Not including some of the mods and Source engine games that would come later on, I consider Half-Life 1 and 2 to be among the worst games of all time. Half-Life 1 needlessly popularized narrative and introduced puzzling and platforming into first-person shooters - a move meant to make the game accessible to more players, but which in turn made first person shooters less interesting. Narrative would eventually become a core element of game design, forcing less innovative gameplay to bring movie and cartoon-like content to gaming (which honestly was probably continued on because it's more accessible than beautifully outlandish ideas like Katamari Damacy).
Half-Life 2 needlessly introduced technology - physics - which didn't need to be in the game to drive a compelling gameplay experience, and IMO felt like a gimmick. It did however drive another heavy narrative, but again, could have provided a direction to design more interesting gameplay. It also prompted meaningless actions from the player unrelated to the objectives of the game.
All-in-all Valve was probably somewhat redeemed by Portal in my eyes, although it took years of refining the first-person platformer concept to get assholes like me to buy in. The damage done to game design overall wasn't worth the road to Portal however.
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