I just don't get it......
Aside from the problems that I've had with repeated crashes to desk top that I've had with no other game (which in part count towards the low score), the graphics are average (there are much better out there), the gameplay is highly linear and the story is far short of immersive. Even the levels are dull and in many cases highly repetitive; at one point I thought I would spend the rest of the game shooting antlions in tunnels. After we'd got out of the tunnels the next repeat trick was playing balancing games with the gravity gun, on which the game design is so reliant that it quickly went from clever to tedious. Oh yes..did I point out that the game is startlingly linear? Most of it consists of herding the player from one set piece encounter to another.
It does have its moments during the more intense firefights (and there aren't many of these) when it manages to get your pulse racing a bit, but otherwise its just very very ordinary. If you want firefights, buy FEAR, if you want graphics, buy Crisis, if you want atmosphere buy Stalker, if you want graphics, atmosphere and story buy Bioshock. But for the life of me I really can't see why people rush to the stores to buy the latest Half-Life iteration. To be honest it just feels like a slightly re-badged version of the original Half-Life, which in its day really was revolutionary. This one just feels like a short, overpriced game that the developers have slapped together using the same formula that they've employed in the previous episode, and all the other episodes of this franchise.
As I said..sorry...I really just don't get the appeal and the rave reviews.....