Wirehead Studios

http://bestof.ign.com/2007/xbox360/20.html

Really, was the fanboy service nessesary?

Saving, replaying and watching replays is not new.

A multiplayer map editor is not new.

I know it's for the Xbox 360, but really those features aren't innovative. Farcry had a map editor and it was for the original Xbox. And saving replays is the oldest gimmick in the game industry.

Really, IGN now has that horrible taste of fanboy website.

And this is why I don't read IGN.  It looks like they're kissing ass to Microsoft over Halo 3, but then Microsoft made the Xbox360 so... naturally you can't rate Microsoft's big budget sequel as anything but the greatest thing since sliced bread, right?  I wonder where their advertising dollars come from on IGN.  Hmm...  Here's a rant for you to back up what you're saying.

Every other review I've read about Halo3 is that it's a great game, but it's not necessarily innovative.  It's pretty standard FPS.  I've not played any of the Halo games, and I'm not out to knock them, but let me tear apart IGN's statements a little bit.


Care to be more specific?


Funny, I remember doing this in DOOM...


Hmm... level editors have been around since Wolfedit.  Coop being competitive?  I think Quake 2 kept track of score in coop.


That's a fanboy statement there.  When was the first time Bungie left someone scrambling to catch up?  Hmm let's see... Id?  Nope.  Valve?  Nope.  Oh wait, we weren't including them were we?

If you want innovative, I can name a few things.  Portal is innovative.  Half-Life 2's HDR system is innovative.  I've heard a lot of Bioshock's gameplay elements are innovative.

Having played 1 and 2 at length and a reasonable bit into 3, none have impressed me in any way, shape or form. Bioshock has a lot of innovative elements (not least of all the game's overall theme), Portal was a joy to play (even though I finished it in one sitting) but Halo is just another example of budget over content. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a self-confessed Sony fanboy. The 360 has some ace games, it's just that for my money H3 isn't one of them.

I hate hype.

Articles like this make me feel old.. None of this is revolutionary unless you started gaming with the release of the original xbox.

I've largely stopped hoping for games that can make me feel like I wasn't just robbed of $50 and 4-8 hours of my life.

Almost any time I see a title that receives some level of acclaim, it's hailed as groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. And to be honest, very few of them are anything beyond derivative or hinge on a single gimmick.

(/rant)

A gimmick, by itself, does not a game make. And ignoring everything that has come before just because it wasn't released this year doesn't do anyone any good.

Though I'm probably wrong there too, just look at how much Madden makes..

While I agree with you that Halo 3's Forge mode is not innovative, it's still uncommon in the console space.  Far Cry: Instincts, Crackdown, and Halo 3 are the only titles I can think of off-hand that have this kind of real-time, multi-player feature.

As for recording gameplay demos, can you think of any other console-based FPS that has this feature?  Furthermore, can you think of any console game that allowed you to send/receive these demos online?  Halo 3 is innovative in this regard because I can't think of a single title in the past that has done this.

Halo 3 is also a leader when it comes to online match-making.  Really, the only console-based FPS's I can think of that beat Halo 3 in terms of server customization are TimeSplitters 3, Unreal Championship 2, and Unreal Tournament 3.

I'm not agreeing with IGN's choice for most innovative design; in fact I dislike the Halo series.  I'm just saying that recognizing a popular game doesn't make you a "fanboy."  It wouldn't be popular if it wasn't doing something right.

One last thing...

The fact that it's taken the console market 14 years to do what you could do easily on a PC game speaks volumes to me about how much lack of innovation there's been in the console market.  It seems that it's just over the last few years that someone's realized, hey, maybe the PC developers did something right?  That's why I've not owned a console since the Sega Genesis.  I want something more than just a video game machine, and the fact that I can't work the bloody controls on them.  Maybe if I had itty bitty fingers, but looking at a modern console controller there's no way I could get my talons around that and use it for anything more than a bludgeon.  Ranting about lack of avian-friendly ergonomics aside, I've just never understood why it is that console makers never thought to do this stuff that's been on the table for well over a decade on the PC side.  Maybe Halo3 is innovative because it's the first to actually do it, but making up for a deficiency well after the fact hardly seems innovative.  It's like finally remembering to put door handles on a car door after they've been on the market for years.

Yeah, maybe on Consoles that's something new, but it's really a very poor excuse for being innovative. It's like saying a napkin is the most innovative napkin to date because it green or something.

Angst: With regards Madden, FIFA, NHL, etc. there is always going to be a demand for updated stats/new kits/players/etc that sports game fans are always going to fork out for this year's update whether or not the game itself has been improved (I'm a Pro Evo fan so I don't count :P). Licensing has a lot to do with this, taking soccer as an example. FIFA has all the real team and player names and kits, whereas Pro Evo doesn't, so it is outsold by FIFA every year despite even by reviewers' standards being the better game.

The thing about the PC is that it's kind of like an expensive Merc. All the interesting bells, whistles and gadgets you find on a big Merc will end up on every other car ten years later. This comes down even to the fundamental things on consoles these days such as HD. The PC has been HD for more than ten years, it just wasn't called HD.

Where the PC has always won over consoles is flexibility.  Sure you can play games on it, but you can also do such things as modding said games, writing, reading the news, communicating with others, buying and selling things online, hacking, viewing naughty material... the list goes on and on.  With the console, you could play games and just play games.  That's fine if that's all you want to do.  I think what's happened, and I think Microsoft and the Xbox probably gets some of the blame for this, is that consoles and PC's are converging a bit in terms of hardware and somewhat in terms of capabilities.  I think that's why you're seeing Carmack talking about multi-platform development so much when it was always PC first with Id.  I can understand this too.  If you're selling a game and you want it to be available on more than one market, you want it to look and play the same on everything so that everyone has the same experience.  It's also games that have driven the computer hardware market.  Nobody needed a 3dFX Voodoo card to run Excell.  They bought them to play Quake 2.  I don't think the console will ever replace the PC as a multi-function tool, nor do I think PC's will replace consoles as dedicated gaming systems for people who just want to play games, but I think you'll see more and more of consoles that can do some things that used to be exclusive to the PC as the result of this convergence.

I'm pleased to see such distaste towards the Halo series.  The games never caught on with me and I'm annoyed by the constant praise the games keep getting.  They claim to be so innovative, yet to me, all I see are blatant rip-offs of nearly every FPS that came before it.

Halo is only innovative and revolutionary in a console speaking sense (as some of you have touched on).  Its brought things already widely available on PC to the XBOX and the general console market (online deathmatch, now apparently map editing and demo recording).  Whoop-de-doo, good for you.  Those who aren't computer savy will be blown away, and the rest of us will be frowning.

Um... I'm not sure but can other games let you pause and move your view around during a replay? That might be what they're talking about when they say "innovative"...

If not it blows that it had to be halo to introduce such a thing...

Yeah, I know that map makers are "new" to consoles, those are just gimmicks to excuse a mediocre game. I actually espected something innovative like , say, GAMEPLAY. OR DESIGN. OR SOMETHING ACTUALLY IMPORTANT.

Driver.

PS1.

Circa 1999.

:ninja:

Ah, good... I dislike halo too much to want to admit it has something new

I see alot Halo sucks here but tbh i do believe Halo 1 was actually good. at that time it brought Co-op play which almost doesnt exsist on PC anymore since PC is more to either SP or deatmatch type of games and MMORPGS.

With my IRL mate we had some rly good times with Halo.

In my opinion it doesnt matter if the game is to XBox 360,PS3, wii or PC i prefer to let the game talk for itself not taking side on what hardware it runs on.

However i do believe the "magic" that existed into Halo 1 was lost in the follow up and i have no idea how Halo 3 runs.

Also ppls who doesnt believe shoot em up works on a console should try metriod prime 3 to wii :)
Tho i have to agree the mouse is a far better tool compared to the analogic sticks on the normal consoles like xbox/ps3 .

Coop play isn't dead on the PC, the developers just aren't writing it in.  I played OpenCoop for Doom 3 with Visimar a while back, and it was great fun.  Q2 had coop, Serious Sam is well known for its coop... there's games that have it, just not any new games featuring it out of the box.  I don't know why, whether they just don't want to bother writing it in or if it's not seen as a major selling point.  I'll take the easy route and blame marketing.

It's not that I don't believe that FPS games work on console (try Black - highly recommended), it's just that consoles these days have USB mouse/keyboard support and yet practically no one is making use of them. The only exceptions I can think of are the PS2 ports of HL1 and UT (can't speak for the PS3 version of UT3 yet) and for me the developers are seriously missing a trick.

Oh yes, and the Dreamcast version of Q3.

Coop is one of my favorite methods of play, but barely any games have it.  D3 didn't really run at playable rates on my old computer.  I've tried more than once to play through the single player on my current PC, but always end up encountering issues with stuttering and freezes.  I've gone through all the tweak guides with no luck.  Q4 did a very similar thing to the freezes I experienced in D3, but I was able to recover it without having to kill it.

Anyway, Q2 coop is one of my favorites.  "I beat the hell out of you all by myself'; this time I have friends, muahahaha".

Q2 coop is fun, so long as you don't get a Rambo in the squad.  I like having intuitive players who don't mind sharing a little ammo and actually pay attention to where everyone else is and stick together as a unit.  That's when it's fun because the Strogg don't stand a chance.  No fun when you get one idiot who wants to just charge and kill everything as quick as he can and not, well, cooperate with anyone else.

Now regarding Doom 3, I don't know what your hardware specs are, but I haven't experienced stuttering.  For reference, my specs are:

Opteron 175 Dualcore 2.2 GHz (overclocked to 2.6 GHz)
2x BFG GeForce 7600GT OC in SLI, 256 MB per card
1 GB PC3200 DDR
Windows XP Professional SP2
Latest video drivers

I can run Doom 3 at 1280x1024 with image_anisotropy 8, no multisamples, all the effects turned on, High quality, and maintain 60 FPS with vsync enabled except in a few spots with this configuration.  If your hardware's at least this good you should be able to play without any stuttering.

Well, like I said, I can play q4 without a problem except the same freezes.  Basically what happens is the further I get into the game (regardless of whether it's a fresh boot -- which I usually have to do after playing the game for too long) the more often it freezes.  When it freezes, the screen goes black and doesn't come back.  I have to end the process.  In Q4 it does this as well, but it only lasts for maybe 30 seconds then I hear the sound come back.  So, while the screen is out, I bring down the console and carefully type in vid_restart which restores the video.  I could just ALT+Enter but then I have to wait twice as long to go back into full screen.  It's an irritating problem, and I don't know that there is a fix for it.  I tried straight off the DVD which ever version that was, and then I tried the latest patch some time later to give it another shot.  The patch definitely smoothed out some problems, but the major one still remained.  The further into it I got the more often they were happening, and having to end the process (creating that wonderful computer lag) every few minutes kills any interest in wanting to play.

Q4 was definitely a big leap forward in my eyes, since the game was entirely playable with the occasional freezing (but recoverable).

I have an opteron 165 (I've tried stock and my normal overclock -- same result).
x800pro
1gb ram

I thought you just meant the game hitched and stuttered, I did not realize it was a full blown crash.  Dr. Jones has been having a similar problem with Team Fortress 2.  The only consistency I can see between this is you both have ATI video hardware.  I don't know if perhaps it's the ATI drivers, hardware, or if it's entirely coincidental, but the problem sounds very similar.  I don't want to be too quick in blaming the video hardware or drivers as I know there's plenty of people playing Doom 3 and Q4 fine on ATI hardware.  With that setup you should be able to run both games quite well.  Maybe check into your memory timings or else there's some background program causing the problem?  You might want to look at your boot processes.  Sometimes a memory resident antivirus or security program can cause games to fold like that.

The biggest problem I had with Q4 was with r_smp 1 it liked to freeze on certain cinematics.  It was a well known issue and never got patched, which I find kind of irritating.  Doom 3 occasionally froze on me, but only a few times that I can remember.  Otherwise both games were extremely stable for me.

I've tried:
Clean install
Lax memory timings
Several official ATI drivers and Omega drivers
Many, many tweaks to the game itself.

I consider myself an expert in computers, both hardware and software functionality.  I don't use any anti-virus.  I have a hardware firewall and heavily tweaked xp and 2k installations.  I don't have any simple viruses or more difficult to remove viruses (the one's the anti-viruses can't even detect such as well designed kernel hooks).

I considered the possibility that one of my "tweaks" could be preventing the game from running properly and did a clean XP SP2 install on another partition.  This resulted in the same situation.  From there, I retried all the things I tried on my tweaked installs with the same conclusion.  So I resolved that there must be some hardware incompatibility -- the combination of my hardware + Doom 3 = crash.

I believe I used r_smp 1 without any problems in Q4 other than the freeze then recover which was present in both smp enabled and disabled.  Doom 3 with r_smp had big issues I believe, but I thought they did address it in the last patch.  I could be thinking of Q4 though.

It's not a big deal, and I feel Tech 4 was more stable with Q4.  I don't believe the engine itself was well designed, due to the tweaks almost always needed to be applied out-of-the-box to both D3 and Q4.  Many people have reported crashes and the like, so I don't feel like this is something out of the ordinary.  I know people who have had no problems with it, and I know people who have had the opposite.

I suppose I should borrow ET:QW off someone to test whether it still remains, but as I said it isn't that big a deal.

If you've done all that I'd say there's definitely some kind of hardware glitch with the game and I would agree with your assessment.  It could be combination of motherboard, CPU, and video all working together.  I know I've seen some strange hardware behavior.  Just recently one person I know had all sorts of system slowdowns, and was ready to ditch Windows and reinstall (her solution for everything it seems...), blaming unknown, undetected snoopware, etc (also rather paranoid).  I told her to try removing her old modem which had a habit of working loose in the PCI slot.  Voila, system runs better.  I've seen bad network cards cause a system to load the CPU at 100% for several minutes at a time.  I lost a Windows 98 install from a motherboard having a chipset go flaky and deciding that the drive no longer needed a directory structure.  My old 486 system lost a compressed volume when the old hard drive (a Maxtor - first and last one I've owned) decided it did not like the new Connor hard drive that moved in next door.  It tolerated it afterward only if it was the master.  Talk about bigoted hardware...  As complicated as modern computer hardware is, and as buggy as the software is, I'm surprised it doesn't crash more than it already does.  I can only imagine the horror stories from people who repair them for a living.

As for myself, the only problem I have is an annoying but consistent one.  Randomly on any boot one of two things will happen.  Upon launching a game for the first time, I will either succeed or suffer a blue screen with a Stop 0000007F, which is a divide by zero.  If the game launches, I will have no trouble that boot with any other games and I will not have this error.  It only happens the first time, and only with games.  I thought it might be Nvidia's drivers being crabby but driver changes did nothing, and it happens in Zdoom as well, which uses a software renderer, which rules out OpenGL as a cause.  I've also tried removing the overclock from my hardware and it still occurs.  I've stress tested the system with Orthos for 9 hours at a go, plus memtest for about 12 passes and it's rock solid stable other than this one problem.  I'm guessing it's either a video buffer overflow when it's trying to hand off video modes, or else some problem with the sound, but who knows.  As for my experience with computers...  I predate them.  I don't consider myself an expert, though I've touched about everything from an old Texas Instruments up to what I'm on now.  I'm certain both of these problems have a cause and some solution, just probably not one that's readily acceptable or accessible to either of us.

That is a very interesting problem.  Even the software renderer causes this?  Have you tried another OS?  If I remember correctly, 2kpro (my preferred OS) doesn't the part of the OS that deals with video and audio whereas XP does.  As I'm sure you know since you have to deal with the error on your computer, the 0x0000007F doesn't necessarily mean divide by zero, but I'm assuming you want me to infer that the first param is null.

You mentioned testing with memtest86, so I'll bring up something.  I've had two cases of a bad stick of memory.  One was my uncle's and memtest quickly exposed that.  The other was one of mine I had a few years ago.  I was having problems with the system it was in, and did my basic testing including memtest.  It ran 24 hours without an error.  As I continued to eliminate possibilities, I eventually got down to the memory.  I tried using one stick, and got the error immediately.  Then switch to the other stick of the pair, and the error wouldn't manifest.  Do I know what was physically wrong?  No, but after I discovered that it would run on the other stick, I tested each stick in all the dimm slots.  This still came out as the one stick causing the crash, and the other not.  The sticks are a pair and "identical", but obviously one of them was different than the other in that it did not function properly.  So memtest couldn't find this problem.

If it is a divide by zero, then I believe the majority rules that it is due to memory corruption at some level.

I stated I was an expert to avoid the possibility of irritating scoldings I find to be attracted frequently to statements like "I don't use an anti-virus".  I consider myself an expert in that I have extensive knowledge and experience in the field of "fixing" computers.  This is often software related, but as you mentioned can be the old lose cable/card, bent transistor, hardware failures, etc.  I am not an expert in microchip engineering; so when it gets to the point that hardware is not functioning properly, with no naked-eye-visible problems -- such as in the case of that stick of ram, I hit the limit of my knowledge and capabilities.

I was going to make a sort of intellectual joke regarding the last sentence of your post, but I figured I'd just say I concur, lol.  The only reason I thought of doing this was because someone mentioned it recently in a discussion I was having about relative and absolute truth and logic.

The full stop error is Stop 0000007F 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x0000000 0x0000000, which is indeed a divide by zero.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137539

I do have an alternate Windows 2000 install set up on another hard drive, and I do have paired memory, though dropping one stick would put me at 512 K - not fun, but testable anyway.  Perhaps when I'm feeling adventurous I'll see about nosing into it.  It's Corsair memory so if it fails it's lifetime warranty.  If it proves to be OS-specific, then I'll have to live with it I suppose.  Then again, I've been wanting more RAM in this system so perhaps I might look into trying to find a deal on a 2 GB XMS DDR set after I get some more cash available.

Regarding experience level, I understand what you mean there.  It's good to know where someone is knowledge-wise so a common frame of reference for discussion can be established, hence my own posting.  :slippy_thumb:

I should also note that we're now way :offtopic:

Precisely!

Indeed, although the posts that I have made in this thread have all been "Off topic" as far as in response to the OP.  I will say I think Halo is mostly hype and agree with many of the views mentioned in this thread.  I've played one of them a while ago and didn't care at all for it.

In fact, the thing I like least about many console advocates (and I don't mean the classics like Atari, NES, and so on) is that they think that current games and consoles are revolutionizing games.  I might say Wii has done some interesting things, but Halo?  PC gaming itself has always taken a backseat to console gaming as far as user-base and popularity, which go hand in hand.  Halo was just taking things that PC gamers had been enjoying for many years and putting them on the console.  All of a sudden, Halo is the revolutionary miracle for which gamers have been so desperately waiting.

It's the ignorance that gets to me... always is.  I don't know the Halo series too well, but to me it just seems like more of the same.  The only difference is that now, the people who knew nothing about online gaming 5 years ago have the simplicity of a little box that connects them to other players (astounding!) in THE best(!) game.  There are more gamers, more online gamers, and more console online gamers than there ever were before, so it accounts for the large user-base.  Align that with biased reviews/hype such as what IGN spews and you have a perfect recipe for financial success.

For me, the last real classic system was probably the SNES, with a few exceptions on the N64 and PS.  I like a couple games on the PS2, but they are new breed.  How many games are released today that have the simplicity and addiction factor of classics like Galaga and Centipede?  Maybe it's because I don't play consoles really at all anymore that I don't see classics like this, but to me it seems like games today are far more focused on a once through type system.  Half-life 2 was good and made me want to play the first one just to know more about the story, but I played it once along with HL2 Ep1 (got them together) and once again when Ep2 came out.  After that, I can't just keep playing, even at a rate of once a month.

Or perhaps I'm aging and wont to the "classics" -- as defined by me.

In the end though, I don't like halo.  It's slow, cumbersome, and not like quake, hehe.  In that there is no maybe: I am definitely accustomed to quake and prefer it's style of play for first person shooters.  That ruins me and biases me toward other things.  Although, I should mention I did play through the first Splinter Cell and enjoyed it, yet when I tried to play through it again just recently, I just couldn't find the interest to bare it.

Maybe that will set this back on topic.

Heres how I see it.  Doom and Quake to us PC Fanatics are the Goldeneye and Halo for Console-Only Gamers.  The problem for me is that Doom and Quake came first.

(I'm not bashing Goldeneye here.  I actually love that game.  I find it more innovative than Halo ever will be.  And thats hilarious, because despite how badass Goldeneye truly is, it was merely intended to be a run-of-the-mill movie/videogame marketing tie in.  Look how far its gone.  Theres a gigantic controversy surrounding the rights between Nintendo and Microsoft/Rare to re-release the game.  But I digress.)

But it all comes down to personal experience.  Some didn't have a computer when Doom exploded onto the scene, and even if they did by 1996, they may not have had the hardware to run Quake.  So their first experiences with First Person Shooters happened to be taking control of James Bond.  Theres nothing really wrong with that.  Its a great game to introduce newcomers to FPS's in my opinion.

Halo just never offered anything that made me say "HOLY SHIT I NEED TO GET HALO NOW!!!"

i beated halo 3 in normal. then in heroic. and i can tell you that its just an average FPS. In fact, i thing that it deserves a 6/10 because:

BAD:

*its not innovative, forge thingie came since MARATHON (like 1999)
*its short (like 4 days, 3 hours per day to complete it 2 times),
*its a PAIN IN THE ASS some times (Rampant its NOT FUN, NOT EVEN CLOSE),
*the AI of the marines is horrible (dont let them drive anything, JUST DONT, they crash w/ trees , the tanks kill *you everytime cuz the damn driver doesnt move by no reason and stuff like that.
*The alien weapons look like mattel toys (cmon they are actually PINK, PURPLE AND LIGHT GREEN, just put a *barbie logo and you have a barbie girl's hair dryer), The game difficulty curve its horrendous (the beginning its *hard, the mid is average, before the end its a nightmare and the ending plays itself.). The final boss cant be a *final boss...its a damn floating ball that fires you a single beam that even a guy in a wheelchair can dodge. *Besides the stolen character "Sarge" (from Predator) gives you a BFG thingie that kill it in 3 strikes. OMG THAT WAS SO DAMN HARD.
*You spect that doomgu...master chief at least show his face...but no, bungie just left a fanboy message.
*You will die a lot because the explosions came from the really NOWHERE, and the snipers that kill ya w/ one shot.
*The headcra...i mean the Flood its another pain in the ass, in Rampant they troops are INFINITE, specially the things that fire needles.
*Some weapons are SO overpowered like the hammer and the alien sword (one hit KO)
*The graphics are not the big thing, i think that bioshock has better graphics.
*The stuff w/ Cortana is absurd. The Chief fell in love w/ an AI? hell thats weirdo...
*The stolen stuff is amazing: Invisibility like Predator, The Sarge of Predator, Master Chief is Doomguy cmon, the flood are headcrabs for god sake.

GOOD:

*Multiplayer its actually fun
*Drive the Scorpion its fun, cuz U kill stuff so easy, and the explosion are well made
*The vehicles are ok, good number w/ Motorcicles, Jeeps, Planes and stuff
*The grenade variety its fine: Frag, Energy, Sticky and Napalm

As my Friend here (That managed to track me down ??) said, Halo is just average. What makes me go like this  :wall: is the fact that "important" websites as IGN say it's like the sh*t.

And, again, Map-making (yeah, map-making, because "Forge mode" sounds just SOOO lame) is not new. Even if you're a console-only player, that's not new, just stolen (like most [if not all] Halo). The game is something so clich?d that Fanboys that say "m45t4h ch|3|= 15 l13k teh r0c|<z0rz" (Translation: "Master Chief is, like, the best thing ever")

People keep saying that the multiplayer excuses Halo and that, is one of the best there is. But if the multiplayer excuses the game, then it shouldn't have a Campaign mode.

As the big Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw fetishist I am, I will say "Microsoft was probably, paying someone to stand behind them (the reviewers) jamming needles full of dopamine every half-hour".

I played Halo 3 multiplayer on my friend's 360 for a month or so around Christmas, but ultimately I just got bored of using the controller, which is such a piece of crap compared to the good old mouse/ keyboard. Ultimately the game's ok, but really, it's just Quake but much slower and with different graphics. And because it's so slow, whoever gets the first shot in wins, basically. Kind of boring compared to having a room full of people in Quake all blasting away at each other for ages with rocket launchers.

As far as I'm concerned there's been a serious lack of innovation in FPS games since Quake, really. As far as I'm concerned Action Quake 2 is probably the only really innovative deathmatch game since then. That said it doesn't really matter if the game itself is cool e.g. Quake 2, or Generations.

As for Half-Life 2, well I liked the graphics, but the lack of variety sucked, especially compared to HL 1. From what I recall, 60 to 70 percent of the enemies in the entire game were all the same type- grunts. The levels, too, got really repetitive. Yet surprise, surprise, people called it "The best game ever" anyway.

Half-Life 2 by itself does seem lacking in the variety department.  My biggest gripes were lack of "fun" weapons, low ammo capacities, bad grenade physics (I hate not being able to time my throws) and lack of interesting enemies, plus the airboat sequence was too long, or at least, too long without the gun and too short once you got it.  I understand the usefulness of the gravity gun, but it seemed like it was relied on TOO much.  I missed the Tau cannon, and things like laser trip mines and satchel charges.  And snarks!  And the Gluon Gun!  The Xen monsters were overall just more interesting.  I think Black Mesa was, too.  The highlight of the game, to me, was when you got control of the antlions going into Nova Prospekt.  I liked being the one with the endless supply of minions for a change!

The episodes do add more depth to the game.  I'd say without Episode 1 and Episode 2, HL2 is kind of bland.  With the episodes it really fleshes out the game.  I think HL2 NEEDS the episodes to really complete it.  It may seem strange to a lot of people, but episodic play is NOT new.  Remember Wolfenstein 3d?  How about Doom?  Those were episodic in nature, just not incremental in their release or engine updates and changes.

I will never agree that HL2 is "the best game ever".  Everyone has a different opinion of what that is, and the fanboys will always argue about it so why bother?