>>719945823
Going in the opposite direction wouldn't be optimal either in my opinion. I appreciated the moments where HL1 and HL2 took away control, it was a break. The key is the right balance. I think HL2 did a better job at balancing that, but it lacked the enemy variety of HL1 so people didn't notice that.
A lot of fans swear that HL1 was far superior to HL2, but my opinion was always the opposite. Not that I didn't miss the enemy variety of HL1, but the overall better balance, more variety of gameplay, visual variety etc. made up for it imo