Building comparison
head to head
Half-Life 2vsYar's Revenge
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.
Half-Life 2
Execution · Pure Mechanics
Landmark FPS built on physics puzzles and tight gunplay.
Yar's Revenge
Execution · Pure Mechanics
A remake of the classic Atari shoot-em-up.
Half-Life 2 leans Execution (Pure Mechanics); Yar's Revenge leans Execution (Pure Mechanics).
Half-Life 2Yar's Revenge
Axis by axis
Execution6 vs 7
Yar's Revenge leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Half-Life 2
Gravity gun and shooting demand precision.
Yar's Revenge
precise dodging and shooting reflexes
Reads1 vs 0
Half-Life 2 leans a little harder on reads, though the gap is small.
Half-Life 2
Combine AI scripted, non-adaptive.
Yar's Revenge
fixed enemy patterns, not adaptive
Variance1 vs 2
Yar's Revenge leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Half-Life 2
Almost no randomness.
Yar's Revenge
minor randomness in enemy fire
Optimization3 vs 3
Same score on optimization - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Half-Life 2
Linear progression with no builds.
Yar's Revenge
minimal systems beyond scoring
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.