Still waiting for half life 3
8/10

See my Half Life 1 review for more details. Anyway, I just wanted to say that the first third of HL2 felt a lot like a tech demo and spent more time 'teaching' the player how to play the game than actually playing it, but the latter two thirds impressed me with the large amount of variety. The biggest issue with this game is that the levels are inconsistent in terms of quality - some are small and linear while others show moments of brilliance. Even then though, the linear levels are still pretty fun, and the linearity allows for cool scripted events that otherwise wouldn't be possible with a larger level. Overall, HL2 is a pretty fun game and it is very much action packed.


There are a few settings I recommend for HL2:
1. Disable v-sync. I've found that the game stutters with v-sync on if you are running at max settings. Even if you do turn down the settings I wouldn't recommend using v-sync because it results in very noticeable mouse lag on a 60hz monitor.
2. The game runs at a very high framerate (300fps) when you turn v-sync off. Unfortunately this results in a lot of tearing. If you are running a 60hz display I would suggest using rivatuner (this is usually bundled with MSI afterburner) to limit fps of HL2.exe to 120fps - this reduces screen tearing.
If you are running a high refresh rate monitor, this is less of an issue. Actually, you probably would be fine if you turned on v-sync for a 120hz display

Alternatively, you can disable framerate limit (set it to 0) and try running scanline sync x2 and set the number to something like -1000 (on a 4k monitor) so there is one tear line underneath the crosshair and another above it (you don't want the tear line to be on the middle, ideally it's better to have the tear line on the top as high up as possible while keeping the bottom tear line below the crosshair) - to see the tear lines, move your mouse side to side horizontally while looking at a large vertical object (such as a corner of a building or a trea) - then alt+tab out of the game and adjust the scanline sync numbers - you will see the tear lines move up or down. I think scanline sync looks a bit better otherwise the tear line moves all over the place when using regular framerate limiter. This depends somewhat on your GPU load, if you find that your GPU is struggling to output 120fps, then you can use scanline sync (not x2) to get better results.

Still waiting for half life 3 8/10 See my Half Life 1 review for more details. Anyway, I just wanted to say that the first third of HL2 felt a lot like a tech demo and spent more time 'teaching' the player how to play the game than actually playing it, but the latter two thirds impressed me with the large amount of variety. The biggest issue with this game is that the levels are inconsistent in terms of quality - some are small and linear while others show moments of brilliance. Even then though, the linear levels are still pretty fun, and the linearity allows for cool scripted events that otherwise wouldn't be possible with a larger level. Overall, HL2 is a pretty fun game and it is very much action packed. There are a few settings I recommend for HL2: 1. Disable v-sync. I've found that the game stutters with v-sync on if you are running at max settings. Even if you do turn down the settings I wouldn't recommend using v-sync because it results in very noticeable mouse lag on a 60hz monitor. 2. The game runs at a very high framerate (300fps) when you turn v-sync off. Unfortunately this results in a lot of tearing. If you are running a 60hz display I would suggest using rivatuner (this is usually bundled with MSI afterburner) to limit fps of HL2.exe to 120fps - this reduces screen tearing. If you are running a high refresh rate monitor, this is less of an issue. Actually, you probably would be fine if you turned on v-sync for a 120hz display Alternatively, you can disable framerate limit (set it to 0) and try running scanline sync x2 and set the number to something like -1000 (on a 4k monitor) so there is one tear line underneath the crosshair and another above it (you don't want the tear line to be on the middle, ideally it's better to have the tear line on the top as high up as possible while keeping the bottom tear line below the crosshair) - to see the tear lines, move your mouse side to side horizontally while looking at a large vertical object (such as a corner of a building or a trea) - then alt+tab out of the game and adjust the scanline sync numbers - you will see the tear lines move up or down. I think scanline sync looks a bit better otherwise the tear line moves all over the place when using regular framerate limiter. This depends somewhat on your GPU load, if you find that your GPU is struggling to output 120fps, then you can use scanline sync (not x2) to get better results.