f13.net

Gamespot: 9.2

"When you combine the strong single-player campaign of Half-Life 2 with the popular online play of Counter-Strike, the result is one of the most complete and compelling first-person shooter packages available. While Half-Life 2 breaks little new ground, it's still a superb and engaging first-person shooter, as well as an amazing technological accomplishment."

Summary: Tons of fun, amazing graphics, disappointing story.

IGN: 9.7

"Half-Life 2 doesn't do anything particularly new; it doesn't really innovate in many ways. But what it does is set a new height for all other designers of first-person shooters to reach. It still isn't exactly perfect, but it's about as close as I've seen in my tenure here."

Summary: How do you get spooge off a monitor?

Doesn't this unlock tonight?

1 hour.

The gamespot review was pretty underwealming actually. I'll wait a bit for some reviews from someone who wasn't a screaming fanboy beforehand.

If it IS worth getting, I'd need a new PC to run it anyway, so I have plenty of time to wait.

I'd really like to be playing this game right now.

Unfortunately I was an idiot and blew my personal monthly gaming budget on Evershit 2.  Hmm... Does Santa make early deliveries?

What I want to know is where are these mythical gaming stores that are open at midnight to sell new releases like halo 2, halflife 2 etc. Certainly not in the Northeast. Rocked up at an EB today as it was due to open (9am) and the guy was just getting there to unlock the store. He gave me a look of contempt and told me to come back in a cpl of hours when hes had 'time to get setup'. I told him that I would go to gamespot (not that they were open either.:P).

I am _enjoying_ half life 2. It is very good. It is not as good as deus ex, a little better than Farcry, and nowhere near as bad as Doom 3. I will play through it and then play through Half-Life: Source. Though everything will be put on hold to play Vampire: Bloodlines as soon as I can pick it up.

What settings are you running on schild and on what specs? Any problems with stutters etc?

Bloodlines... mmmmm

Can't wait to get home from work to try out HL2 though. Should be fun.

Comments after a couple of hours...

Graphics are excellent throughout.
Game feels very much like playing on rails, almost to the point of being a tech demo.
Runs well enough on my AMD1900/GF4400Ti/768Mb of fun, occasional slowdown, but the defaults are set to high.
Loading message is slightly too regular and beginning to annoy.
Steam is bloody slow at starting games up.
Physics are nice. Puzzle solving does feel a bit less like simply taking abstarct elements and combining at random as a result.
No set piece has included anything I haven't seen before (in HL1) as yet, though they are all very well done.
Atmosphere is great.

Looking forward to the creations of the HL2 mod community.  Doom3 engine was pretty gimped from the start with the poor multiplayer code and an engine that is questionable in wide open spaces... has anyone made a wide open style level for doom3?  Hell, maybe it was in the original game.  I got too bored to finish it.

Walmart sold Halo2 and Half-Life2 at midnight.  The clerks were less aware of Half-Life2, and there was no midnight crowd gathered like there was for Halo2.

I played the leaked release a year ago and it ran extremely well on my Athlon 2200+/GeForce 4 4200.  Now, there is alot more eyecandy.  I run Athlon 2200+/Geforce 5900, and I get more machine lag then I would like.  The good news is that it is only are areas that the game loads upcoming material(not the "Loading" screens itself).  I run 1gig of Corsair RAM, but a 7200RPM Maxtor HD.  Easily playable still.  By no means a beast of a game to run.  All settings on high, at 1024x768, no anti-aliasing.

Runs decently. Particularly if you have the full steam nocd install.

On another note: We've had 1/3 the number of posts today because HL2, MGS3, and Bloodlines are out. Oh and Metroid Prime 2 for you Nintendo kiddies. Read f13 more damnit! :)

Nothing to read cause no ones posting...and Im stuck at work for another 3 hours + 3 hours of 'family' time (read keeping the wife and child happy) until I can play.

damnit.

Oh yeah and talk about skimpy on the box cntents, nothning but 5 cds in paper sleeves and a 2 sided reference card. Blah.

Got Bloodlines, woo! Now... if this damn workday would only end. Hmm, which to try first, HL2 or Bloodlines?

Bloodlines review plz.

I'm eager to hear how Bloodlines turned out.  The game has held my interest  during development, but the recent screenshots and videos that I watched have looked rather dull.

Answer: Steam.

Excuse me, I'd like to be able to play something I have spent a considerable amount of money on.

WTF?! I'd have loved to have given a review for this game but, as it stands, I've spent over an hour installing and "creating an account" just to be able to play a non-MMOG.  I can't wait 'til the German H4x0rz get a patch out for this hostile-toward-customers internet requirement.

I've spent less time downloading/installing WoW...and that's still in its Beta stage!

Here's to the downfall of the industry and to the politics/greed that ass-ramed those who still cared about it.

 (http://www.resvrgam.com/files/steamingturd.jpg)

So you cannot play HL2 at all due to that error? How about if one buys a box version of the game?

This IS the retail *boxed* version of the game! :(

You still have to create a steam account and verify your cd key online.
Yaynot.

Mandatory "authentication" for a single-player game is just...wrong in so many ways.  I wonder is Valve and M$ swapped stories during their sleepovers at the Neverland Ranch?

Here's what I've been staring at for the past 2 hours:
http://www.resvrgam.com/files/invasive.jpg

Now I have to get to work and spend the next 8-12 hours thinking over the waste of cash I just blew on a SOE-esque single-player experience :(

How many instances of "steam" can you locate in this picture?  I've had viruses with less invasive qualities.

Jesus Christ. Change that desktop theme, whore. That start menu looks like something out of the Big Book of Furry loving Elves. Or WoW. Whichever. Bleh.

Edit: Oh, and yea, a bunch of people here at work are staring at that. Man am I glad I bought it off steam.

I get kind of giddy seeing all the people who refused to buy over Steam because a box is more "foolproof" or something get screwed while us early adopters get to start playing right away.  Mmmm... schadenfraude....

So those of you who have played it a bit, is HL2 indeed the second coming of baby robot jesus?

I'm on the fence about getting it. I have heard the last levels are in Xen and the ending is underwhelming.

Your compassion is very comforting.

I hope Karma isn't something you believe in :P

Well, mine crashes right after I select "New Game." I didn't really have many problems with Steam, though.

I suspect Steam and things like it are the future--cuts down on piracy, and allows developers to cut publishers out of the loop and make more money directly.

Downloading from Steam doesn't stop you from having to connect to Steam every time you want to start HL2.  My ISP was down for a couple of hours last night, and I couldn't play HL2, even though I had previously connected and unlocked and all that malarkey.  Decidedly unimpressed with that - I expect it will be cracked in a day or two though.

Having said that - the game itself is beautiful from the 30-40 minutes I mucked around this morning.  And ran fine on an Athlon 2600, Radeon 9700Pro and 1 Gig ram.  1024x768, all video details high, no AF or AA though.

I preached the wisdom of pre-loading as much as I could, hence my conscience is clean.  :D

It's not the second coming of Jesus.

It is very very very fun.  Especially when you get the grav gun.

I love how they recycled a bunch of the sounds.  Others might not.  It's comforting for me.

Edit: Steam works perfect for me.

OK, been playing it for a couple of hours.  Got to the 'swift boat' bit and then it crashed and bombed me out.

NOW I CAN'T FUCKING START IT AGAIN BECAUSE STEAM IS FUCKED BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION.

THIS SUCKS.  THIS IS THE WORST IMPLEMENTATION OF SHITE I HAVE EVER WITNESSED.

REALLY SORRY TO SIT ON THE FENCE LIKE THIS BUT IT'S HORSESHIT AND I HOPE SOMEONE IS FLOGGED UNTIL THEIR RIBS SHOW FOR THIS CRAP.

The game itself is great.


Edit - I don't give a flying fuck who it works perfectly for.  It's fucked for me.

isonews is listing this today (http://www.theisonews.com/release.php3?releaseid=93951)

According to the "release" it says their crack emulates steam.

I may have to download that, I can no longer log onto steam it seems.  Played CS source yesterday afternoon and today my account doesn't accept my username/password.  I am very pissed.

Why, amongst only 6 other icons, do you keep a jpg of a steaming turd on your desktop?

That is really quite strange.

Well, as I've posted elsewhere - I've put my money down and I have a non-functioning TURD.  I will be pirating this thing first thing tomorrow so I can actually play what I paid for.

As a developer, you really ought to take note.

Don't ever do this.  It's bad enough you made SWG.

That's the image I captured for the "error" pic.  I thought I'd name it something that it reminded me of (it's been promptly removed now...and to Schild: the WoW scheme's been changed as well :P ).

Ok, does the regular $54 version of Half-Life 2 available at EB come with Half -Life: Source, DoD: Source and the rest of the back catalog like the Steam Silver version does?  I don't think I want to spend $80 on the retail collectors edition just to get the Half Life/DoD/back catalog crap.  So I guess what I want to know is if the regular (non CE) retail HL2 is equivalent to the Steam Silver package or if it's just like the Bronze package.  If it's not like the Silver package then I guess I'm going to go with Steam and will have to worry about picking up the box and original CD in a few years when the game is el-cheap-o.

Or you could just torrent the fucker when a crack comes out because you refuse to submit to the Steam bullshit.

That's the route I'll be going...  Restrictive activation schemes?  Automatic piracy fo' me.

Nah, I don't pirate software anymore.

I like the steam bullshit. Don't talk about piracy on my website. I think that covers it.

Heh. I DID mention previously that I didn't trust steam. It's an abortion, and I'm glad some more people have become aware of that fact.

Damn you people! Internet delivery is the future. Though, I still think Valve should have sent everyone a nice dvd case witha  dvd of halflife 2 in it. Everyone likes having something material to show for cash paid.

It's the future if Valve starts publishing software for distribution over Steam.  That will only happen if they release numbers on how many people acutally use that shit.

As for the dvd, can't we back it up and print up some nice dvd covers?

There is little question in my mind that Team Fortress 2 will be delivered over Steam primarily, if not exclusively.  It's sort of the same concept the Phantom was embracing, but I guess with much less suck.  I do like the fact that more of my money will go directly to the people responsible for the game, but I am still unsure of how exactly I feel about steam itself.  It bothers me that they are requiring a steam connection to activate the retail version of the game, since the steam login has a habit of, umm, failing.  Oh well, wave of the future with speedbumps and all, or what have you.

Yes, at our own expense. I'd rather have them pay for the DVD and paper media and send it to me. After all, I did buy their game. ;)

I've had some experience with people who react to technical issues like this.  Nine times out of ten it's PEBCAK.

Have to share this quote from Penny Arcade:

After a VERY frustrating time with my CD key, (Missleading fuckers), when you go to put in your cd-key it says:




So I look on the back of my cd case (WTF paper CD case? cheap ass fuckers.) and I have a CD key that looks like this.



Now, this didnt work. After about 20 minutes of entering different versions of the code, I finally got it to work, by using:



VERY confusing. But I was in.


The graphics are really really good, and it runs like a charm on my machine, I mean it runs REALLY good. All settings on high with AAx4. Those are the settings it defaulted to at 1020x768. I cant believe how good it looks and runs. WAY better than Doom3 in both areas.

I played for a few hours, and got to a part where I get to drive a Swamp Craft Thingy. So far I am loving the game, but UGH, driving that craft really makes me seasick. I had to stop 3 times during that part cause it was rally making me nausious. Anyway past it now.

The gameplay is really cool, a lot of the time I cant tell if the mobs im fighting are doing a scripted sequence or just good AI. Good job.

Hope to play more tonight.

While in the real world, I work towards getting our department and company away from delivering hard copy information sets, I do appreciate a good game manual.  This is extremely helpful in some games and the especially well done manual is often fun to read, pleasent to the eyes, and packed full of information.

Staring at a goddamn PDF or RTF file sucks.  Whenever I have something long like that to read at work I always print it.  I've yet to get used to having to stare intently at my screen and read large amount of information at the same time.  Until they can accompany a game release with a decent online help system or something similar to an Infocenter or Java help then I'd be more inclined.  More F1 help in games would be a start.

I just look at my nice Fallout manuals and find it hard to look toward the future of pure online delivery with any sort of fondness.  I'd like to just download my games in the future instead of having to deal with the brick and mortal places that reek of nerd stink, but, I feel we'll be missing something in the transition.

Just thought I would share this:

~spoiler~spoiler~spoiler~spoiler~spoiler~spoiler~

It's in black, highlight to read.

I was running across the rooftops of buildings from these crazy leaping aliens firing backwards and running out of ammo fast.  I dodged into a rooftop room and closed the door.  Apparently, these zombies that can rip me apart into tiny little pieces don't know how to open doors.  Feeling safe, I proceed to crowbar my way into a few supply boxes hoping for ammo.  I hear the zombies start moving up along the walls.  Still feeling safe, I'm moving through the boxes 1 by 1.  Then I hear this terrible crash and there's 3 of the fuckers all around me w/ broken glass and everything.  The bastards climbed up the wall and crashed through the skylight.  Scare the living crap out of me.  Well, I bust my shotgun out and kill 2 of them while running around screaming like a little girl.  But then I ran out of shells.  So I bust out my grav gun and lift a radiator off it's hinges.  The leaping zombie leaps into the radiator I have suspended in front of me knocking it from my hands.  So I panic some more and throw boxes at him w/ the grav gun, finally beating him into submission.   I stopped playing after that, needed a God-damned breather.

~End~

You know you've got a good game on your hands when you love it SO MUCH that you have to share your experiences with other random posters, but you don't want to ruin the experience for them.  Whatever happened to teh hate?  :)

Putting spoilers to games is a good way to get a ban if you dont announce it first.

Well, after a long install (6 hours, never seen anything like it in my life, makes me wonder if something is wrong with my dvd drive) I finally got to play about an hour this morning.

My first comments are it is lots of fun, though not alot different from HL1. The character models however look AMAZING.

I'm not to far into the game yet so I'm sure it'll get more impressive later on. Of course, I just bought Vampire so not sure which I'll play tonight.

Edit: One issue I am having is that sound sometimes stutters. Most of my NPCs at one point or another sound like they have a horrible stuttering problem. Once in awhile other sound effects stutter as well, usually accompanied by a second or two freeze of gameplay. Thinking I may upgrade my sound drivers.

Let me know how you get on with that.  Mine does the same thing, but I thought it was some kind of preloading going on, as it seems to happen at 'key' bits.   Maybe it just has a problem with my audigy 2 - I have the latest drivers...

Just thought I'd add - while waiting for another server to install - that my problems and objections are entirely to do with Steam.

Half Life 2 itself is a great game.  It's not as good as the original, of course, but it's a really good play so far.  I'd rate it up with Far Cry and WELL above Doom3.

It's problem, imo, is that it's not able to do anything new.  With the original half-life, they used the Quake 2 engine and went and shocked the world by doing some amazing stuff with it.  With this one, I feel they're doing more of a 'tech-demo' of Havok and Source, more than anything else.

Did anyone else feel that Ravencroft (or whatever) was simply a way for them to say to future developers - "Hey, you can base your gothic, vampirey or zombie game with this engine !!".  It really felt tacked on - even down to the priest character.  

And the story is STILL a little confusing.  Considering I'm fairly well into the game, I'm still a little non-plussed at all the shit that's going down.  I'm worried I'm going to meet 'exposition man' soon and half to listen to half an hour of bullshit.

Ah well.  It's a great game.  But Steam is the worst implementation of an idea I've seen in quite some time.

I thought Ravenholm was pretty cool, actually. But I'm into vampires and that sorta stuff so my opinion is a bit biased.

You misunderstand me - It WAS very cool.  I had a blast, no pun intended.  I also thought the maniac with the shotgun was great and when he laughed, I laughed.

But it didn't fit somehow.  Seemed jarring and out of place.

I think it's fair to say the game is very episodic.

1984 -> Canals -> Ravenholm -> Mines and so on.

Partly it makes it look more like a tech demo.

Partly it gives a bit mroe variety than in HL1.

What?  They threw vampires and castles into Half-Life?  Do I even have to go into how gay that is?

It's bad enough dealing with the fruity, Cure/Morrissey worshipping art fags of the Vampire games.  Those games I can avoid.  But throwing it into Half-Life is fucking stupid.

Not Vampires as such - just a very dark and gothicky feel level.

Though werewolves were there.  Kinda.

Just play the game.  Play it at a mates tho - don't buy the abortion that is steam.

Not vampires.

Crazy ninja zombies outside at night in what looks like a small east european village.

The individual elements are all very much appropriate to Half life, and not all that different from fighting HL1 spec ops guys. It's just a new setting.

So far it seems a very worthy sequal to half-life, and I'd easily rate it the same score.  It hasn't been perfect, but pretty damn close to it.  The engine is phenomenal, the level design is often brilliant, the AI is sometimes great...sometimes not.  I just don't want it to abruptly end like I'm thinking it will.  There are so many things that just impressed the crap out of me or got me excited, it really reminds me in that regard of half-life 1, but updated and improved upon for a game coming out 4 or 5 years after the first.

And yeah, the story at the moment still doesn't make too much sense, and I'm at least half way through the game I would guess.

If you poke every Vortigaunt(sp?) you meet, repeatedly, you get more of the story than you might otherwise have.

Goddamit.

I'm off home now to poke vortigaunts.

Despite how many questions have been left unanswered by the conclusion, I'm actually impressed with the game's overall design and narrative.

Ravenholm was a great addition to the story IMO and deviated from the Orwellian City 17 quite nicely.

***spoiler in black below***
Fr. Gregory's character was a nice hint of tragic heroism that rarely makes its way into these types of games: you know after your departure, he's as good as dead...seemingly sacrificing himself to allow your escape while he "tends to his unruly flock" with a gleefully maniacal laugh and dwindling ammo. I really liked that.

By far, the vehicular scenarios have played out some of my favourite scenes though: nothing will beat a certain canal trek aboard the make-shift skiff (especially after the Vortigaunt works his magic on it).

The Buggy scenarios were a bit frustrating at times but were also fun once I managed to get where I needed to go with it.

***spoiler above***

All in all, Half-Life's sequel didn't disappoint (Beyond that complete BS with Valve's steam experiment/excrement).

Best....Graphics....Ever

Agreed.

On my 3.2 with 2gb DDR Ram and a GF 6800 GE it is absoulty amazing. I run it with all settings on high, with 4xAA. No slowdowns.

Car. Fire. Die.

Slowly.

If thats for my system specs. It wasnt that expensive.

I spent like $600 for the system with 1gb RAM. Upgraded to two gigs for another $100 (I made sure I got a mobo with lots of slots for ram).

I got the GF card for a gift, but I was in the proccess of saving up for it anyway. Put away $100 a month, no biggy.

Ohh, if only it where that easy.  I could take a picture of this month's credit card bill to show you, but I'm not one to subject people to random acts of horror (god, I spent 600 dollars on a vacuum this month).

Ha.  I'm looking at about the same price, but I get no gifts of electronics.

Well, I work a lot, and dont have that many expenses, so its not to hard for me to save up for a few months. Just have to bring lunch to work and im all good.

/hijack

My buddy's fiancee spent 2 grand on a fucking vacuum. And now they spend $150 a week to have a maid come in. And they are broke.

People are fucking stupid.

I am leaning toward an Antec case, Seagate or Maxtor HDD ~160 gb, Samsung DVD RW (probably 12x), GF6600 (I might crazy and buy the 6800), and probably a gig of RAM. I know exactly dick about motherboards, but if I can find one that has a decent onboard sound setup I am all over it.

WRONG THREAD!

Well, I took out my old Soundblaster Live (96 or 97 version) and used my Motherboard's onboard audio. It still stutters but much less. It went from stuttering every 5 minutes, and usually twice during talks with NPCs to about every 10 minutes and only once during talks with NPCs. Vampire has the same problem but not as bad.

Heh. That is what I get for having multiple windows open.

Completed it.

Not more than about a day's play all told.

Sucks.

Graphically and 'enginely' a really nice piece of software.

But right now I feel exactly as I did when I came out of Matrix:Reloaded.

Yeah, that bad.

Took me three days and I enjoyed it.

I'm still playing it. Don't fucking ruin it for me.

Crap, the game must be close to over for me then, and this current position in the game has me very annoyed.  I don't know if this is a spoiler or not, but it might be if you are hyper-spoiler-sensative:




I'm in the city.  Its bugging the hell out of me.  I hate my squad.  I just want to get back on my buggy and keep hauling ass around the countryside.

The buggy pisses me off.  I miss my boat.  The one that never got flipped over.

Yeah the boat was good too.  But I kinda liked flipping my buggy over...especially in antlion territory.  Made it intense.  Or something.

You have a squad? Boats?

Looks like I might be playing this one for a bit longer. Which isn't bad.  I was afraid I would finish this game too soon. I never even thought of breaking open any crates! I thought they were just there to make steps.

I'm riding the gamers short-bus and I still can't see out the frickin window.

Ok, the heap of crap known has steam just patched itself.

Result: HL2 won't start anymore.

Fucking wonderful.

Face it:  Doom 3 > Half-Life 2.

And that's not saying much.

Bruce

Ouch.  I disagree.  

I think Half-Life 2 is a superior game but the bureaucratic bullshit needed to endure just to play it is a little off-putting IMO.   I got bored with Doom 3 after the fun-house effect lost its appeal and I noticed the conveyor-belt I was on...was way too blatant in Doom 3 vs. HL2 (again, IMO).

Are you fucking serious?

I could barely force myself to finish Doom 3, and I ended up cheating so I could get through some areas quicker. I sat down and played HL2 all the way through legit, despite dying over and over in a few parts.

Outside of the ending the whole game was better than I expected it to be, and I expected it to be really fucking awesome.

And this is with a lot of the stuff I thought was cool from the early videos being removed (i.e. some of the weapons, the "hydra", etc).

Please dont feed the troll.

This sums up my position on the matter too.

It's a good game, for what it's worth;  but the trouble is that it's in no way what we were expecting.  The story is, well, cliched and absurdly awful.  There's far too much 'figure this one out yourself' and far, far too many bad game cliches in there :  I mean, how many times can rocks actually fall and seperate you from any help so that you're a 'man on your own, on the edge, ready for vengeance' or whatever shitty tagline they would ascribe to it.

The whole thing doesn't make any sense and I kinda expected the 'G-Man' to start spouting off about how you're the one and 'you already know the answer to the question you were going to ask five minutes ago when I asked you who was the oracle'.  We've done the Matrix guys :  give us a fucking proper story or at least have Gordon wake up at the end in the fucking shower with Bobby Ewing.

Bad, bad, bad.

Apart from that, the technology is really good, the graphics are stunning and, apart from the occassional audio stutter which looks to be a problem of the Audigy cards, it runs sweet as a nut on my machine.

And then there's Steam.  Which is patching right now.  Don't get me fucking started on Steam.  If this is the fucking future, I'm going to be one of the guys throwing my fucking wooden shoes into the machines.

Fuck Steam.  In, as Haemish would say, it's fucking ass.


Anyway, I digress.

From my life.

Rrgarding Steam, the problem isn't really with the concept - the problem is that the implementation is a bug ridden inflexible piece of ass. And that in all likely implementations for the foreseeable future, bug ridden inflexible pieces of ass are inevitable.

For me the depressing thing about 'teh future' isn't just that something-like-steam might be how people do things, it's that...

1)  The dominant delivery services will be selected by market power of the publishers who they are tied to, rather then by the quality of the system itself. Most likely resulting in bug ridden pieces of ass.

2) The design focus of aforementioned large publishers will be on anti-piracy measures, which will proceed to make life hell for casual PC gamers who don't find colourful ways to avoid the nonsense, and which will not affect actual piracy in any way.

I don't look forward to a world where 3rd party patches are necessary to circumvent ineffective but inconvienient anti-piracy measures such as steam.

HL2 itself remains great in every way apart from the story line however.

I dont think the gamer population has any one to blame but our selves. If piracy was viewed differenty (IE not acceptible) then we might not have come to this point, but the huge warez community, and the fact that so many people are willing to steal software on a regular basis, well, Valve has the right to try and protect their software.

Look at the last large FPS release, Doom 3. I think at least 40% of the people here who played it, warez it.

Now, im not trying to be high and mighty or say I dont warez software, just that I cannot blame Valve in any shape or form for trying to actually get the monty for their game. I have had not a single problem with Steam ether, so maybe im a bit less bitter than some of you.

I think we brought it on ourselves, so I wont piss and moan about it. I agree with Raph, I think we are looking at the future of copyright protection. Then again, maybe it will be cracked tomorrow (or was yesterday), what do I really know.

Before yesterday, actually.  The pain in the ass you're all enduring?  Yeah, you're the only ones suffering, because the people who crack their game don't have to put up with Steam.

ETA:  Just wanted to add that I buy games left, right, and center.  About the only time I pirate a game is if they haven't released a demo.  If I consider it worth it, then yep, I'll buy the game.  I'm single with no kids, so basically I'm made of disposable income.  Steam, or some other shitty activation scheme?  Fuck you, I'll automatically pirate it.

If steam was any more effective than 'cd-must-be-in-drive' code, then I'd agree with you.

But the key point is that it is no such thing. Steam type anti-piracy measures are exactly as hard to circumvent as cd-in-drive code.

And I don't really see how any protection scheme on a single player game where the game runs and content is stored entirely on the client can ever logically ever be any more effective than a cd-in-drive check on startup.

In fact, by driving legal owners toward certain websites due to crappy implementation Valve might even cause a small increase in piracy.

Initially, I may have agreed with you...but: the gaming industry grossed more money than the over-paid film industry last year so I doubt pirating is as detrimental as the industry leads us to believe.

Bottom line: it's about greed and the only people winning in this political bullshit are the bloated, overpaid, completely useless higher-ups in these companies who don't even share their wealth with the people who make these games (the grunts who endure the 90-hour work weeks and hectic dev cycles).

greed for teh win.

Fight the power, maaaaan!  Seriously, if you think you're being overworked and underpaid then fucking quit.  The reason people work in the gaming industry is because they want to, and therefore they have less negotiating leverage than any employee in some other (unsexy, uncool) area of software development.

Furthermore, EA, Vivendi, whoever, has no responsibility to get their employees wealthy.  Their responsibility starts and ends with ensuring that their shareholders (y'know, the folks who invest the capital to even get these games made) see a return on their investment.  If you don't agree with that, well, then you're not a capitalist.

Personally I totally understand the fight against piracy. The only problem is that all these ways to safeguard against pirates only succeed in cutting down on the casual pirate. The guy who burns copies and gives it to his friends.

Who do I go to when I legitimately buy a game and it doesn't work because securerom jacks with my cd drive? The pirates. I don't make a habit of pirating, I feel guilty as hell when I do it and tend to look down on my coworkers who do it regularly. But if I buy a game and the anti-piracy protection makes it unplayable for me you can bet I find a crack as soon as possible.

I crack all my games, if only for the fact that having to dig up a CD every time chaps my ass.

I actually find that I play games that I don't have to put a CD in for alot more than those that require a CD.

Probably why I don't play as much XBox as I'd like.

I'm such a lazy fucker.

I do appreciate the fact that HL2 doesn't require a CD to be in the drive.  Seems like every other game I've bought recently won't start without a CD.

I still have not yet finished Half-Life 2 yet, but I have some initial comments to make about what I am experiencing.

First, the game is great.  But I do have some issues.

The level designs are very linear.  Half-life 1 had linear levels, as do many FPSs, but often this linear design is hidden by a few occasional paths, and "open rooms" that allow for occasional non-linear gameplay for a brief moment.  Infact, in HL2 some areas, the linear approach gets downright ridiculous.  Some of the blocked off passages, fallen debris, or path through a challenge comes accross as forcing me into finding a nifty solution, instead of truely letting me find that passage as a fun alternate route.  It feels like an attempt to intentionally show me the cool thoughts put into the game.  I would have rather stumbled accross some of these on my own.   HL2 appears to take a much tighter linear/rail approach then I would have expected it to.

The AI.  While not remotely dumb as shit, it has not yet shown me anything I am impressed with.  Enemies still come right at me.  They don't get snagged on landscape, but they do not do anything that remind me of the soldier-AI in HL1.

One moment the game is teaching me how to stack boxes to get past areas, and the next moment I stack boxes to get to a ledge, and an invisible barrier prevents me from getting there, because it is evidently not an intended area they want me to get to.  I understand they might not want me to get to unintended areas, but don't taunt me with some areas that appear like I can easily get to them(and might have to to get past that area).  Atleast craft the levels in such a way that does not taunt me by giving me the impression of creative access to areas.  Especially in a game that sometimes wants the player to be creative.

Dis-jointed chapters.  I love the variety of areas that HL2 is running me through.  But it is also a curse.  Areas seems more like gimmicks then any coherent flow of the story.  I do love the variety, though.

Outside of the game, the CD install, authentication, and file unpacking took far to long.  Ontop of that, it is insulting to have to have a CD-drive check ontop of the Internet authentication.  I am also wondering why I cannot buy Half-life: Source as a @$10 addon to the retail box I bought.  Steam originally rejected my credit card purchase, even though I use that card to pay all my other bills.  So I had to buy a retail copy, and, by default, missed the opportunity to get HL1: Source.

The retail DOES require a cd in the drive.  I can't play it without.  And to your statements that the steam related first day/week problems were due to people buying retail you are woefully misinformed.  The spread of retail and steam preload people that are having problems is about even.


As far as hl2?  Didnt add much?  Depends on what you mean.  They added a lot to the first halflife.  vehicles you can control that are a HUGE part of the game, controllable squads, etc...  I guess they had squads in opposing force but something about that game pissed me off.

Right now HL2 is the best fps I have ever played.  Nothing else really even comes close.  So far I am only about (guessing) halfway through the buggy level but I have loved every moment so far.  Best implementation of physics in a game yet.  Beats farcry which had my vote for that title prior to hl2.  I have not played the vampire bloodlines game yet, that could change things.

Deus Ex. Bloodlines is close. Half-life 2 is third.

I was referring to ALL corporate structures in regards to the bloated, over-paid, useless higher-ups...not just game companies.

Game companies are designed to work their underlings harshly and exhaust them quickly (so as to keep them jumping from company to company).  Anyone in the industry knows this.  It's easier to manage a bunch of pixel-pushers who lack seniority and desperately need that paycheck than it is to push around someone who has clout. :P
People hoping to have a long-lasting job in that industry are delluding themselves (unless they're already in before the 1998 cut-off or related to the boss).

Anyways, I think this discussion would probably be better suited in another thread.

/back to the regularly scheduled Half-Life 2 thread :)

Just beat it.  The first half was alot better than the second, but its still on par with half-life 1 in my eyes.  Great game and worth the money, even if it seemed like they needed another half an hour at the end there.  Now time to get around to playing Deus Ex, and apparently Bloodlines as well?

<nelson>Haw haw!</nelson>

Here's a nice summary of the stuttering problem in HL2:

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

That stuttering dilema is really odd:

I never get any stutters in HL2...at all (though the game briefly pauses with the "loading" message for a few seconds now and then (flaw or feature of the engine I suppose...sorry I'm spoiled by streaming levels so the sudden cease in gameplay to "zone" just feels antiquated and immersion-breaking).

However, I DO get this audio anomaly in Vampire: Bloodlines...all the time.

Thanks for the heads up and linkage :)  I hope Valve makes good with their patching.

***Spoiler Below***
Did anyone else think the ending was anticlimactic?  It reminded me of the old Atari games' endings of "Congratulations, you won the game...roll credits."   It saddens me that they're going to try and milk this franchise with some episodic bullshit that will cheapen it.  

"We're rallying a 'cabal' of devs to make single-player levels that will only be available via Steam that may allow you to play as Alyx Vance!" - Gabe Newell  .....Bad idea, Gabe.  

Since Alyx has a voice and defined persona, you'll be deviating from your already established: "The player IS the protagonist" conventions.  You should NEVER break story-devices/structures!  That's learned the first day in any cinematographic/creative writing course.  Cpl. Shephard...no voice.  Barney Calhoon (given a voice and that expansion pack [Blue Shift] seemed to only sell due to the high-def pack)...Freeman: no voice.

So many plots left unresolved... The very concepts of trials, tribulation, conquest & reward have been completely tossed out the window!  It's like an M.Night Shamaylan movie (post "the Sixth Sense"): Great preface, build-up and confrontational crescendo...but the endings fall flat and end up annoying the viewers.

Hopefully, Half-Life 3 will be the final installment in the franchise and tie up all those loose ends.  If they milk this cash-cow for everything they can (which is a strong possibility), they'll have officially killed their own baby.

I'm still somewhat disappointed that I didn't get a chance to fight some of those funky aliens, vehicles? & "stalkers" that were seen as you take your joy-ride up to Breen's office. :(

So much left in the air....what a waste of an otherwise brilliant title.
***Spoiler Above***

Unless you're one of the pariahs who require the CD in the drive as well as an active internet connection for Steam.

Fuck Steam.  Fuck Half-Life 2 and Fuck Valve.

(And the AI in 2 is a thousand steps back.  They walk into your gun.  They open the door, see the bullets whizzing by from a gun hardpoint and wander into it.  What.  The.  Fuck.)

There was a few good moments for the AI it seemed in the beginning at parts, but by the end it just felt like they gave up and didn't care anymore.  And sure, the story was crapfully told, the character development wasn't particularly great, and the ending was definitely at least a half hour to early.

The game still kicked ass though.  I'm not really playing HL2 for its storytelling.

I was.  After all, I expected them to improve on the first game, which was :

Ordinary bloke on a train, going to another fairly boring day at work.

Bam.

Next thing you know, it's 5am and you have to get up for work the next day - for real - so time to stop playing a damn computer game.

The story was what I was there for.  If I just wanted to shoot shit, I would have preferred Doom 3.

I would just like to say:

Fucking Headcrabs!!  Especially the new ones that travel in PACKS on the backs of their hosts, get THROWN at you, and poison you down to 1 HP if you dont dodge.

That is all....Fucking Headcrabs....

Given that I've not had the oppertunity to say this before, I'll now simply echo that HL2 kicks all kinds of ass.    By that, I apparently mean that you can pick a kind of ass that needs ample boot kicking, HL2 is fully reverse compatible with that functionality.

I mean, sure, Half Life 2 is "just" a first person shooter in much the same way as a 20 megaton bomb is "just" an explosive.  The truly refreshing thing is that Half Life 2 finally brings us to the feeling that we've reached the next level of first person hooters... shooters.  (Dang undeletable typos.)   Doom 3? Who cares about Doom 3.  We all know where the real mods are going: Source Engine all the way.   Why, oh why did I waste $50 on that demon-infested 3d marvel when I could have simply waited for Valve's lovechild to come sprawing on me an enraged lobster with a butter fetish?

Listening to a recent radio interview, Fraya (I feel like I'm missing a letter there... freyla? freyra?) and the rest of the Natural Selection team said they'd "love to bring Natural Selection to the Source engine", but they're not sure how easy that would be yet, and "if the community's going there".   Clueless, brilliant bastards.    I can forgive them (and rebuild the small altar of worship I made for them out of recycled shoeboxes and earwax) under the knowledge that they've just now got their hands on the SDK.    Fray?a and team estimates that, should they decide Natural Selection Source is doable, we'll see Natural Selection out for HL2 in a matter of a few months some time after Beta 6 is released.   That's (nearly) good news for me, because Natural Selection is my favorite multiplayer mod of all time.   (That NS is my favorite mod sort of took me by surprise as I initially (before playing it) thought NS would have as much popularity as Battlezone 2, that is to say, lousy.)

Meanwhile, I have tried Counterstrike Source, and it's playable enough.  By "playable enough" I meant that I ended up spending 6 hours just playing the office level, mostly shooting surprisingly bulletproof file cabinets in attempts to tip them over, tearing apart entire rooms of hapless office supplies with my lovely but pathetically inaccurate Paras machine gun, and (even simultaniously) mourning the repetitive destruction of the vital microwave oven within (even Counterterrorists need hot pockets).    However, that Counterstrike is only means of multiplayer conveyance for Half-Life 2 is hardly adequette.  Day of Defeat is coming soon, but I'm not sure how I can get my mits on it without being forced to shell out more money than I already have.   I need my precious, precious Natural Selection.

Woah, wait a minute... you have to buy the mods now? They're not going to be downloadable like they are now? Wow, that's really stupid. Don't they realize the only reason the first HL lasted this long was all the free mods people could download and try. Between this and requiring me to have an active connection and the disc in the drive make me regret not getting it via an alternate distribution network, and I don't mean Steam. GUess I'll be going that route with any mods I want.

I think you have to pay for DoD and Counterstrike, but that's because Valve bought them.   If I try clicking on DoD what pops up is a little screen saying, "come spend $60 to buy the "silver" version of half life that includes DoD.   (DoD is technically not released yet, but it's "coming soon.") Now, if I could just pay $10 to upgrade my existing copy of "bronze" Hl2, this wouldn't be that bad.   But, it's completely out of the question for me to buy a completely different copy of HL2 just to get my mitts on DoD.

Mods being made by third party developers such as those making Natural Selection shouldn't cost you anything.   Although, with steam involved... hmm, good question.   They could potentially charge you a subscription service just to use steam to download and integrate these third party mods.   Given that Steam is the only way to launch the Source engine, that's a definate possibility.

No, mods don't cost extra.  You can install HL1 mods right now and they show up in your Steam menu under "third party".  I run Natural Selection (the creator of which is FLAYRA... as in "flay Ra") under Steam just fine, as well as The Ship (http://www.theshiponline.com).  I see no reason to suspect that HL2 mods will function any differently.

Hmm, I wonder why it is that clicking on DoD brings up a dialogue to purchase Half Life 2 Silver, then.

DoD isn't a third-party mod, nor is CS.  They are commercial games now, owned by Valve.

Natural Selection, by contrast, is a third-party mod not owned by Valve, and its owner does not charge for it, so it is free.

If Valve charged extra for playing third-party mods, their mod community would evaporate in a flash.

The MOD bug bit me (I've been tinkering around in the un-finished SDK) and have been having a blast.  After about a year of discerning what one can and cannot do with the SOURCE engine (without having to devote a staff of 40 programmers and an entire LLC), I've designed my Total-Conversion MOD and patiently await Valve's release of the real SDK.   I know it's no Counterstrike or Natural Selection but: I'm hoping this endeavor will be worth my time & effort (it sure has been fun mucking about with the engine as is).
MOD's Website (http://www.resvrgam.com/games/tlp-sow.htm).

I'm hoping Valve doesn't get hostile to us amateur content creators :(

If Valve were hostile to amateur mod creators, they wouldn't have released the mod tools before releasing the game.  They know very well that Half-Life was a huge success because of its mod community (mostly the CS team), and they plan to provide more support to modders this time around if at all possible.

Yup, I never even played HL1 single player. I just bought a copy to play CS and DoD.