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CS: Source Half-Life's Only Multiplayer
James DeSimas writes "Halflife2.net was able to get an exclusive interview with Chuck Osborn from PCGamer. In the interview he found out that Counter-Strike: Source is indeed the only Multiplayer for Half-Life 2." This comes on the heels of the news that PC Gamer will feature a special HL2 Review in its upcoming issue. Full Steam and Retail packaging details about the game are also available from many sources today as well.
No crowbar headcrushing in multiplayer?
That is no fun at all!
--
Knut Karlsen, norway
Halflife2.net was able to get an exclusive interview with Chuck Osborn from PCGamer
So what happens when a journalist interviews a journalist anyway? That's not good journalism, IMHO.
FTA:
* Standard Edition - includes HL2 and CS:Source. Ships on six CDs, in one of three box-art packages (Gordon, Alyx or the G-Man).
* Collector's Edition - includes Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source, a Half-Life 2 T-shirt and a Prima book sampler. Ships on a single DVD.
First I would like to say that Vivendi Universal has pulled crap in the past related to shipping and hr practices, and other crap, and other crap, and that means it's an unstable publisher in my books.
We're not sure if Steam will have HL2 or not. It's up to Vivendi last I checked. We're not sure if CS Source will be considered part of the Vivendi distro or not either. Speculation upon speculation at this point, IMHO. Note that this was a PC Gamer guy who was interviewed by some other guy
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I am incredibly disappointed that it seems there will be now regular HL2 Deathmatch. I played CS from beta 2 until the present, but I have gotten extremely fed up with CS and want plain, vanilla HL2 DM again...no waiting until your idiot teammate wearning the "myg0t" tag dies as he is the only one left alive on your team...
;)
Of course, I will be buying the Steam Gold pachage b/c I am a fanboy
The entire interview can be summed up as saying HL2 is really cool and that Counter Strike Source is the only multiplayer... though I'm sure we'll see other mods in time.
That being said, this interview basically told me not to get too excited about HL2. I'm a huge fan of HL and its mods, but I get bored quickly with single player games... I want multiplayer. AI in games can only go so far. I'm also not a big fan of counter strike. I prefer DoD and Natural Selection (some others are okay once in a while). So, no rush for me to buy HL2 when it comes out.
They've delayed this game way too many times to the point that I've pretty much lost interest in it.
Maybe when it hit's the bargain bins.....
Even though no one else has said this yet in this thread, because someone says this in basically every story like this - whatever happened to co-op modes?. Hardly any games have co-op any more, which I find to be the most enjoyable type of multiplayer first person shooting. Ever since playing through doom 2 in co-op I've been hooked yet no one seems to want to make games with this feature any more - they want us to fight each other instead of teaming up :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, have they decided yet which package we who went out and bought Radeons a year or two ago will get?
Team Fortress 2 will be a separate game. It will not be included with the game (did you read the summary?) - you'll have to buy it separately. Team Fortress Classic will be ported to the new engine as a free mod though, I imagine.
People should take not that PC gamer is essentially a marketing tool to get gamers to buy the games that gives 'exclusives' to the mag. Expecting an honest assessment of HL2 or really any game from this would be rather naive. Driv3r comes to mind as a fine example of 'exclusive' reporting at work in the game review business, where certain publishers/reviewers somehow overlooked the many and obvious bugs in the game and still talked about it in a rather positive manner.
Doom3 as well is a good example of this; nearly every single reviewer (both mags and sites) for the first few weeks acted as if this game was in fact the second coming of christ. While Doom3 was very well executed and obviously had amazing graphics, I am unsure how people felt so positively about a game that really got drudgerous after the 7th lab that you had to transverse to reach hell. And then you just go back to the labs after you reach hell for more hallway adventure. For all the amazingness of the engine, I was hoping for more variety in the environments, which with the exception of hell and outside on mars, there was very little that changed.
These rags are definitely not the place to get a real opinion on a game; their real value is for the screenshots they release as part of the exclusive. Otherwise, it is often difficult to tell the reviews from the advertisements themselves that share the pages.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
If this is the case, I am interested as to what multiplayer code they will provide in the SDK. They will have to provide a basic DM system for people to build on, or will they just give the counter-strike code?
It's rather odd.
Steam Packages
* Bronze -- HL2* and CS:Source.
* Silver -- HL2*, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source*, Day of Defeat: Source*, Valve's back catalog currently available on Steam.
* Gold -- HL2*, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source*, Day of Defeat: Source*, Valve's back catalog currently available on Steam, Complete Strategy Guide from Prima Games, 3 different Half-Life 2 posters, Half-Life 2 hat, Half-Life 2 postcard, Half-Life 2 stickers, Half-Life 2 Soundtrack CD, Chance to win a trip to Valve! (1 trip offered for every 5000 Gold packages purchased).
*To be made available upon product's release.
Also what does "to be made available upon product's release" mean? Does that mean DoD source isn't done? Does that mean HL1: Source isn't done? So basically if you buy the gold package next week the only thing you'll get are stupid posters, strategy guid, hat, postcard, stickers, soundtrack and all the old valve games until the other games are actually finished which still noone has any idea as to when that will happen?
Whats the word with Natural Selection? This has to be the best HL multiplayer mod there is. I would be thoroughly disappointed if this never came about.
I don't think anybody wants to compete with UT2004. No one, including Battlefield 1942, does it better right now. It's addictive, there's almost no learning curve, and even n00bs can have a good time and rack up high scores by playing support. Doom 3 only had basic deathmatch, Quake IV will be mainly single-player as well. It's not surprising Valve didn't want to go through the monumental investment of getting a good multiplayer option going when they already had CS.
I mean, there was Team Fortress 2, and it looks like a stillborn from here- there's been no real news on the game for at least two years, and almost all of the features intended for it have made their way into other realistic war themed shooters (parachuting into missions from planes, allies showing up as squad re-inforcements, voice chat).
Maybe you had a different version of the game than I did.
In MY Half Life I could run the game, click multiplayer, and kill people in the HL game, in HL maps, with HL weapons, and HL skins.
What were you playing?
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Valve didn't really have any multi-player in HL either
How does this stuff get modded up? The original Half life *DID* ship with multiplayer deathmatch. and it was pretty fun too.
So what ever happened to Team Fortress 2?
Insert Sig Here
This shouldn't take as much of a surprise to the average Counterstrike player. I imagine the two most likely responses are:
CS Player #1: You could play deathmatch in Half-Life?
CS Player #2: I play this Counterstrike thing all the time, but what the heck is Half-Life? It didn't come on my Counterstrike CD I bought at CompUSA!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I really enjoy DM, but I've never understand what people see in Counterstrike. The games are always over too quickly, you seem to spend more time sitting around waiting for it to restart than actually getting out there and putting bullets in heads...
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
That's odd because in the stolen builds and in the "beta" there was HL2 DM Multi-Player.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
modDB is saying that DoD will also be included on Steam. Yay/nays?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
What, the gold stream package is a lot better then the collectors edition! That bites, I hoped that there was going to be a soundtrack cd in the collector's edition.
So it looks like the retail collector's edition buyers are getting the shaft, the only bonuses for the collector's edition is the DVD(good), HL1 and CS Source (good), a sampler book(blah, they usually turn out to be a few crummy magazine quality pages, and you have to buy the real book anyway), and a t-shirt (blah, I would preferred a soundtrack cd, or the other source versions). I say the collector's edition failed to live up to the "lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff" claim.
The stream version lives up to this claim: Day of Defeat: Source, Valve's back catalog currently available on Steam, Complete Strategy Guide from Prima Games, 3 different Half-Life 2 posters, Half-Life 2 hat, Half-Life 2 postcard, Half-Life 2 stickers, Half-Life 2 Soundtrack CD, Chance to win a trip to Valve. Not having the official DVD and having to download the games is the only downside I find with the stream version.
And all the exclusive stuff the collector's edition buyers get in comparison to the Gold is a DVD copy, a sampler of the book, and a t-shirt. The shirts might as well say "I paid for the Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition and all I got was a crummy t-shirt."
So I really hope that they offer the other merchandise in the gold package for separate purchase, I can see lots of people wanting to buy the HL2 merchandise but not wanting to buy the stream Gold edition. I will probably get the collector's edition anyway, I prefer having a physical copy and want to have it as part of my game collection.
When will we see Blue Shift: Source?
I play UT2004 daily, and it's even more fun when custom maps are played, and with the new vehicles it's a hoot.
I just wish they would overcome that 32 player limit. I miss the days of Playing Wolf:ET on a 64 player map(chigc.com ruled for that). It was a full-out war. With some of the larger(10 meg) maps, UT would even be more fun with it.
Take a look at the third entry under "Processor Vendor" at the Half-Life 2 Hardware Survey.
Looks like this isn't the only place where that's a valid poll answer.
--
Read the guide, then get yourself a free iPod.
And on the flipside, many games have came and gone trying to recapture or reinvent what CS got so strikingly correct, hence a slight rehash of an old game can be massively appealing. Old players see their classic game given a much needed face lift and new players get to discover the classic gameplay formula in it's more or less pure form.
Do we need to change chess every year with some new fangled feature to make it a good game again? I'm just saying there is a reason CS has such incredible staying power with so many failed imitators lying in a broken heap next to it.