HL2 only picked up for me when I got to Ravenholme if thats the right name. Up till that point I found it to be a boring slog. I keep playing it to about half-way through then something like a re-format comes up and playing again from that beginning puts me off. I suppose that Steam cloud feature leaves me without that excuse anymore.

I love the gameplay aspect of HL. It's a great series in every respect.
HL's story sucks balls though.
HL1: ALIENS. OH LOOK MR. FREEMAN I HAVE A BRIEFCASE AND I'M MYSTERIOUS AND YOU GO FROM POINT A TO POINT B TO GET TO A BLACK SCREEN.
HL2: Alyx as a person? Emotional and engrossing storyline? Intriguing sci-fi concept? Fuck no. Awesome gameplay, but idiotic and pretty naive story.
I don't have anything against HL or people who love to play it - but I do have something against people who say HL has a great story. It doesn't. It's a mess.

Prove it.
I think it's really decent for a game. Awesome for a FPS.
When you say idiotic - Painkiller, Serious sam or Quake comes on my mind.

Idiotic? It was pretty generic science fiction, but surely not idiotic. And keep it mind it hasn't ended yet.

Taken out of context, Quake 3's story was pretty retarded, seemingly put there just so someone could claim that the game has a story. It does fit the gameplay perfectly though.
Yes, I repeat, Quake 3 Arena has a story.
I quote the manual:
Untold Centuries ago the Vadrigar, the mysterious Arena Masters, constructed the Arena Eternal for their own internal amusement. Virtually nothing is known of these beings except that they savour the carnage and clamour of battle. As such, they have stocked the arena with the greatest warriors of all time. And you have just joined their ranks.
As a gladiator in the Arena Eternal, you must not only survive, butalso win each and every battle against ever more powerful opponents. Don't worry much about being "fragged." The Vadrigar won't be cheated of their favourite sport by a little thing like death. Those who fall are instantly restored to life and immediately thrust back into the battle, perhaps a little wiser for their misfortunes.
When the dust, blood, and gibs settle, all warriors will have earned the right to battle again, providing further entertainment for the Vadrigar. But only the warrior who has fragged the most foes wil be lauded as the winner. The victorious gladiator advances to a more challenging array of arenas, until, at last, he or she faces Xaero, Lord of the Final Arena.
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Half-Life's story is very crude compared to many other examples of story-telling mediums, but it was a huge leap forward for FPS games, and I believe it can still hold its own even with more recent and slightly more eloquent additions to the same genre.
Yes, adventure games and role-playing games have had better stories since forever, movies and books even more so, though they are all unfair comparisons since those genres to a much greater degree relies on telling a story where shooters have relied on gameplay and challenge.

The beginning is boring? I must be weird I totally the dig the introductions and the tense atmosphere. I think it's in the chapter "Blast Pit" but while you're lurking in the belly of the facility you have this deep steam music which seems to echo through the empty hallways, always sends chills down my spy.
And "Water hazard" and the large chimney falling and crashing just before you, unforgettable I must say.
I don't understand the comments on the story, there must be misunderstandings on both side I guess. Part of the fun of this saga is to join the tidbits of story together like a huge puzzle yourself to get a sense of what the hell is going on. I personally consider this genius and the pinnacle of joining story with gameplay in such harmony to make the game "flow". It's using the video game medium to its best.
We have something else with RPGs: a lot of the background history is generally explained in great detail. You are eating through a lot of text and information delivered through character interaction and other forms of knowledge transmission (see "the codex" in Mass Effect, or books in The Elder Scrolls).
What i want to say is many things are set stone this way and a lot of inconsistencies/contradictions will become oh so clear (Mass Effect 2 'nuff said).
This doesn't appeal to anyone of course, I personnally find it interesting I can try to think about possible answers to questions left unanswered and fill the gaps with my imagination.

Yes, but see, there's a difference between just story and the whole cinematic experience which Half-Life brought to the table and HL2 refined and brought to its peak for that time (and still holds on extremely well now); for example I love System Shock 2, it had a great story, but I didn't get the same overall feel from SS2 - probably because of all the ridiculous gameplay imbalances it came out with. Weapons which degrade after a few shots? Yeah, no. The game, as offered, just had too many immersion-jarring faults which screamed "YOU ARE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME", instead of following a story.
People lauded Bioshock for how it told the story through the environment and the way it looked but guess what, HL2 had done that before with the whole dystopian view of a burned down city with boarded windows and locked doors and police patrolling the streets, through the way the citadel could be seen from any point of the city and so forth. Sure, Bioshock took it to the next level but in no way was the daddy (pun intended) of the concept.
In the HL series it's also easy to miss out little bits because you're never dragged out of character so things can be pointed to you *possible spoilers ahead* like the speech at the end of HL2 (or was it Ep 1) when the scientist (missing his name right now) talks about starting to repopulate because the inhibitors that kept sexuality down were no more, or how the reason the rocket in Ep 2 (where you need to launch the gnome into space) was too heavy is because his pet headcrab is there (and actually opens the door with the gnome if you don't close it and the gnome falls and you don't get the achievement).

Both of which have been released 5 (five) years after HL2 ;)

I was just pointing out the cinematic experience is alive and well. You were talking like it was a long dead art.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound that way.

Well actually, Beyond good and Evil felt like a cinematic experience that was better than HL 2 and Mass Effect combined. Or Outcast, for that matter. Mass Effect just had fancy "camera," and HL2 had really nothing of it's own, except technology - however, everything in it was so well refined that it was a really amazing experience

I stopped gaming in 2000 or so, then picked back up in 2006. I completed HL 2 sometime in 2007. I was impressed with the sense of immersion into the dystopian gameworld it provided, especially in the first few levels. I definitely felt like the protagonist in a good movie or novel, as opposed to Mario or Sonic (nothing against either of those guys, I love em both).

Still waiting for steamless version... ;-p Even got free HL2 voucher somewhere (came with my ATI card). Wonder if it's still valid... not that I'd ever use it. Also have both original HL box as well as HL athology box (both presteam obviously) around somewhere. I wonder if those still work...

You missed Knights of the Old Republic. Fix that.