I remember first playing this game about 8 years ago. I went under the name "Sharp-Shooter" at the time, and it was my first experience playing an FPS with other players. Unfortunately, that experience would turn out to be a bad one.
Many of the weapons in this game require little to no skill to use, or have a secondary fire that requires no skill. With many of them, you can be very vague with your aiming and yet be rewarded with ridiculous damage (usually an instant kill at full health). An example of this would be the secondary fire for the pulse rifle. Anyone who has played singleplayer Half Life 2 knows that this is a fairly large orb that rebounds off of all surfaces and instant kills any target it hits regardless of current health. Well, in Deathmatch it is no different, but this is a problem for two reasons. The first being that there are other weapons, such as the primary fire for both the SMG and pulse rifle, which have been nerfed considerably in this game compared to the campaign game. The reduced damage meant that you had to keep your aim on target at all times for the best effect which requires concentration and practice. The orbs having no reduction of any kind therefore makes this unfair as anyone could take down someone skilled at using the primary fire with no effort at all. The second is that the orb's ability to rebound everywhere means that there is little chance of avoiding it, and the user could get kills without so much as seeing their targets, or even knowing where they were at the time.
But that's just one example. And yet the majority of the community somehow convinces itself that every weapon in this game is equally as hard to use as everything else.
So do I recommend this game? Well, not really. If you are looking for a fair and skill-based game, this is not for you. It forces you to play in a way that requires no effort, which if you refuse to do as I did, will leave you with the stress of losing constantly regardless of how hard you try or how skilled you are. Then again, like with anything, it is still up to you.
I remember first playing this game about 8 years ago. I went under the name "Sharp-Shooter" at the time, and it was my first experience playing an FPS with other players. Unfortunately, that experience would turn out to be a bad one.
Many of the weapons in this game require little to no skill to use, or have a secondary fire that requires no skill. With many of them, you can be very vague with your aiming and yet be rewarded with ridiculous damage (usually an instant kill at full health). An example of this would be the secondary fire for the pulse rifle. Anyone who has played singleplayer Half Life 2 knows that this is a fairly large orb that rebounds off of all surfaces and instant kills any target it hits regardless of current health. Well, in Deathmatch it is no different, but this is a problem for two reasons. The first being that there are other weapons, such as the primary fire for both the SMG and pulse rifle, which have been nerfed considerably in this game compared to the campaign game. The reduced damage meant that you had to keep your aim on target at all times for the best effect which requires concentration and practice. The orbs having no reduction of any kind therefore makes this unfair as anyone could take down someone skilled at using the primary fire with no effort at all. The second is that the orb's ability to rebound everywhere means that there is little chance of avoiding it, and the user could get kills without so much as seeing their targets, or even knowing where they were at the time.
But that's just one example. And yet the majority of the community somehow convinces itself that every weapon in this game is equally as hard to use as everything else.
So do I recommend this game? Well, not really. If you are looking for a fair and skill-based game, this is not for you. It forces you to play in a way that requires no effort, which if you refuse to do as I did, will leave you with the stress of losing constantly regardless of how hard you try or how skilled you are. Then again, like with anything, it is still up to you.
