Crayola Clan Wiki | Reviews / Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

October 16, 2006

I played two maps of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch this past weekend (about 30 minutes worth), so I feel qualified to write a comprehensive review of it now.

The two maps I played were insane. They each basically consisted of one giant room where everyone ran around in the middle killing each other. In other words, there wasn't a lot of room for finesse, and no room at all for defense. The objective was to get as many kills as possible before your inevitable death.

On the plus side, it was interesting to see an FPS without a rocket launcher-type weapon. Since there wasn't a rocket launcher, there was a lot of variety in weapon usage, which was kind of cool. Quite a few people were using the gravity gun to throw barrels and crates around, which also made it an essential defensive weapon (if you saw someone about to throw something at you, just fire up the gravity gun and catch it). I personally liked the crossbow.

I didn't have too many problems with lag on a cablemodem. It was a little glitchy now and then but that comes with the territory. One thing I did find annoying: Because of the realistic rendering of the weapons, as opposed to the more stylized graphics in, say, Quake 3, it was almost impossible to see the weapons and ammo lying on the ground until you were standing on top of them. In the middle of a firefight, I never knew what I was picking up, or even if I was picking something up.

It was fun for a while, but I got tired of it after 2 maps. I was never fond of the kill-die-repeat style of gameplay for extended periods of time. I greatly prefer kill-stay alive-repeat, and that just wasn't possible on those two maps. Maybe I'll try Counter-Strike next time.