Poll of the Day > Anyone remember the Doom 3 vs. Half Life 2 debate from 2004?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Both were the high-end PC games from that time. The general consensus was that Half Life 2 blew Doom 3 out of the water and that Doom 3 was a huge disappointment.

I'm playing Half Life 2 for the first time ever now and just finished the "Water Hazard" level.
Even though I haven't finished the game, I feel like Doom 3 was the better game, and I only played Doom 3 in PS3 era, so more modern times as well.
Doom 3 has reading material from journals, emails etc. which really added to the atmosphere and plot. So far Half Life 2 is the standard 1% plot and 99% pew pew pew.
While we're on this topic, does Half Life 2 get more immersive from here on out? I still plan on finishing the game, and I DO enjoy it. It's just I wish there was more story.

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I liked Half life more but really enjoyed both

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i don't feel like half-life 2 has aged particularly well

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Main reason people liked HL2 was because their PCs could run it since it looked like shit. Anybody with a recent GPU was playing D3.

Kanatteru posted...

i don't feel like half-life 2 has aged particularly well

That's how I feel too.
When I played the first level I was very impressed with the presentation and atmosphere. I thought I was in for a hell of a ride, but it all has kinda went to hell from there.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/914642-half-life-2/reviews/91932

"You see that bit about potential wasted up there in the title? This is where that comes in. The atmosphere in the game is great; at the beginning, you really get the feeling of a run-down, dejected city under the heavy hand of tyrannical overlords. However, this atmosphere is squandered- the time in the streets is very brief, and in that time, everything is lifeless"

I agree with this review so far


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Red_Frog posted...

Main reason people liked HL2 was because their PCs could run it since it looked like shit. Anybody with a recent GPU was playing D3.

Don't you have that backwards?
Half Life 2 had the heavier system requirements back then.

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Ferarri619 posted...

Don't you have that backwards?
Half Life 2 had the heavier system requirements back then.

Did it really? I would have thought it was the other way around

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Ferarri619 posted...

Don't you have that backwards?
Half Life 2 had the heavier system requirements back then.

Nah, HL2 was easier to run. After the leak released and ran like chunky butt butter, Valve had to retriple their efforts for release. Doom 3 could scale lower (looking dreadful) after people learned to hack it and disable the flashy effects, but it was designed to cook all that fancy logic Nvidia and ATi had been stuffing into their chips.

Its water hazard pre or post ravenholm?

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Ferarri619 posted...

Anyone remember the Doom 3 vs. Half Life 2 debate from 2004?

I don't, mainly because I was the opposite of a PC gamer, so I never really gave much of a shit over what PC gamers thought about anything.

If anything, I remember people arguing over Half-Life versus Halo more than Doom.
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I remember Doom 3 being a disappointment because it was such a different game compared to Doom 1+2 (not bad IMO, just different). Half Life 2 was really just Half Life 1 but with more of everything. ID Tech 4 was a more impressive Source, but I felt neither was as good as Unreal Engine 2.5 (which at the time, most pre-builds couldn't even run)

That said, I remember neither game really being able to be played on my PC at the time, so I didn't play them until I seriously got back into PC gaming around 2008/9.

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> Anyone remember the Doom 3 vs. Half Life 2 debate from 2004?

Nope, even though I was there I found Doom 3 to be pretty suck-tastic and the Gamecube was absolutely dominating... 2004 being probably their best year

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Doom 3 was exciting because of the lighting.
Half-Life 2 was exciting because of the physics and human animations.

I seem to recall a lot more positive buzz about Half-Life. I remember a lot of people being annoyed that you couldn't use the flashlight and the gun at the same time in Doom 3, lol

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