I don't think they deserve the praise they get. They make nothing but generic forgettable cookie cutter shooters, and yet they're praised for being innovative and original. The level design in most their games are simple (lots of rooms, because rooms are easy to make). You'll probably tell me to go back to CoD and Halo, but I don't like Cod and haven't played Halo in years. I got bored of Half-Life 2 and never finished it. Portal doesn't have any replay value. Left 4 Dead is one of the most generic, uninspired shooters I've ever played. Merely being released by Valve will get it instant game of the year awards. And there's a damn lot of bias when reviewing Valve games; I've seen reviewers critize games for certain elements yet praise Valve game for the same elements, magnefied. It's thanks to the overglorification of Valve games by reviewers and gamers that many other unique game ideas are forgotten.

And Steam. What makes them think that constant updating makes the games better? Remember the days when they finished the game before releasing it? Steam has many problems, but Valve always blames it on you for not building your own PC entirely dedicated to gaming from scratch (or buying whatever latest computer). I shouldn't have to go through all that just to play some games, and I shouldn't have to be online. Sometimes you even have to install the same game multiple times. With the dreaded new generation coming in, chances are myself and many others will turn to PC, only to find something similar to the Xbox One.

Valve have an air of pretentious so thick you could choke on it. That's how I feel. I'm going to get a lot of hate. Hopefully there is someone who agrees with me.

@kingofash: You're right about one thing, Steam is very similar to the Xbox One.

I actually agree to an extent. I think Steam's a great service, but I think their games are ridiculously overrated. HL2 and Portal especially. I just cannot see what the appeal is for either one of them.

I disagree.

Me too.

@kingofash Name a game which where reviewers have criticised a part of it they have praised a Valve game for

Name a unique game idea which has been forgotten because of 'overglorification of Valve games'

Steam don't make the games, they just sell them and run updates. Its not their fault some games need patches, they just provide them.

Name one pretentious thing about Valve

You don't have to be always online. You have to be online once to install Steam, buy the game, install the game, and run the game once to verify it (considering the entire platform is an online service, that seems reasonable). After that you are free to play it offline unless the publisher has set up it's own DRM methods. You have to be online to receive updates for the games. I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say the game has to be installed multiple times unless you are talking about the game being automatically updated for you. But hey if you stay offline then that's not a problem for you. Patching games is not a new problem for PC games, nor are compatibility issues and they really don't have anything to do with Steam.

I'll leave the rest of your post alone since they are opinions and you have every right to them. I have different opinions. Might be a bit overrated overall, but Portal 2 is probably one of my favorite games of all time.

I will agree that many of Valve's games aren't that great, I enjoy most of them, but I don't think they are exceptional pieces of work. What I don't agree with is that Portal is a bad game simply because it had no replay value. Also you can't blame the constant updating on Valve/Steam (unless you're specifically referencing the updates for Steam itself and not the games, then I will say that Steam is a service and is never a finished product, just like any other services).

Left 4 Dead is one of the best multiplayer games ever created.

Portal is one of the best games ever created.

Wait. Hold the phone. You have to be online to use most of the functionalities of a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform? WHAT THE FUCK?! Oh my god, Steam should just die. I can't believe it.

Where does it end people, where does it end? I mean, next you're going to tell me that I have to be online to use giantbomb.com. I mean... oh wait.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 revolutionised how games were made.

Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 are two of the most popular multiplayer games of all time.

Steam radically changed (most believe 'improved', many believe 'saved') and then cornered the PC gaming market. They did it while maintaining an incredibly positive public image.

Yeah, they're pretty overrated.

I also don't care for Valve's games too much. Definitely some of the most overrated games on the planet. But I loves me some Steam.

It must be frustrating having opinions that the majority of gamers disagree with. Oh well.

GiantBomb has an offline mode. You just have to drive to Jeff's house and look in through the windows.

You're overrated.

Considering they get worldwide praise from everyone, they must be doing something right.

whats with all these bizarre half life valve hate threads recently.

@jimbo said:

How did Half-Life revolutionise games? They weren't the first shooters, and the technology already existed before then. Is it good that most of the PC gaming industry is under Steams thumb? Valve has almost supreme reign over PC gaming, literally.

So, since Maze War, there hasn't been a revolutionizing FPS. OK, got it!

What games do you like? Why.

0/10 try harder next time

Man, this bandwagon has really gone far and wide.

"Valve have an air of pretentious so thick you could choke on it." Haha...aha...wait, I'm sorry just *cough*...ahahahaha.

@supamon said:

Are sony fans now piling on Steam now solely because the Xbox One is essentially just the console equivalent Steam? Is this the bandwagon you're referring to?

You said "They make nothing but generic forgettable cookie cutter shooters" and you justify Portal as being unoriginal because it doesn't have replay value. So replay value= innovation? Then I might as well play Temple Run because it has tremendous replay value it has got to be an innovative game.

Go play the shooters before Half-Life came out and the (popular) ones after it came out. It totally changed how people thought about game design, especially the manner in which narrative is delivered. Half-Life is the seismic shift between the Doom / Duke Nukem era and the Call of Duty era. Stories are delivered the way they are today in shooters because that's how Half-Life did it.

You not liking Steam is fair enough, but arguing that they're overrated while also arguing that they've established an 'almost supreme reign' over an open platform is a little contradictory. That's a pretty impressive position to have achieved don't you think?

• Half-Life 1 is one of my favourite games and I could play through it all (even Xen) today and still enjoy it. It's probably the first time I felt completely immersed in a video game.
• Counter-Strike was my first serious online gaming hole. I played that game for years.
• Half-Life 2 was exciting at the time, but everytime I try to replay it I get to Ravenholm and lose interest. :(
• Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2 are, as I recall, much more interesting than actual Half-Life 2. Probably because stuff happens.
• Team Fortress 2 is nothing special. I've fonder memories of 2fort in Team Fortress Classic with that baller nailgun than TF2.
• Portal 1 is amazing and one of the best examples of something you can do in a game that you can't in a book or movie.
• Left 4 Dead 1 is the most enjoyable online shooter I've played. Except maybe for Quake 3. Hell, it's one of the most enjoyable multiplayer games I've played period.
• Portal 2 is very well made. :|
• Left 4 Dead 2 is the most enjoyable online shooter I've played, now with melee weapons.
• Dota 2 stole 200 hours of my life. It was all a blur.
• Steam sales are amazing, and Steam itself has become a fantastic service.

Nah, I think they're pretty good.

@humanity: I would kill for some Offline mode Jar Time. Literally...

kill...

I actually really don't like Valve. I realize that in 15 years of them making games the only ones I really liked were Half-Life mods. Half of which weren't made by them. Never liked TF, found Portal cute but I don't like that style of puzzle game very much and people drove GladOS into the ground, and I disliked both Half-Life campaigns because I used to absolutely hate the single player campaigns in PC shooters of that era (to this day I think Deus Ex is the only one I ever finished, and Deus Ex isn't really a shooter), and I don't like the movement or the shooting in Left 4 Dead

So yeah. When are they making a new Ricochet?

I dunno man. On one hand I thought Half life and Half Life two were boring.

I stopped paying 2 during one of those terrible driving sequences, I think its pretty overrated

On the the other, portal

I'm not a big fan of their Left 4 Dead games, but Half Life 2 was neat, and also, Steam is pretty awesome for getting games, ridiculous discounts, and having patches and crap done before you play start the game.

Wholeheartedly. I think Portal, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress are all amazing games that are anything but "forgettable cookie cutter shooters".

Agreed and they achieved it because they now offer such a great, consistent and often times fantastically cheap service and their games always come out and change quite a bit of the industry around it, I mean how many games tried to copy the left 4 Dead style of co-op multiplayer within a year of L4D's release. And here's the clincher, it's free to use Steam, who'd have thought it eh?! Ha ha

@kingofash: From the tech side, Half-Life with GoldSrc Engine (an extremely modified variant of Quake 1) was the first time anyone bothered to make either engine open enough to allow a "full conversion mod". Quake 1 could do some of this but not as full or extensive as Half-Life where it went beyond "changing gravity" or "post process filters" but higher level constructs "rules" and "goals". This alone is a huge advancement that allowed Counter Strike and Team Fortress to arrise where anyone could experiment with a game and come up with radically different game designs without rewriting the entire game.

You can believe, if you want, that Valve is overrated but history has shown again and again and again that they revolutionize areas they tinker in which leads me to believe otherwise.

@kingofash: What rating do they deserve?

@tarsier: I think this is the first wave of the new Valve ARG for Half Life 3.

Well, Half-Life did revolutionize story telling in first person shooters, opting to let players experience the story first hand rather than relying on cutscenes. Portal is a great game, as is its sequel. Half-Life 2 is ridiculously overrated though, at the time people were to believe that it was the second coming of Christ whereas in fact it was a very poorly paced shooter with an impressive physics engine. I do not care for Team Fortress 2 and I just can't seem to get into both Left 4 Dead games. So yeah, Valve games are overrated, but one cannot deny what Steam did for the PC gaming scene.

Arguing that something is overrated is probably one of the dumbest things in the world. You're essentially complaining that other people like something more than you do.

Whats with the anti valve threads all of a sudden

Valve games? Yes, very very overrated but some of them still fun.

Steam? no, no it isn't

Also: Before the praises gets way out of hand(well too late) Valve aren't actually the ones who say "Hey, we're gonna put these games on sale today!" so don't thank them, the only games they can put on sale are Valve games. The publishers are the ones you have to thank for the sales on games.

If Valve just put games on sale, publishers would get very upset.

Common sense really, when you think about it for more than half a second

You know what I think is overrated? Kids. They're always running around bitching about how old stuff that innovative while they were just a twinkle in daddies eye are dumb. getting their little crusty peanut butter fingers on everything. Always challenging authority just because. They're always running on my grass and causing a ruckus on my street too. Way overrated.

Yup, I'm pretty sure Left 4 Dead and TF2 are extremely cookie cutter. They are like ... like ... uh ...well ... err ... oh that's right, they are not. And at the time they came out they happened to be pretty unique games. About the only cookie cutter thing was that they were FPS. Some Imma assume you don't know what you're trying to convey or just you trollin' brah.

@grixxel said:

Do you actually have reason why they're not generic?

Mee three

The only thing I find overrated that Valve does is Dota 2, but that's because I really dislike those kinds of games, so it's just a taste thing.

Steam is pretty awesome, they make up for some issues with solid-ass service and TONS of great discounts and bundles.

"PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" -op

Yeah!

I much preferred the system where bugs were permanent because there was no way to fix them! This isn't a fucking dumb complaint at all.

Seriously though, the awfulness of your post is so complex it's actually quite amazing.

I'm not going to defend Steam, but you obviously didnt play HL2 when it released. Things have come a long way since and it hasnt aged as well as other games that just rely on their shooting mechanics. Half Life has always been more about it's atmosphere than gameplay.

Steam is awesome, never had an issue with it. Great sales, consistent and stable server and a handy offline mode. Valve created it, so they are awesome too. I haven't played many Valve games, but I've had a ton of fun playing with my mates on Left4Dead 2.