probably my biggest pet peeves with steam at this point. Definitely agree with that.
It’s tough because I agree with you. It’s a solid platform and has been for a while. I don’t want them to mess with it too much and risk turning it into a pile of trash. That said, it’s because it’s so solid that I wish they’d spend more effort on it. I don’t want them to add for the sake of adding, I want them to spend more effort refining their existing features. I don’t want more I want better.
I just adore the character writing in HL2 and I'm not sure we would've gotten that tone in a darker game
Probably not.