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Half Life 2 Goes Gold

Posted by michael on from the bang-bang dept.

AhabTheArab writes "IGN is reporting that Half Life 2 has gone gold. After months of speculation and delays, it is finally true this time."

2 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Deep Breath by alnya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There should be some sort of law against posting headlines like that - my heart went quite aflutter.
    Sadly, it's not true, and until Valve AND Vivendi issue a press release saying "Gold, and you'll be able to play it on this date" none of these "nearly gold", "almost gold", "so almost gold I can taste it" announcements really mean anything.
    Mod headline -1.

  2. Re:What's it saying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Does it reflect our desires or the nature of humanity to any extent?

    In my view, yes, to a very small extend it does... but it is an extent many times smaller then the extent of experimental psycological research like the millgram experiments. which far predate DooM and half-life.

    Try comparing what these experiments showed about human nature compared to what the often observed but never scientificly proven desire among a group of people for shiny fast cars.... If you are excited about the things that sport car buying behaviour can tell us about ourself then you might just be a psycologist, the same goes for games I guess.

    You can speculate on what part of human nature these games expose. Personnaly I like to think they show that there is still a strong will to survive in even the most boring office dwellers. Little else would explain why a dark spacestation filled with creatures that can kill you, just not for real, can be excisting.

    Its funny (and perhaps a little telling) how people always talk about how first person shooters are about shooting other humans or creatures totaly ignoring that the player spends hours in an environment filled with entities that fight back, fiercly, and in a way optimized for player fear. Look at which first person shooters are a succes, its not the ones where you can shoot the most creatures (anyone excited for serious sam 3?), its the ones where even very few creatures can hurt you very bad, very fast, when you least expect it. The tactical shooters where getting spotted and hit once pretty much means game over are perhaps the most populair subgenre ever. This to me says something, just not as much as the stanford prison experiments. (Which btw, show some simalairity to the sims, shit, way to smash my own argument)