Okay so we have some of valves greatest games going head to head here.

Let's get some background here shall we?

Half Life (original): released in 1998, half life was valve's first game and was a surprise success. the game had around thirty hours of play (depending on how much you like to mess with the scientists). The half life game also had multiplayer. The game was not the crysis of 1998 but it looked nice.

Half Life 2: The slightly dissapointing(atleast in my thoughts)sequel to the original half life. It had 15 hours of gameplay (again, depending on difficulty level and how much you like to throw things). It was the first game made with the Source Engine and the Source Engine is currently known as the most advanced in terms of physics. The game was delayed.....alot. The game used the physics engine so they could introduce the GRAVITY GUN! a gun that picks things up and throws them. Sounds kinda stupid, but youspenjd hours doing stupid stuff with it.

The Episodes are basically expansion packs to half life 2. They have the same gameplay as Half Life 2, same graphics, etc. This was done so that less delays were reached and they came out quicker. Most episodes are around 6 hours long(once again, depending on how much you play with randon crap). All episodes, currently released, have VERY CLIFF HANGER like endings.

Portal: I cant explain the gameplay. I know I'm sorry. I am bad at that, I cant explain complex designs in games. But you probably have already played it and if you haven't....why not?

NOTE: I did not include multiplayer games because.....shut up. No, I just haven't played enough of counterstrike and TF2 and whatnot so I decided to not talk about what I dont know.

Which do you love?

Gotta go with HL2. The reviewers creamed themselves over it and after I (finally) got my hands on it with the original Xbox version, I totally understood why. It had it all. Story, gameplay, innovation. I didn't mind the load screens a bit with such a good game. I couldn't believe the great deal I got with the Orange Box when it came out.

Love Portal and it has one of the best rewards for finishing a game ever. But I could play HL2 over and over.

The episodes were great, but the first hit of crack is always going to be the best.

Tried to play the original HL on Steam, couldn't get into it. Too spoiled with what FPS's are like now.

Why would you seperate the Half Life 2 episodes? Did you hate the starting of the Episode 2 so much? Me? I haven't gone through Episode 2 yet because I hated them damn Antlion caves.

Portal above all others. it takes an amazing game to make me beat the main campaign over and over and over and over. Im on like my seventh play through, and still come back to it when Im looking for something to play

Gotta go with Half life 1. It just is such a classic. Old-school-ness reigns in the black mesa labs. Random explosive crates and barrels, inconvenient detours to get 3 feet forward, run and gun gameplay, crazy powerful weapons with ridiculous amounts of ammo, go-here-turn-on-this puzzles... man, the game is just too awesome.

Half life 2 is amazing in it's own sense, but I still enjoyed half life 1 more overall

I enjoy episode 2. It feels right to be in a forest.

I absolutely loved Half-Life 2 and the episodes, the gigantic strider battle at the end of ep. 2 was one of the best final fights i've seen in any game, but it's trumped by only one other...

...Portal.

i have never had my mind bent so much by any one thing, be it game, book, movie, ANYTHING. you can't make better use of a physics engine...it simply can't be done. i've lost count of the number of times i've played the final test chamber, and the ending is so balls-tighteningly great that the rest of the game could have been terrible and i would still consider the whole thing amazing. Valve hit the mother of all gaming home runs with this one...

when Half Life came out, FPS were all about get a key, go to a door, fight a boss, repeat. Half Life was so groundbreaking when it came out... there's just no way to choose any of the sequels, they could never be as amazingly fresh as the original was when it came out. not to mention the countless hours playing tfc, counterstrike, day of defeat, etc. I got more value out of Half Life than any other PC game I ever bought. The greatest.

My first Half Life experience was 2, so yeh...

When the original half life came out I took 2 days off college and completed it in one sitting with no sleep, never had a game grab me that much before or since, it really did feel revolutionary.

portal, definatly.

Half Life 2. The fact that you could dispense of zombies in so many fun ways (Ravenholm :D)and mock the head crabs afterwards (I love playing dodge with them, their little screams are so cute ^_^) is to me a great-game factor.

I loved Portal, but it had no headcrabs :( The cube's kinda pretty though...

HL Vanilla : Little beat the sheer terror of the Pit Fiend. But the Xen(?) sequence was a whole host of widdle.

Hard to compare them all; I've just finished going through the original Half Life for the first time in 7 years! It's got a totally different feel to HL2 in my opinion, but I prefered HL2 because it was challenging, but not actually hard-for me HL was hard, and you really had to work at it to complete, if just for the repeated dying for me. No doubt it's a pretty awesome game, the mulitplayer was great, and it's a classic, but still I've got to go for HL2.

Portal is a really genius game, and instant classic, but I just wish it had been longer, and had a better replay value

Eps 1 + 2 definitely have their moments, like the final epic Strider battle, but I'm not sure with their length you can compare them as individual games to HL1 or 2.

YOU B*STARD, HOW CAN YOU MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN PERFECTION (except for episode 2, which was a disapointment).

I have a thing for the episodes too. I mean, they were just so fun to play that I cannot simply reject them. In fact, I might go and play them now!

I'd go Portal, EP2, HL2, HL, EP1.

I think that EP2 is (considered by itself) a good summation of all of HL's good points while dispensing with a lot of its bad ones. HL is the first good story-based RPG in existence. HL2 really was the first in the series to do something revolutionary with an actual physics system and the gravity gun. EP1, while a FANTASTIC story, is just more of the same and the [Good Dame!] ELEVATOR WAITING IN THE DARK is an exercise in anger and frustration.

And of course Portal is the first-fruits of the second-coming.

how can you compare portal to half life? portals a puzzle game. half lifes an FPS. thats like comparing, i dont know... halo to another puzzle game... (i dont play that many ok! if i did id know some other good puzzle game like portal.) ah well, my vote will have to go to half life 2 the episodes had to little G-man for my liking, and i never got far enough in half life to hear him talk.

Episodes were my favorite. Alyx Vance ftw!

Portal comes in second, Half Life 2 in third. Half Life 1 is last, partially because I only played it after playing Half-Life 2 and the episodes. A good shooter, but rendered quite obsolete by its successor.

I got the Orange Box a while ago but never actually played Half Life 2 until recently and as soon as I did I knew what I was missing out on. My favourite is probably Half Life 2 episode 2 mostly because I loved the end battle.

Half-Life, I will allways maintain that a Combine Soilder could never take down a HECU Grunt, especially Corp. Adrian Shpered <3.

Yeah, and also, I felt that the story was alot more well made, I mean, I am such a huge Half-Life fan, I use to dream about being a HECU Grunt, but HL2 was a real dissapointment, after I got over the initial excitment (I starting playing it at 12pm x-mas morning and by 9pm I was far into Novaprospeckt), it was just too short.

Portal, easily, because of its intelligent and novel gameplay that doesn't overstay its welcome.

HL2 and its episodes didn't grab me the same way, and I haven't had the pleasure of playing the original HL.

-- Steve

Can't I just vote 'yes'? I enjoy them all.

My vote went to the HL2 Episodes though, as Ep2 seemed like the penultimate HL experience. (yay, big word)

They are all fantastic but I would have to go with the original Half-Life due to its huge impact it had on video gaming.

Portal hand down. It's fresh a brilliant idea, doesn't impose a long stay and a wonderfully brilliant story. Also the Portal fun was good and the game got you thinking logically. Seriously, Portal was amazing.

Either that or the original Half-Life. Honestly they are not far away from each other on the scale of awesome, it's just that portal is noticably ahead.

I hate all the half-lifes and portal EXCEPT episode 2 I don't know what it was they did different but I LOVE it.

Half Life 2 because that's where the whole Orwellian alien-dictated future came from. It's gritty and was so far different to the first. I can't see people voting any other way.

shatnershaman:
I hate all the half-lifes and portal EXCEPT episode 2 I don't know what it was they did different but I LOVE it.

Sure your tastes didn't change? Go back and play the earlier ones. As for me... Too close to call. Never played the original.

EDIT: Ravenholm, How did I forget thee? Half-life 2

Easykill:

shatnershaman:
I hate all the half-lifes and portal EXCEPT episode 2 I don't know what it was they did different but I LOVE it.

Sure your tastes didn't change? Go back and play the earlier ones. As for me... Too close to call. Never played the original.

EDIT: Ravenholm, How did I forget thee? Half-life 2

I played them all at the same time with the orange box so if my tastes change in 10 hours my tastes are retarded.

EDIT: I did play episode 2 last but I did play epi 1 and original half life 2 at friends a week later(he wanted me to beat it for him)

Half-Life 2.
It seemed like you had just overcame an epic journey by the end of the game.

I voted Half-Life 2, partially because it's true, partially to spite you for saying it was disappointing. It was the first I played of the HL series, and it inspired me into buying the original. Rarely does a sequel not only live up to the amazing game before it, but in some ways actually do BETTER. Not to mention it had the best ratio of graphics quality to performance of its time.

This is a hard choice. Half-Life is a classic that helped define the genre of story-driven FPS's. Half-Life 2 is perfect blend of story and artistic presentation. Episode 1 really renewed my faith in NPC companions. Episode 2 really felt like a true step forward in narrative story telling in an FPS. Lastly, Portal is a work of pure genius. All of them exude "awesomeness". If I had to choose, I'd go with Episode 2 only because it did so many things right and was one of the only games that, at the end, literally made me say, "Oh my God, did that just happen? I can't wait for the sequel."

Personally, i'd seperate the episodes, because here's how it works out for me:

HL2: ep2 > HL2 > Portal > HL1 > HL2: ep1

Spy sapped the poll - You forgot about one game!

And again,