def half life 2 imo.
you have less weapons than in hl1 and most of them are just normal, regular weapons even though hl2 takes place 20 years after an advanced inter-dimensional alien empire conquers earth.
some of them like the smg, magnum, spas-12 and crossbow were literally, shamelessly copied and pasted from hl1!
hl1 actually had unique and advanced weapons for you to use like the hornet gun, tau cannon and gluon gun.
in fact, the tau cannon was going to be in hl2, but like with many cool shit, was cut from the final game.
and just to troll you even more, they even have the balls to not even give you any new or interesting weapons in episode 1 or 2, just the exact same shitty arsenal in the base game!
the only unique gun in the whole game is the gravity gun, and its more of a tool you use to solve puzzles.
and by solving puzzles, i mean picking up shit, carrying it around and putting it back down.
and yes, i know it gets supercharged at the end of the game and at the beginning of episode 1, but it goes back to normal and doesn't get supercharged in episode 2.
speaking of which, so much gameplay, enemies and story content was cut out from the final game, lots of it is really interesting and would have been a million times better than what we got.
the final story also has no real objective, its literally just go meet up with the guy and thats pretty much it.
everything you do in hl2 is just so you can meet up with eli vance, even in episodes 1 and 2.
and even then, he don't tell you anything useful, its just go meet up with the guy so other characters can progress the story.
i literally did not give a flying fuck that he got killed at the end of episode 2, which they retconned on hla because the writers are pussies who don't have the balls to kill off characters, and then move on and keep them dead.
in hl1, your objective constantly changes and makes sense for the story.
your main objective is not to die, the primary ones are to get to the surface to find help, survive the aliens and military, get to the lambda complex, and then enter xen to kill the nihilanth to close the portal to earth.
almost literally nothing in the story, aside from characters talking, walking and doing stuff, happens.
the chapter red letter day is literally an extended, interactive cutscene ffs!
i also fucking lol at gordon freeman being humanities saviour after hl1 for stopping the xen invasion of black mesa, even though that happend 20 years ago at a top secret science facility with only a handful of survivors.
it feels like the devs themselves became blind fucking fans of their own game and view gordon as their op mc!
so, yeah, thats pretty much it and i feel like this thread is long enough already.