Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game

Comments

• isyasad@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  truly dull sections - yes I’m looking at you the vehicle sections … makes playing through HL2 a slog. Just a few hours in, I didn’t want to play any more. I was done.

  Totally agree with this. HL1 is one of my favorite games ever but HL2 was just boring. I tried it a few times and never finished. Opposing Force and Blue Shift are my Half Life 2 and Half Life 3.

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• ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  As someone who hates open-world ubisoft style games, I’m personally not much of a fan of HL2 either. I tried it multiple times at different points in my life and each time found it to feel like a slog that I end up giving up on a few hours in.

  I enjoyed the 1984 aspects of the world at first, but I ultimately can’t get past how bullet spongy enemies are. Virtually every weapon feels extremely impotent except the revolver, which has very limited ammo. I began to dread every encounter with enemies because it rarely felt fun to fight them.

  On my last playthrough I cheated and gave myself infinite revolver ammo, which helped me get farther than before, but even then I was struggling to push onward after a certain point, just because it felt like endless waves of enemies being thrown at me with some mildly enjoyable physics puzzles tossed in between them.

  Never felt a connection with any of the characters, and without that the gameplay itself just becomes repetitive to me, I stop having fun, and stop.

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• fartsparkles@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Half-Life was the same. The game doesn’t spoon feed you a narrative, the same way real life doesn’t have a narrator (at least one outside of your head).

  You need to pay attention to your surroundings, listen in to NPCs talking, read posters on the wall, etc to piece together the story.

  It was and is one of the cooler ways to do storytelling in my opinion. Cutscenes etc are fine but for a first person game, I love the immersion of the story happening around you rather then being loredumped on you while you’re agency is taken away from you.

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  • Auster@thebrainbin.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Agreed. And in this line of more subtle storytelling, from the games I played from the franchise, if anything, it took all the way to Portal 2 for some things to start making sense.

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• MurrayL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.

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• LiveLM@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Idk, of all the ways you could criticize Ubisoft, dragging this random guy just because he didn’t care too much for HL2 (and then took the time to write down his thoughts instead just going “game bad 👎”) feels silly.

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• Chozo@fedia.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I have to agree with him, honestly. HL2 was novel for its time, but if you're playing it for the first time in 2026 then yeah, it really doesn't hold up to modern game experiences. I also dislike games that end ambiguously or on cliffhangers, and the lack of closure provided from sequel-bait endings like HL2's can be annoying to people who just want to play a complete story. I want to see it through to the end and get the feeling that my actions had any sort of consequence to the world, and HL2 really doesn't provide that.

  And narratively, the fact that Gordon is a silent protagonist really doesn't make the player feel like they're a real part of that world, and rather they're just going along for an on-rails carnival ride. The player has no real agency to affect anything that isn't a part of the singular route offered by the game. This would be okay if it was a role-playing game, and the player is intended to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, but HL2 is a wholly linear game where characters just bark commands at you from start to finish.

  Honestly, for being a negative review, I think he was very fair about it. It's an important part of gaming history, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great experience for modern players.

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  • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    HL2 has a ton of story, but it isn’t spelled out in cutscenes or written down in item descriptions. It’s discussed by NPCs and inferred from the environment. You experience it all in a first person frame, without third person cutscenes or by asking someone to exposit at you.

    You’re a person in the world and nobody will be the explaining the concept of lightbulbs or the where the combine came from or how the city was built. But you can absolutely find out more about that in the game.

    But yes, we all hate the cliffhanger.

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  • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah I played it for the first time last year and I couldn’t really get into it. Gave up a few hours in.

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• carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  is the time shown on steam reviews accurate? cause i’d guess that it takes more than 12 minutes for a casual player to finish half-life 2

  in fact i checked and the world record in speedrunning is around 36 minutes lol

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  • DeadDigger@lemmy.zip ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    Lots of mods for older games circumvent steam, so steam does not know about the game running. Famous example was Skyrim and Skyrim script extender. If this is the case with mmod idk

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  • dosse91@lemmy.trippy.pizza ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I have some similar reviews with 0 hours because I usually play a cracked version of the game and then buy it if i like it just to support the dev. Maybe that’s what was going on here.

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    • carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      that makes sense. maybe the mod they installed causes steam to not count the hours.

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• Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not to play the devils advocate but they do have an argument. Not in the physics point because physics haven’t been done to death so that part of Half-life 2 IMO is still fresh. But the rest of Half-life 2 can be dull and boring and nonsensical if played today. Half-life 2 was such a cultural shift that everything great about it has been dissected, analyzed and improved upon wherever possible.

  Much like Half-life 1 the things that made the game great are industry standard now. You’re used to the greatness so all you see are the flaws. The boat section is too long, the car section is poorly paced, the story is too cryptic, the list probably goes on. But anyone who played it at launch knows how fucking sick the game is because there was nothing else like it.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Friends of mine who played at two different points far after launch still found it to be just as great, even if the physics and facial animations were no longer best in class.

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    • PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I personally played it some time after Portal 2, probably 2015 or so. I found it great, particularly as far as lore and pacing are concerned. Sure, there are bits that drag, characters that aren’t well written, and plot/lore details that are too ambiguous, but I’d much rather that than hand-holdy, surface-level plot of most similar shooters, or plot told through YouTube videos and flavor text like many modern shooters. IMO, its still one of the best at what it does, and its still a personal favorite for it.

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I tend to agree with this. I had given up on PC gaming by 2004 so did not play HL2 until the Orange Box on Xbox in 2007 and my reaction was “Jesus this is boring!”

    I’ve tried to replay it a couple of times since then, most recently on Steam Deck, but it just doesn’t click with me and I give up around the Canals.

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• FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Bro spent hours playing HL 2 and then had to turn on godmode? Does he only have 1 hand or something? What happened?

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  • acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    0.2 hours to be exact.

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    • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Ah good catch, that means they lied as well.

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  • Bbbbbbbbbbb@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I did that for Control when I played that, I was just ready to be done. Im guessing by every other part of the review the person was also just ready for the game to end

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• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The bridge crossing level and using the crossbow to crucify combine soldiers were about the best parts of the game as I remember it.

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• RandomStickman@fedia.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Reading the comments aged me more than anything

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• artwork@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not only the author of the post frame the ineffably marvelous Ubisoft for their Assassin’s Creed only, or the people in the organization who are not even related to the case, and for literally unknown reason, but also the author of the review feels like a disrespectful bigot who has a bad time enough to inscribe their hatred into someone’s effort.

  Such a deep sorrow some people do not care about their actions… and ruin this world in hatred and utter, disgusting unfairness…

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  • MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Stanning for Ubisoft isn’t the look you think it is.

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    • artwork@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Assassin’s Creed Odyssey	Watch_Dogs 2
      Image	Image

      // Image source: Personal backups of screenshots

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  • Agrivar@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Dear lord, I actually hope you used AI to write that nonsense.

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    • artwork@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I never use LLM except for pentesting or experimental/medicine.
      Meanwhile, I am sorry to know that you found it nonsense.

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