An enabled console and freedom to play the way developers never intended elevates the game from enjoyable physics shooter to 'how many shotgun shells does it take to kill everything in the game?' (last count; ~4000)

This is wonderful since the gunplay is too slow and weak for your cybernetically enhanced fast-twitch muscle fibers but now you can send GPU crippling swarms of pellets at every Tom, ♥♥♥♥, and Harry who lacks the ice-cream scoop sized lump of gray matter necessary to flee. Or you can tweak the damage numbers on RPG rounds so that corpses, upon remuneration for crimes of their past lives, shuffle spastic to orbit mighty Ra.


On a less serious note, the variety of weaponry on offer is a step down from its predecessor. Towards the end of the original you had access to a railgun with the sound and kick of an electrified cannon and a fire hose that soaked the walls with plasma. These two weapons had short but memorable narratives attached to their introductions. Stepping through a giant hole and over several corpses to collect their progenitor adds a certain dash of glee.

HL2 has only 1 unusual weapon in the form of the upgraded gravity gun (see 'physics shooter'). And while the power to rip consoles off of walls and launch them to tenderize lowly meat puppets is fun and all it comes too late and is used too little to really bring out that psychotic laughter FPSs strive for.

Game would be improved drastically if I could kill enemies with a giant mining drill.