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Half-Life 2 Going Gold on Monday? [updated]

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the on-the-horizon dept.

Warrior-GS writes "According to GameSpy, Gabe Newell has announced that Half-Life 2 is going gold on Monday. Numerous retail outlets have Sept. 1 or Sept. 2 as a shelf-date for the game, so a gold announcement now seems to mean those dates are fairly close to reality." Given that HL2 is already available on Steam, this doesn't sound too far-fetched. Update: 08/28 19:27 GMT by T : Kraiger writes "According to HL2 Fallout the announcement of the futuristic FPS, "Half-Life 2", going Gold is a complete hoax! According to HL2 Fallout, the announcement from Gabe Newell, a Valve Software employee, was created by someone who was able to guess the simple password of "gaben" for Gabe's forum account."

14 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. I'm looking forward to this by Timesprout · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its been on preorder for me for a month now. I'm not a big gamer but HL was such a gripping game to play and the mods are so good they definitely brought a new dimension to gaming for me. Heres hoping its as good as its predecessor.

    --
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    What truth?
    There is no dupe
    1. Re:I'm looking forward to this by bgackle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I was looking forward to this too, then I started doing some research on what "Steam" is. I quit playing counterstrike over a year ago, back when WON was still being used.

      See: this link

      Let's just say I'm extremely dissapointed in Valve for where they have taken this. I wouldn't hold your breath on mods, either. This game is now DRM'd to the hilt... making and finding mods just got a lot more difficult, as did running a creative server.

      I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I may actually pass on this one. I have no desire to need to be constantly connected to the 'net to play a single player game that I paid for, or to play LAN games with my friends. There is no excuse for them to need to be "working on" allowing access to the game you bought.

      --
      What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
  2. Gold, perhaps, but not yet retail by MonTemplar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The latest from Amazon UK is that it will be available from 1st November. It was being reported as 3rd September up until yesterday. (Needless to say, I've got a pre-order in with them).

    -MT.

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    -MT.
  3. Zero Sales? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are so many coupons floating around, Do they really expect to sell any copies of this game? Seems to be they've already "sold" it when they took the money from ATI.

  4. I, for one by Sheetrock · · Score: 3, Interesting
    While I'd been looking forward to Half-Life 2 for quite some time now, am I the only one that thinks Steam represents an unprecedented level of intrusion in my computer activity?

    I may be a bit sensitive to this because one of the other games I looked forward to (Battlefield Vietnam) had a set of conditions to use the online anticheat system (to my knowledge mandatory for Internet gaming) that were intrusive enough that I just shelved it. I just want to buy it and play it, not open my use of the software up to unwarranted scrutiny.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  5. Game Hype by rh005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's hope that it's not as bad as Doom 3 in matters of interactivity. Do you remember that, after the first Doom there was Duke Nukem, where you could interact in a lot of ways with the 3D environment. There were more things to do, special weapons, cameras, holoduke etc. That was then. But now, in 2004, the level of interactivity hasn't increased at all. With some exceptions, like Deus Ex and System Shock, it's still the same game as 10 years ago. Has gameplay been replaced by hype?

    1. Re:Game Hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Well, a year ago they claimed that there was no scripted AI in HL2 at all. Then the game was leaked and it turned out that all the sequences shown at E3 were scripted after all...

  6. Re:Not looking so hot after Doom 3... by bogie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well how do you know that until you play the game? HL 1 was very immersive I can only guess that it will be that much better. In fact playing Doom 3 feels very much like HL1 story wise. And yes I know Doom 1 had the general idea first.

    Regarding graphics its not D3 but it pretty darn good looking.
    http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/492/49 2830/img_2 133273.html

    The thing is D3 is all about cramped indoor environments. Hallways and Offices etc. HL2 looks to be much more in the vein of cityscapes and outdoor areas which after D3 will actually be VERY refreshing. Don't get me wrong I'm still enjoying being scared by D3(and yes headphones are the ONLY way to play!) but I'm kind of over the whole walk into dark room, have imp jump out at me. The formula while still fun gets really stale 2/3 in. And fuck are those half-baby half fly things annoying.

    Anyway while Valve has really pissed me off with the delays I'm still very much looking forward to HL2. That and hitting people in the head with a crowbar. HL2 is looking to be pretty different from D3 and that's a good thing. My nerves couldn't take another creep and get scared jump fest.

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  7. Gold? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I could see it going Gold on Monday to be honest...

    I mean, if you're looking at a November 1st release date, and about a month of making the retail boxes... Assuming the Nov. 1st release date is accurate of course...

  8. Re:And the hardware to run it... by feidaykin · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You just reminded me of a story... one that took place six years ago, on a dark and stormy night. Well I don't think it was dark or stormy, but it was involving hardware that would make anyone shudder. Half-Life had just been released, and all the gaming sites were raving about it... so much so that I decided to buy it when I saw it on a shelf at a local Best Buy. I sorta glanced at the min requirements, and I thought I was close enough.

    I was very, very wrong. I inserted the Half-Life disc into my 4x CD-ROM and started to install it to my PC... It had 24MB of memory, a "PR233" Cyrix Processor, and I believe the video card at the time was a 4MB card with "pretend" support for Direct3D.

    The pain.

    The horror.

    You know those Houndeye creatures I think they're called, the ones that create a blue circle of hurt? One of those would bring that computer to a complete standstill when it did its little attack.

    The poor Cyrix also over-heated often, so often that I renamed the short-cut to the game "Crash-Life" and felt better somehow.

    This story does have a happy ending though. After a few days of suffering, I got myself a Celeron 366 and clocked that baby at 550 MHz, I got a voodoo2, and i think a massive 96 MB of ram. If it hadn't been for Half-Life, I likely would not have upgraded for months, maybe even years. Behold the Power of a Computer Game!

    Of course, the question is, will HL2 be good enough to cause people like me to run out and do the same thing we did six years ago? Perhaps that will be the true measure of its success; not that it is hardware hog, any game can be that, but that a game can be good enough for folks to plunk down three or for figures worth on hardware to play it.

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  9. Well obviously its a hoax... by Kelmenson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "Going to go gold Monday"?

    Uh, clearly written by somebody who has never had anything go gold... Before something is going gold, you have release candidates. You test the release candidates intensely, and if you find no bugs, then it goes gold. So you can't say on Friday that you are going gold on monday, unless you already know you have no bugs, in which case you already should have gone gold...

    If this were real, he would say that they had a release candidate. The difference between an RC and Gold is testing, which is what will be happening between now and Monday...

    1. Re:Well obviously its a hoax... by xfact0r · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The RC was supposed to be delivered to Vivendi sometime in august, but I believe it was missed.

      I also agree with you that it is a hoax, as the post from hl2fallout.com has come from a proxy server, and the poster has also posted a message boasting about how he has the account.

      On a seperate note, valve included a second test with the preload, the text "password is nova/prospekt this is the second test" has been found in the EXIF information of a jpg inside the preload, more information at halflife2.net forums and #secondtest on irc.quakenet.org

  10. Collector's Edition? by Fiz+Ocelot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't been able to get a clear idea on exactly what you get with the Collector's Edition. I've heard that it may contain HL1 redone on source engine and TFC redone as well. But no confirmation on that. I certainly would love that if they were included though.

  11. Re:Hoax by EvilAlien · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Excuse me a sec, my Troll Detect-o-matic just went haywire...

    I think you have that backwards... the stuff I read suggests that ATI owners will be dancing in the streets (I get pretty decent framerates in CS:Source) while nvidia owners will be contemplating jumping from the nearest tall building. I also get pretty decent performance out of Doom 3.

    Of course people are going to rush out and buy this game! Its going to be the best thing since... er... Half-life. It'll make people forget about Doom 3 and Far Cry ;)

    --
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