Hmm, I thought the story for HL2 was poor-to-nonexistant:/
Poor-to-nonexistant plot? Hardly. The genius of HL2's plot doesn't lie in plot twists, emotional angst and all that... it's in the detail. The photograph in Kleiner's lab, showing a bunch of scientist (including Gordon Freeman) with one of the faces obliterated by white-out. The spray-painted orange Lambda symbols wherever the underground resistance has left a supply drop. Barney pausing whilst hacking a console and saying "Did you hear a cat just then?... The damn thing haunts me..." A terrified resistance member being comforted by one of her comrades while a firefight rages outside. Newspaper cutting talking about the "Seven hours war" hung up in Eli's lab. Eli's missing leg.
The bits that really stand out for me, however, are during "Red Letter Day" - Alyx goes through the teleporter, and she gives her dad a kiss on the cheek when she arrives - and "Dark Energy". When Gordon goes down in the lift to enter the core, Alyx presses her hands against the glass, and watches him descend. Without saying anything, it's an emotional moment.
Also I felt it had no atmposphere (except for Ravensholm, that was cool 
).
You ever noticed how there are no kids in HL2? During the opening sequence, Doctor Breen's broadcast includes a section where he reads a letter from a citizen asking when the suppression field that prevents breeding will be lifted. Shortly thereafter, you walk past an old play park, with a swing set and see-saw, all rusted and dirty from disuse. and I'd swear that the soundtrack at that point includes kids screaming.
There may not be a plot in the traditional sense but the WORLD is so full of depth and atmosphere that I've only scuffed the surface here. It's run-down, neglected, opressed. Whole sections of a once-grand city have slowly fallen to ruin, inhabited by tired, scared citizens. Very little new is invented that isn't being used by the Combine. The plot depth and atmosphere are there, they just aren't expressed overtly. It's implied story-telling, basically, and a fine example at that.
They made this big wet deal out of the physics but if you acutally did anything useful or "out of the box" with them it screwed you (e.g., in "(SPOILER) Entanglement" I pre-built an escape route out of the pit with the turrets & 4 forcefields in it & ended up in the middle of a load of spawnpoints for enemies).
If you will insist on mucking with the game, then you can expect to be nastied up. HL2 was never designed to be a game about choice. In fact, the whole thing revolves around a lack of choice. Gordon is forced inexorably down a single path, both metaphorically, and literally. Sure, there are different ways to take on different challenges. During "Nova Prospekt", when faced with turrets, the options I tend to use when dealing with turrets are to either chuck a grenade at them, or rip a radiator off the wall with the G-gun, and use that to knock them over instead. But at the same time, there really is only one course open to you. Fight, move on, follow like a rat in a maze where all the alternative routes have been sealed off. But there are times when you can bypass the game and get away with it. During the coast road sequence, for example, you come across a gate. You're supposed to seek out the batteries hidden around the area to power the motor and open it.
The first time I got there, I built a ramp and boost-jumped over the gate instead. I wasn't penalised for that. I took DOG's ball into Ravenholme with me, one time. Not only is it useful ammo for the G-gun, but it's combine-aligned, meaning that the headcrabs and zombies attack it. If I chuck the ball into the middle of a zombie cluster, I'll kill one, and the rest will gather round and smack it, leaving me free to pick up a sawblade or something and take ALL of them out in one go. plus, it can kill headcrabs by rolling over them.
Also your fellow soldiers are totally disposable.
Not so. Medics hand you health packs if you get too badly wounded, for starters, and they ALL pitch into the fights, making them a lot shorter and easier.
I also love it when they swap out their weapon for a better one on the ground. At the start of "Follow Freeman", one of the soldiers following me grabbed an RPG with a satisfied "one for me..." and then shot a strider, yelling "AND ONE FOR YOU!!!" Another one swapped her SMG for a combine pulse rifle nicked off a dead soldier, and said "thank you!" to its former owner. And even these minor characters make eye contact with you, look and focus properly, and basically behave like human beings. One of mine got killed by a turret one time, and the guy next to her gave this anguished "NO!" and rushed over and knocked the turret down.
Also Steam both sucks & blows
Never had a problem with it, myself. In fact, I think it's quite useful.
