[kupoartist]

Originally Posted by Spank-A-Thon

To that end I could name you a dozen or so PC games I consider to be "better" than Half-Life 2....

But surely this is the point. It seems blindingly obvious to me that FPS games do not constitute your favorite genre. Yes, calling something "the best PC game ever" is very unstable territory, because FPS games aren't everyone's favorite. But to create a thread saying "Half-Life 2 is a let down" is pretty ridiculous when you're clearly not that interested in the game in the first place. The flaws you find in it are the product of wishing the game was something it was never intended to be, nor ever will be.

Originally Posted by Spank-A-Thon

There was no innovation in HL2 - zero - none - nada. All they did was produce an amazing Physics engine. This is hardly innovative. Realistic physics has been attempted in countless games, it just so happens Valve have pulled it off the best thus far. That's not innovation but simply evoution.

Please show me a game that actually integrates Physics into the gameplay itself. All other games with Physics engines just have them as an extra bit of eye candy. HL2 is the first game to allow Physics to open up gameplay choices. That is innovation. So are many of the graphics features in the game. Things like Facial Expressions, Shader effects, advanced animation and lip-synching are virtually without peers in the entire of gaming. Sure, Graphics aren't everything, but if you're going to make sweeping generalisations about the total lack of innovation in a game that cleary has at least some....

Originally Posted by Spank-A-Thon

However, with FPS' I play to shoot things, not watch unskippable sequences hence why UT stills gets an outing whereas HL2 will be played once.

There must be perhaps 5 "unskippable sequences" in HL2, and all are excellent anyway, so I really don't understand your problem. UT is a very different beast once again anyway. How can a Competative Multiplayer FPS be in any way compared to a Story-Driven Single Player FPS? And how are you able to forgive the deep repeatativeness of a game like UT but bemoan something that isn't nearly as repeatative: Vehicles, Squad Battles and puzzles break up the shooting anyone?.