When does it get good

ravenholm and then it gets not good again

I liked the coast road chapter. Episode 2 is good the whole way through.

It peaked in the prologue chapter before you get the crowbar. It’s all downhill from there.

Aww but that was the best part of the game. Everything else in the game is just running ina a straight line shooting the same guys over and over.

op here, im trans btw!

When you press "new game".

when you stop being retarded

It'll forever be hobbled by it's over reliance on "LOOK PHYSICS" gameplay for the rest of it's existence. I still like it and those moments don't ruin the game for me but lots of the game feel like technical showcases of Valve being very proud of their shiny new toy.

Point Insertion - Movie sequence. Nothing to do but move through a fairly linear level listening to Barney and Alyx.
A Red Letter Day - Movie sequence. Trapped in a lab waiting for Barney, Alyx and Kleiner to stop talking.
Route Kanal - First actual gameplay. Pistol and SMG are very poor weapons so the game relies on an abundance of embarrassingly placed red barrels to cover for the poor gunplay. Civil Protection and Manhack enemies are as dumb as bricks.
Water Hazard - Cinematic hoverboat experience. Once again with the convenient placement of enemy and object placements.
Black Mesa East - Movie sequence for the most part. A considerable amount of talking before you acquire the gravity gun. Then you're forced into a tutorial with Alyx and Dog for 10 minutes before you can leave with it.
We Don't Go To Ravenholm - Essentially a linear haunted house with object placements tailored to the gravity gun.
Highway 17 - Another vehicle segment roadtrip where you occasionally get out and shoot combine or ant lions. Annoying crane physics segment to move your car. The bridge and lighthouse sections are alright. Shooting gunships gets tiresome quickly. Feels like a mediocre HL1 Surface Tension filler overall.
Sandtraps - You can just sprint through the carefully designed "ground is lava" first part and the ant lions can't even catch you. Beach and Nova exterior works well with the ant lions.
Nova Prospekt - At this point the ant lions have overstayed their welcome but it's still used as a core mechanic. They are simply too powerful in a close quarter environment so you barely get to engage in normal shootouts.
Entanglement - Extremely poorly designed movie and turret sequence. Lots of small talking sections where you just listen to Alyx and you can't do anything followed by three boring turret sections where all you have to do is pick them up if they fall over.

OP kind of has a point since the game does sort of drag on until you get to the crowbar.
I'm not all that fast, but it took me about 17 minutes to get there.

its a tech demo just appreciate it for what it is

When you install MMod. Playing HL2 vanilla is a noob trap.

Anticitizen One - Finally a series of levels where you can actually have firefights but you're accompanied by the most brain dead of NPCs and fighting against civil protection most of the time so it falls flat. Alyx's capture scene is terribly done.
Follow Freeman! - After the annoying sniper gimmicks the museum section is alright but Barney tends to glitch out a lot. When that part is done the game violently shits itself with some horrendous strider battles on the streets. You simply hide and then shoot them with RPGs while they wander around aimlessly.
Our Benefactors - Another physics segment. You'd think you'd be using regular weapons at the end of the game but the supercharged gravity gun is all you have. Gets boring very quickly. In two parts you're just watching the pretty citadel visuals fly by.
Dark Energy - Absolutely dogshit "final boss" A couple of soldiers and two gunships and the game ends.

To clarify, yes, I wrote this post up until the end of the first sentence, ran from Point Insertion to roughly the start of Route Kanal, it took about 17 minutes, and while it's not the FIRST time I've played through HL2, the light gunfight you get to start off with isn't too bad.

Metrocops are kind of easy to kill

Maybe? I have like 10k hours in TF2 several hundred hours in CS:GO/2 a bunch in Source and like 900 hours in gmod etc. etc, so I really wouldn't be able to give a fair evaluation on the actual difficulty in dealing with THE FIRST ENEMIES YOU RUN INTO.
For what it was, I thought it was pretty fun

After you install the dual wield vr mod

You know actually now that I think about it, how long did Half Life 1 take before you actually get to start doing shit?
I know the tram segment is long as fuck, but HOW long as fuck is it?

When you close it and launch Half Life 1.

Again, could be wrong.
But isn't it even LONGER before HL1 gets going

No. Half-Life 2 takes an extra 5 minutes to get going (first weapon acquisition)

After you STOP FUCKING WITH The microwav e

kys magnusson

You know what.
I'm gonna fire up Half Life 1.
And if it takes me more than 17 minutes to get to the crowbar you are the big stinky.

just going off this
youtu.be/SGJDY4q8sSI?si=l_JbG9AlGltoSsqO
17 minutes 21 seconds

Point Insertion

great for atmosphere

Red Letter Day

mostly just a boring plot dump

Route Kanal

a basic tutorial that goes on for too long

Water Hazard

a bad vehicle section that goes on for way too long

Black Mesa East

a boring plot dump that goes on for way too long

We Don't Go to Ravenholm

the best part of the game

Highway 17

the second best part of the game

Sandtraps

boring and annoying first half, fun second half

Nova Prospekt

fun first half, boring and annoying second half

Anti Citizen One

a worse version of the best parts of the previous two chapters

Follow Freeman

the same as above but worse

Our Benefactors

a victory lap thats fun the first time around but less so on replays

Well then hey, in your own proof you admit you are the big stinky, but just for shits and giggles I ran through it too. ~17.5 minutes.

Just got pic related. Reckon my phone (A54) will be able to emulate up to and including PS2/GB. What will I think of it?

'Rise and shine, mister Freeman'

I think you're in the wrong thread, shill.
I heard there's a mod that makes Gman just say Go Fuck Yourself, to knock a good portion of the intro out.

when you click hl2.exe

When does it get good

You're not gonna like this, Half-Life 2 doesn't really "get good" until the very end. The first half of the game (up until Ravenholm) is mostly just a series of linear set-pieces and scripted sequences with minimal actual gameplay.

Who cares. HL1 is a better game, HL2 is a gimmick filled experiment.

when you open the game. route kanal and ravenholm suck, after that the rest of the game is kino

good

the only good thing about half-life 2 is ravenholm

Who cares

That's the entire premise of the thread you tomato, how long it takes before you start getting to do fun stuff.
Having played both games, right now, they're both pretty fun once you actually get to do stuff.
And for the record I'm gonna count Half Life 1 even further along because the scientist zombies kind of suck ass as enemies go.