Why is Half-Life 2 considered the best game of all time by many?

Why is Half-Life 2 considered the best game of all time by many?
People say it was revolutionary, but it wasn't even the best game in its year of release

>VTM Bloodlines
>phenomenal freedom of role playing by today's standards
>phenomenal writing by today's standards
>phenomenal voice acting by today's standards
>every single line of dialogue is rewritten if you play as a malkavian
>level design is entirely different if you play as a nosferatu
>no inconsistencies withing the story
>one of the rare games where the ending is good
>hasn't aged like HL2 which seems like a shitty corridor shooter in this day and age
youtube.com/watch?v=kSFtnVGSY00

>freedom of role playing
>several stats are literally useless after a certain point where they forgot to write in any options that utilize it

vtmb is unfinished and really bad at points.
Painfully bad.

And why are you even compairing Hl2 and VTMB? They're both incredibly different games outside shared engine

Bloodlines is possibly one of the most overrated games of all time.

HL2 want revolutionary, its engine and technical features were. VTMB itself is proof of that because it was built on HL2's engine

Learn your shit sometime

>phenomenal freedom of role playing by today's standards
lmao

>every single line of dialogue is rewritten if you play as a malkavian

yeah but vast majority of npc replies aren't

>one of the rare games where the ending is good
debatable

Not really considering it's a cult classic and no normie has ever heard of it

Nice hyperbole though

The engine was revolutionary for the time. Half-Life 2 was basically a showcase for the engine.

The Physics, object buoyancy in water etc.

It's the same engine.
VTMB is built on Source, an outdated version of source at that.

Bloodlines was a case of great idea, horrible execution, it didn't help that the game had so many bugs at release it was unplayable.

Can you name a game without useless stats?
Deus ex has swimming, half of Fallout stats were useless
Give examples, have you played with the unofficial patch?
I'm comparing them since they were released in the same year, just to show that games weren't ubercrappy back then, so HL2 being a light in the darkness wasn't the case
>lmao
Name an rpg in last 5 years (aka after FNV) with better roleplaying, tbqh everything is decent if you compare it with Witchers, new Deus exes, Skyrim e.t.c.

Bloodlines is overrated and broken shit like every other Troika game. You have to download mods for it to even be playable.

HL2 enabled the development of Bloodlines, so it WAS a light in the darkness.

Uhh
Then download the mods? (It's a single mod by the way)

Because VTMB is a buggy, unfinished mess.

>DUDE Bethesda enabled the development of FNV, it's built on the same engine so it's like a giant mod for Fallout 3

Swimming is pretty useful in deus ex since they placed a whole bunch of items in locations you can't reach without swimming, including augmentation upgrade canisters.

That would be a fair comparison if source engine was the embryo of its time, but it was the exact opposite

>Give examples, have you played with the unofficial patch?

Hollywood is extremely small compared to downtown and has fewer quests
Chinatown has like five quests

The Hollywood sewers are terrible
Hallobrook hotel is terrible
The Kuei-jin temple is terrible
LaCroix tower is terrible
The entire end game is terrible

None of these were even designed around anything but combat, earlier combat zones in the game (Beach House, Sabbat warehouse, Elizabeth Dane, museum, etc) had multiple routes through them, you could stealth through them, even some conversations/diaries/computers the player could listen to or read. all of those are completely absent in the end-game.

Its a game worth finishing but one you hit the tzimitczi house the game is over with being good, perhaps the grave yard but you still have the hooker/fuck him option i guess.

Fantastic start though

I don't think anyone debates that Santa Monica and Downtown aren't great areas.

But that's the point, the second half of the game just falls apart gradually, because it is an unfinished game.
Activsion (and Valve to an extent) completely stopped Troika from being able to work on it.

>one location has fewer quests than the other
I don't get how this is bad, would it feel better if they moved some quests from one location to another? Also Hollywood and Chinatown are discovered almost at the same time, so that fixes it, also Hollywood has the gigantic sewers that you've mentioned, so it's not as small as it seems.

>The Hollywood sewers are terrible
>Hallobrook hotel is terrible
>The Kuei-jin temple is terrible
>LaCroix tower is terrible
You forgot the underground quest Fat Larry gives, the worst one of them all. Grinder quests are crap in every game, and the lategame combat quests were indeed rushed, but that's not a major part of the game, besides you can speedrun it with console commands, which I find to be underappreciated and not ruining the immersion at all, that's a genuine thing I do in games with poor combat and good story

And it didn't help that Troika is terrible with managing their ambition, time and budget.

>lategame combat quests were indeed rushed, but that's not a major part of the game
considering you're hit with a bunch of them at the end of the game, each of which is not optional. I would consider them major parts.
You have to go through the sewers, you can to kill Andrei in the Hallobrook, you have to storm the temple (assuming you don't side with Xiao) and you have to scale venture tower.

Unless you do cheat.

>game is unplayable without mods
>10/10 GotYoaY
Stop.

If it weren't for the broken difficulty I'd say Far Cry is the best game of 2004.

i dont know, i just like it a lot, what the fuck is the problem?

the story is interesting, the game is fun to play, the characters are likable, the sountrack is insanely good on the entire franchise and hl2 is no exception, cool level design and of course the physics mechanics and shit

it also looked great for the time, and the backstage development content is just impressive
and worth investigating if youre a fan of the series