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Half-Life 2 Finally Activated
Thomas Scovell writes "After over half a decade of development, stolen source code debacle, a promised deadline that was missed by a year, and a feud between the developer and the publisher that is still in court, Half-Life 2 has finally started to activate for those who have purchased online via Steam online or who grabbed the boxed version at the retailers that let it slip early. Go play!" Reviews are available via Gamespot, Gamespy, HomeLAN Fed, and IGN.
So this game is unplayable if i have no internet connection ?
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I was wondering if this was going to be 12.00 AM GMT, EST or PST. Looks like it was PST.
I might buy it this time
Duke Nukem Forever will be better !!
ahem...
It is taking an absolute age to unlock the game files.
Released: November 16th - Playable: November 21st.
Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!
So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...
they are busy on ordering
I've seen a number of reviews say that Half-Life 2 is the best FPS of all time. After playing it even for only the hour that I have (I have a Social Psychology mid-term tomorrow morning ;), I can tell you that it is, hands down.
I have to commend Valve for doing it right. They didn't rush. They didn't over-hype. They didn't fuck it up. =)
I believe Valve deserves a round of applause. Half-Life 2 is a masterpiece.
*Applause*
You are an idiot. http://www.ohnoes.org/
It's not original at all. I've watched my roommate playing it, and it's the same old stuff with better graphics. Physics = eye candy.
Glad I passed on getting it now, because I buy games for their gameplay. Once the mods come along and the bargains hit I might consider it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
and the upcoming doom3
???Personally I think that someone has still the right to decide him-, her- or itself what to do with ones own time.
This is a private sector too, NASA isn't. Games bring in the big monnies enabling you to just push your skills a bit further, and doing the things you dreamed about doing. -as in creating revolutionar games.
I can see how one could find more satisfaction in entertaining millions then thinking out ways / helping out to kill millions.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Not really offtopic. Just that it's very unusual on ./ to have a 5min pause before first post... Either a server hickup or everyone left the forum to check something out.
No I can finally start breathing again. Have held my breath since source leak.
Leeeeeets play!
I remember all the previews and special edition magazines that had the same theme, "Who will come out on top: Halo 2, Doom 3, or Hal-Life 2?"
To be honest, I was rooting for Half-Life 2. I always respected Valve's commitment to their community in their support of their game(s). Halo 2 was more of the same (yet somehow more fun than the first). Doom 3 was pretty, but had the personality of a tray of ice cubes.
I guess what I am trying to say in my own biased way, is, I'm glad I was backing Half-Life 2. So far I am not disappointed.
And by the way, has anyone noticed the excessive use of exploding barrels yet? It's like City 17 is a giant nitro nitro plant and they can't seem to keep track of the product.
I started up Steam precisely at 3:00AM, and had it tell me it was 'unlocking' (decrpyting) the files for the game. Minutes later, I was in game.
I played about 45 minutes when I swore to myself that all I would do is the intro. The game is just plain amazing, and runs pretty damn well on my computer with detail turned up (this is a 1.5 year old laptop).
Been playing it for the last 2 hours, simply Amazing.
;)
AMD 2600/ATI 9700PRO and I'm getting 60-100FPS with 2X AA, at 1024x768. Smooth as silk, fast, and great.
Only problem, Its a tube chaser so far, just run and run and run. But damn if it dont look amazing.
BTW, she looks cute in those Jeans, Good job Valve..
If this version still has cockroaches you can step on in between killing monsters, I'm there.
> Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military,
...
>he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women.
So instead of responsible of killing hundreds or thousands he is responsible of killing just a few. I think that is good.
I don't understand why downloading it through Steam costs $49.99 when you can get it from places like http://www.yesasia.com/ for $39.99. I thought using Steam was going to cut out the middle man and save the buyer money while also increasing Valve's profits. So much for their great idea of direct downloading...
I wish games makers would spend the time improving coding routines and working on gameplay than continually upping the specs required to play games. Bring back the zx spectrum I say!
What about those who paid a lot of money and ordered it over steam, to get it "before people buying it from retail stores"?
IF you pay for a premium service you should also get it. In this case everyone got it at the same time. I would be pretty pissed right now.
I know people who paid $75 for it, with the promise they would get it before everyone else.
What the fuck?
What does Jon Carmack have to do with HL2?
Is this a thread-rip from a Doom3 thread?
Ive downloaded it, unlocked it and get the menu page but when i start the game it crasheds.
Oh the humanity! (and being in london, i was late for work as well (release 8am GMT) )
Official GOD FAQ.
...So I guess you're a Halo 2 fan?
Couldn't sleep and I was sick of infomercials so I decided I would try this steam thing...seeing as it was unlocked today. I dusted off the copy of HL1 a few months back and got aquainted with steam. Steam got HL1 down and playable on my machine in notime. They must be getting SLAMED. I have 4 meg down and steam (when used for HL1) saturated my bandwidth. As it sits now I bought the game and started downloading it at 4am. It's now 4:45 EST and I have 6% of HL2 downloaded. Ready to play in aprox. 321 minutes. So maybe this stint with insomnia will be spent watching the progress bar. If you are planing to buy HL2 as much as I'd rather the money go to Valve I would have to suggest you get a boxed copy....and leave Valve content server 18 alone...:P
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while installing Valve products, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Valve product that has run faster than its ID counterpart, despite the Valve products faster optimised code. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram installs windows faster than this 800 mhz machine can do Half-Life at times. From an ease of installation standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Valve is a "superior" company.
Valve addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Valve product over other faster, cheaper, more stable games.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
I'm assuming since you can download this version that the music is no longer on the cd. The music for the first one was excellent and key during parts of the game so I hope they don't have bad compressed MP3s, or some other proprietary compression, for the music this time around.
Jon's games and code have advanced the field of personal real-time 3D graphics as a whole, not simply first-person shooters. Without the pressures which Carmack and friends brought to bear on the graphics cards manufacturers the 3D graphics market would still be insignificant. The positive effects of this research has and will continue to be profound. Virtually every game currently under development has a 3D component to it.
- Strategy games (WC3)
- Flight sims
- The Sims
- First person shooters
- Role playing games
Think on the profound changes that are likely over the next 5-10 years within the 3D graphics / simulation space. Imagine if all we had to look forward to in gaming was yet another side-scrolling game...The foundations for the sweeping vista that is the real-time 3D graphics space was laid by one man: John Carmack.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=46 n s_6113062.html?page=17 n s_6113062.html?page=10 n s_6113062.html?page=7
n s_6113062.html?page=4 n s_6113062.html?page=12
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/scree
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/scree
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/scree
water doesn't look so bad neither::
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/scree
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/scree
I was on #halflife2 on IRC for the countdown. Then I started playing. In the hour that I have played Half-Life 2, the only thing I can say is that I am in complete awe.
First off, If you've played CS:Source, you don't even know the half of it. Half-Life 2 is one hell of a single player. It manages to scare you in broad daylight. It scares you not just by monsters, but by the dystopia/authoritarian thing going on. It's really freaking scary.
The voices, facial movements, physics, "Civil Protectorate", it's all awesome. After just one hour, I've forgiven Valve. Half-Life 2 is just as revolutionary as the original Half-Life was. You really have to play it to believe it. I can't even begin to describe in words the euphoria and the terror it strikes in your heart.
Not bad for a company's second game.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Arggghh!! I was too "honest" to call in sick today! The rod up my butt must have a rod up its butt. And I'm roleplaying tonight so I only get two hours when I get home to enjoy the goodness. (I swore to myself years ago never to forgo human interaction for a computer game. I haven't decided where online gaming lies yet).
Would anyone speculate if Valve and/or the publisher can possibly be persuaded to port this beauty to Linux?
Is it running on OpenGL or DirectX?
Is there any?
:-/
I didn't play HL1, but think that while the single player mode is great and pretty, I fear it gets worn out pretty quickly?
A major factor when I buy games is nowadays is the amount of replayability.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Looking at the boards on http://www.halflife2.net/forums and http://www.hlfallout.net/ it seems as though quite a few people can't play because of numerous bugs.
I didn't read the license, but nothing that I know of prevents you from buying it, deciding it's shit, and selling/trading the password to your Steam account (which has a resettable e-mail address associated with it.) ... The new "owner" can then change the password and e-mail address, and delete all the friends (or, hell, even keep them, haha!) and add his or her own.
What if you have other steam content?
I feel like I am truly alive for the first time ever. It's like my life itself was finally fully activated at midnight PST on November 16th, 2004. Infanthood, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary school, middle school, puberty, high school, these were just pre-loads.
World of Warcraft actually. Just one more week
And the opening train ride took less than 10 minutes! Thank you, Valve!
So mygame kept crashing loading the very first level. I wanted to cry. Not knowing what to do, I did the only geek thing I could think of: I simply posted my tears on Shacknews. But within minutes a Valve guy showed up asking if he could help. Then Erik Johnson himself popped in and started troubleshooting. I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first. And all this at like 2am in the morning. That's some pretty sweet support kids: they tracked ME down instead of me having to beg them to help.
Cough, crack.
Perhaps a terrible pun but apt in this case I think.
It would have been nice if valve had promised to release some form of patch if Steam was ever to go down but c'est la vie, I'm sure I can find one elsewhere.
A pentium pro with nt4? Wtf? That is not just obsolete, it belongs in a museum. Then he mentions windos on a 486. I often get confused about timelines but aren't we talking windows 95 here at best? Wasn't the first windows that wasn't as much a disaster as windows 3 pretty much pentium only?
So basically this is a troll/rant that a game takes time to install on hardware wich can't run it. If it is true, wich is always possible /. has a lot of idiots, then might it take a while because he is downloading it over his leet 9600bps modem?
Anyway he wants a reason to buy valve games? Because half-life was one of the best first person shooters ever and still counts as a benchmark for every other fps out there. Only a tiny handfull of games can even compare. They also shown enormous commitment to maintaining their product. Where most fans fall down on their hands and knees in thanks when their game company fixes bugs that should have been spotted in beta, Valva has continued to upgrade half-life at no cost over the original purchase price. Sure it also allowed them to sell expansion packs but nobody forced you to buy them. You still got the improvments if you updated.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The only reason I am typing this is because during the first 30 min my system locked while playing - I had to hard reset. No big deal (I am one of those dangerous overclockers ;)
But *WOW* This game has already destroyed Doom 3 in the FIRST HALF HOUR OF PLAY!
You will excuse me, I have uh, important uh, stuff to uh, go and do now...
*starts steam again*
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Don't bother.
As for replayability being your major factor for buying games. What a weird choice. Do you only watch movies wich you can watch over and over again?
But of course the answer is simple. No half-life 2 is not a endless replay game. It is heavily story based and once you know the story you can only improve your "score" except it doesn't keep a score.
Go play tetris.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It looks like they also unlocked the port of the original half-life on the new Source engine as well. I am downloading that as we speak.
Definitely! When the revolution comes, Carmack will be sent to a re-education camp in Northern China.
...did they have to release HL2 on my girlfriend's birthday.
Now I'll be looking over a candle in a romantic restaurant picturing gordon freeman's beardy mug.
I wonder if macdonalds would do...
Its funny how that activation feature was designed to prevent piracy, but since its a hasle, it promotes it.
It appears that developers need to think "outside-of-the-box" for this and come up with something more effective.
That or use Open Source ideology!
steam kicked in at 2:04 CST (according to my PC) and the game was decrypted/enabled by 2:15.
the feel of it is just right.
(if you get the great idea to whack the combine soldiers with the telephone be prepared to run)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I've been playing for like two and a half hours straight, possibly an hour more than is healthy for me and I'm about halfway through the (first, only?) river-runner level.
I have that unpleasant "I've stopped playing but my world-sense is a bit skewed still" feeling that accompanies all good games. So: Half Life 2 is a winner. It's fun, kind of frantic, you know.
I haven't yet seen what I liked about half life 1 yet apart from the great dialogue.
And a final thought: nice movies leave me with a 'the world is fantastic' feeling, but games never do. They're all conflict-based and quite negative. Someone should release a happy, immersive game where nothing goes wrong. Just to see what happens.
That's all, nothing more.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
... I just can't understand what people like in those FPS games. OK, I don't like this kind of games, and I understand that many like them. But please, tell me why?
- can't play cos they are at work
- can't play cos they don't believe in online activation
- can't play because their machine plays slower than a ZX81
Me? I'm at workMy Portfolio
Suprnova release in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
mate of mine got Coutnerstrike source to run in cedega... HL2 may work... either way i'm too poor :( $5.00 away from being able to afford it ..*sniff*
where in the fuck do you freaks come from ??
I will not be using Plan 9 in the creation of weapons of mass destruction to be used by nations other than the US.
is a virtue.. Give it about 2 weeks for all the single player hype to die down... Then everyones gonna focus on the MP aspect ('replayability') - which thus far has proven to be quite a let down (ref: CSS, et al) - and then we're all gonna sit back and wait for the official release of CS2.
:)
I personally refuse to buy this game until theres a new CS out that runs natively on the Source engine (because playing de_dust2 under Source, albeit pretty, is still the same old shit - better graphics, lower FPS - no thanks.)
back to CS for me, bye!
And what the hell am I going to do with that? Does it at least run in wine/cedega? Or does it look like this:
- Half Live 2: 59$
- Windows: 250$
- Having to repartition harddisk: fuck you.
Even the additional cost of windows (Microsoft-Tax), is very discouraging, but the general behaviour of said operating system raises the cost even more. I can't for instance just install windows on the third disk.
--
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Cedega should support it if it doesnt already, last time i looked it almost ran counter strike source fine and it might run it in cvs by now. Its entireyl OpenGL i heard to help combat hacks (i hear opengl is easier to work with when writing hacks?). Either way great fucking job been playing it last 2 hours its incredible. I feel this is a valid reason to take off work tomorrow and my boss will understand.. im sure of it....yeah..
http://interserver.net/
I'm sorry, the game can't be that great if people stop after 1/2 hour, 1 hour or even two hours to come to slashdot and tell everyone about it ... when I get my copy, I won't be on /. for quite a while ...
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Hell yeh and all those race drivers should be forced to be ambulance drivers and fire truck drivers. Or maybe in the real world the skills required and the attitude to the job are different, like the difference between writing viruses and anti virus it's rare for someone to be good at both. Welcome to the real world some people are good at some things whilst being bad at another even in a realated field. If your cousin is real rather than a figment of your imagination he needed help anyway if losing a death match sent him into catatonic despair, but more likely he is fake and you have the problems.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Lol, tell me what you think when you here those magic words in this amazing world. You can quite literally play with anything and everything in the world... i was flapping shutters and knocking on the walls... just wow!
and i'm not even experiencing in full glory
800x600 med settings
on FX5200
There is no
w00t! I've been playing Counter Strike: Source for weeks now, can't wait to get home from work to play HL2. 30% completed...
Julie Moult is an idiot.
With all the buzz and everything, GameWinners has the minimum system requirements listed for people without the spare cash for faster rigs. That means, we still could run the came(barely), unlike some other games *cough*doom3*cough*
Now that people with normal rigs are playing this, I have to decide if I should buy the game or not, based on my current system.
:\
P4, 2.0Ghz, 1024meg of pc2700 ram (cheapy stuff), gf4ti4600.
Will I be able to play HL2 and enjoy it?
Also, which do you think would run better (I'm sure someone out there knows what this game likes), 2.0Ghz w/ 1024ram or 2.666Ghz w/ 512 ram? I ask cuz I can't seem to OC with the new stick of ram I chucked in, but I can without it
STill have exams, have to wait till saturday to play anyway, nooo!
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
As soon as the server is taken down, no one will ever be able to install HL2 again.
Thus copyright on HL2 is forever.
And as soon as they want their users to switch to HL3 they can pull the plug on HL2.
You'd think
But I deliberatly try and break it up as some sort of rationing maschocism - it really does seem to be this good
Someone will, if they haven't already, release a program which pretends to be steam. There have been numerous examples of this in the past.
Well, it's against Valve's EULA to sell Steam accounts, but of course that doesn't stop people from doing it.
Though there have been many reports about people on Ebay getting burned with fake/fraudlent Steam accounts.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I do not know what the big hype was about. I got stuck in an area and stopped playing it. I kept running around in circles. I could have looked up gamefaqs to find out what to do next but I did not like the game that much.
holy crap hell just frooze over!
Now it has taken ALMOST 2 hours since this came online, and no other stories in slashdot coming. Is this coincidence, or is there some correlation between those too.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
It looks like how painters depict mirror images reflected on water.
Sorry guys. As a Linux user I'll be happy to spend those 60 bucks for a native version of HL2, but until that moment I'm prepared to wait long months to get a useable "free" windows version.
Now I'm here, can't lie about needing to go home, and when I get home, I have to clear up the devastation in 3 rooms redecorating causes to get to my PC to be able to play.
Life can't get much worse than this.
Oh, hang on, feeling faint... have a headache.... spots before my eyes.... erm... bye... need to find my boss and go the hell out of here.....
/me goes to find water to put on forehead to look sickly.....
Although I commend Valve for helping out should they happen to catch a user in trouble on an un-official forum, I feel that I should point out that I hope this doesn't become an expected thing.
Most developers have a support forum / e-mail where users can be helped as quickly as possible. It doesn't benefit tech support if they have to start roaming other forums. In fact, it's the proverbial slippery slope - today it's Shacknews, tomorrow it may be some more obscure forum, and next week they're hiring chinese-capable staff to start hunting down lost users on chinese forums.
Official support should certainly not be expected, but in my humble opinion not encouraged either, on un-official forums/mailing lists/etc.
Should a user still want to post in an un-official location, then the support they should expect to get is peer-support. If those peers can't resolve the issue, then the right place to go is the official support areas, rather than wondering why the developer isn't reading the thread.
Just my 2 cts, as I've been there.
This came up for me last night when I purchaced HL2. I created a new Stream account for HL2 and the other mods it provided. I already have 3 or 4 HL licenses, so I wanted to set it up so that I could use one of the retro ones along side the new one for LAN parties.
This is a big downside of the system, if the user is not aware of this. I own HL and HL2 licenses, but having them both in the same steam account means you can't play head-to-head using them.
What happens if Valve goes out of business?
None of you will be able to play the game you just paid $50+ for.
I mean, it's not likely they'll go out of business tomorrow, but what about next quarter or next year? Do you know the financial condiftion of Valve? How do you know they're not barely staying afloat and this lawsuit with Vivendi is going to push them over the edge?
Or, perhaps Vivendi will be able to get a court to force Valve to shut down the authorization servers. What will you do then?
I can't believe people are so willing to become such good little consumer/servants of their corporate masters in exchange for a bit of fun.
I got burned with Doom 3, don't want to make another $50 mistake. Is the game a resource hog, can the average system run it in XGA?
Yeah! Halo 2, WoW Beta, and now Half-Life 2! Say good bye to my GPA!
What's this GPA you are talking about? Grand Pheft Auto? Is it any good?
TC - My Photos..
Remember the train ride at the very beginning of Half-Life (1) ?
The security guy, Barney, welcomed you saying: "You came in late, this morning, Mr. Freeman, but finally, you're there..."
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
Are they staggering when and where they unlock it? Its still locked for me...
Bah, waited this long, I think I can handle one more day.
That's always the way; every copy protection scheme is cracked, usually within days, so it only hurts the legitimate users.
The EULA is not legally binding except for the US (and similar UCITA countries).
My bet was on Duke Nukem Forever :-P
Anyone else getting motion sick from playing this?
I've played for about an hour and had to take a break because I was getting motion sickness for some strange reason.
And before anyone gets out their "Jump to Conclusions" mat, I've been playing CS:source for about a month and regular CS before that, played all through Doom3 and finished it, am on the WoW beta, just re-finished playing HL1 to get me back in the mood of the storyline...all without any problems.
Perhaps it's just me...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I am totally disappointed in the Steam delivery of HL2. I had everything pre-loaded as of last night. At 7:00 am EST I start unlocking HL2. I'm on a 3 meg cable line. It's taken 30 mins to hit 40%. Bogus. So much for playing before work...
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
I get up at 3AM EST to unlock it and play for two hours, and now I'm stuck in work... From what I've seen so far this will blow away everything else out there and compliment HL1 very well. My only concern now is that will it be long enough? I was already through three chapters in two hours and from the looks of it there are only 15 chapters. (Yeah, I realize now that it would be something like 10+ hours, but compared to HL1 that's not a lot....)
Is it Valve's fault if you cannot read?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
i guess the geforce 2 will not do here, if only they would lower the price of the 9800pro cards a bit..
Sample this!
The BitTorrent scalability bottleneck is reached as millions of geeks bring down the SuprNova.org BT tracker severs, on what is considered "the biggest simultaneous warez download event" in history.
Bram Cohen (and half of life on Earth) could not be found for comments.
Well in case anyone was wondering it did speed up. Most I could get was between 200-250K. However once the files reached 52% I was able to load up the game and play. It is a SMOOTH game. I can't wait to see the mods that come out for this. So basically having bought the game at 4am I was playing it at 6:45 or so. Not so bad once the connection got up to speed. I'm off to newegg to put together a better box. Any suggestions?
If you could only afford one game (halo 2 or half-life 2) which would it be and why?
Does that mean we should begin the process of holding our breath for HL3. I'm not sure if I'm up for that. Holding it for Team Fortress 2 and Duke Nukem Forever damn near asphyxiated. Not to mention watching this train derail during the course of its "development". I think I'll stick to Halo 2 online for right now. Call me when there are some HL2 mods (other than same old CS) worth a damn.
Haven't I read this story before? I blame the editors.
So long dental plan!
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Game just came out and it runs pretty well under Cedega (winex).
Wow!! That's a long, long time! What is that, about 5 years?
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
* DVD-ROM: Yes
* CPU Speed: 2.4GHz
* CPU Type: Intel Pentium 4
* Disk Space: 5.5GB
* Display: DirectX 7 Graphics Card (DirectX 9 Recommended)
* Memory (RAM): 512MB
* Operating System Compatibility: Win98/ME/2000/XP, Not Mac Compatible
This was off the Futureshop.ca website.
Guess I'm safe from Half Life 2 with only half the processor and half the RAM required. Ah well. I'm getting too old for this anyway. Have fun.
I unlocked HL2 four hours ago and then happily fired it up to play, only to be faced with a the updating Half-Life2 window. The ready to play countdown made it as far as under 100 minutes. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes watching the ready to play time count up insted of down. 126 minutes and climbing.
For all the Doom 3 bashing on this site, Id is your only hope for 3d games on linux..
GPA??? I think you meant GTA!! You were listing new games right?
Think about this for second... since you obviously don't know much about game publishing. If you were a publisher and your developer wants to distribute a product via online delivery, do you seriously think any publisher would say "ok" and not expect a single dime of the profits?!
Valve's publisher has spent and is spending millions on advertising and marketing promotions. Do you SERIOUSLY think that they would not have had the foresight to negotiate a cut of the profits from Steam sales?
Half Life CD has been sitting on my shelf for the last few years... maybe now there's a sequel out, it's time for me to play it?
Wow! They set the game in a fully rendered Milton Keynes! Yikes!
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
But don't worry, he respawns!
6:15 am opens steam =|
6:17 am unlocking game and taking a shower =O
6: 45 am half life 2 logo comes up =)
6: 46 am menu screen =..)
6:50 am starts a new game =D
6:52 am starts playing =..D
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
7:30 am craps his pants =|
8:02 am takes another shower and gets ready to go to work =(
9:32 am posts on slashdot
The game is very very fun. The first 30 minutes I spent just throwing things around, breaking windows, and launching various objects via teeter-totters.
Steam worked flawlessly, and I hope Valve has a tremendous success with it. Kudos to Valve for designing a good copyright protection system.
Oh, I know this can piss off a bunch of people who are so concerned about those poor souls without Internet connection (ps. Netzero still has a 10 free hours/month deal), but the system rocks.
Up yours Vivendi, RIAA, and all others who don't think that distribution via the net is not profitable. Valve got all of my $$ this time around.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
There's no need to read GameSpot's review: just take IGN's score and subtract 0.5.
No... It really is THAT good. Unfortunately I'm at work now and only got to play it for 5 hours or so... But they're not kidding. It was well worth the wait.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
my girlfriend lost me to counter-strile for about 4 months. she's very jealous of Half-Life 2 taking me away from her. hehe.
1001100 1100101 1100001 1110110 1100101 1001101 1111001 1000010 1101001 1110100 1110011 1000001 1101100 1101111 110111
I just spent the 60euros for the game and it is now two hours later and the game still won't start.
It is still downloading and "unlocking" stuff and doing god knows what to my computer.
Grrr, what a way to treat a customer.
I should have waited for the torrent : (
While its hard NOT to see it coming, I am one of probably thousands of PAYING customers that can't play the game because 'authentication' servers are overloaded.
I just forked over 100 dollars for the CE version of hl2 and am now greeted by a wonderful 'subscription pending' screen that has been sitting there for over half hour. "sorry for any inconvenience they may cause". Just another example of the paying customers getting royally screwed over.
THANKS VALVE!
Does anyone know of a LAN gaming shop anywhere in NYC where I could rent a PC by the hour to play HL2? I'm fully activated on steam, but on corporate travel for the next 4 months and running a P4 1.7 laptop with the GeforceGO 440 (16MB...)
Google has helped, but I can't imagine in this humungous city, there's not a high-end LAN gaming cafe!
So when can I expect to see this for Mac? Another five years or so? Awesome.
Seriously, I love HL in college (and HL2 was first meant to come out in my junior year...) but I can't imagine it being as much fun without being able to hear friends shouting four letter and extended four-letter words across three floors of dorm.
If you're paying $250 for windows, you're the sucker, buddy.
Jay | http://oldos.org
On behalf of all the women at this guy's college: Thank you Half Life 2, thank you Halo 2.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Is there a facility in STEAM to create CDs of the game(s)? There's nothing in the official FAQ. I'm tempted by STEAM (even though it's probably overloaded), but if I can't make a hardcopy, I'd rather wait until I head out to the mall. Then the decision is DVD edition or CD?
Here come da fudge!
Hahahaha Steam is so slashdotted...
Oh wait... maybe it's not slashdot, I suppose it's *MAYBE* possible it's the million people trying to download multimegabyte files to activate HL2?
Naaa... gotta be slashdot.
No seriously. ... (shit where's greys anatomy when I need it)... and makes your motion senses aggree with you visual senses preventing the motion sickness.
If you watch a lot of people playing that kind of came you will see them swaying there heads about, almost like there trying to look behind the monitor, this causes fluid to move around your
Try it, next time your about to run around a corner or turn, tilt you head in the direction of movement and swaying you body that way a little helps too.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I've only seem the HL2 preview movies, and it kicks shit.
Pushing tables infront of doors to make them harder to open, only for the tables to get thrown out of the way (knida GTA3++), beats, it's dark, nothing happned for a while, bet there's some stupid hole that a load of spiders are gonig to come out of. I would be scared, by doom3 if I coudln't predict almost every doom 3 monster before it arrived.
Doom 3 also bragged that there engine could work with deforming objects, now If I could blast my way through walls, instead of following a very linea route then Doom 3 would be much more fun.
I havn't even finished doom3 yet, and I've got time to post here, can't you tell I'm gripped.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Go back and check it again. It doesn't have any excellent levels. It was designed before Quake started using the look-with-mouse, move with keyboard controls (that Bungie introduced with Marathon). Thus, there were very few places in levels which actually used the vertical dimension, because pressing the up key in the right increments was virtually impossible. Remember that Doom 1,2 had auto-vertical aiming and no real Z axis?
Quake I was ugly, with its all browns. The levels were terrible, not using Z, or only using it as a trick (the narrow path you could fall off of). I had a 3dfx card (most had no accelerator), and even I didn't play Quake I.
Quake II was a lot better, it had the right controls (I think it even defaulted to them), good colors and good levels.
Had the same problem. Solved it with a small dose of THC. No more motion sickness, instant automatic overclocking, and the most realistic game experience ver.
"installing" is just decompressing and coping files, that is it, period! If something is not compressed it "installs" faster. You have NO idea what you are talking about . . . stop posting - read more!
Expecting people to pay what they could reasonably expect to pay in the stores, is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Norton / Symantec do something similar.
I think the key benefit here is that this method of software distribution supports someone who seeks instant gratification.
The other day I needed a copy of Norton AntiVirus, so I went to the Symantec website, purchased, and had it up in running in less time then it would take for me to drive to the store and back.
While doing the same thing with Half-Life 2 might be a bit more challenging due to bandwidth constraints, the same general idea applies.
Priced the same, for time convenience.
This is exactly the same reason that I bought my copy via Steam, particularly reason #6 (and convinced a few friends to do the same).
On a side-note, while waiting for HL2 to download (man, that 4GB sure took its sweet time) I decided to play some Counter-Strike. I missed the Counter-Strike train, so last night was my first time playing it. Ever. No, seriously. Well, suffice it to say that I got it handed to me; 5-16 in the hour that I played. I took me 3 rounds just to figure out that I could buy other weapons.
Hey! Where are you going with that? Give me back my geek badge! What if I promise, I'll never go to bed again without playing an hour of HL2?
Disclaimer: This comment was generated by a Flock of Trained Microsoft Programmers for Aqua_Geek.
Use Amazon, dude =)
Subtotal of Items: $52.99
Shipping & Handling: $4.98
Promotional Certificates: -$34.98
---------
Total for this Order: $22.99
Received the game today
I submitted this yesterday...fascinating article on the behind the scenes stuff, goes into previously non-public detail (including the hilarious story behind how they caught the hacker) and how the source code theft devastated the team morale. A must-read for everyone.
The Final Hours of Half-Life 2
Here's a weblog entry about how to turn on God mode.
Doom 3's graphics are a trick. The levels are actually very simple, mostly composed of simple block and tube brushes with the occasional mesh model for detail. The reason the game is so dark is: 1.) framerates begin to die with overlapping lights, and 2.) having everything dark and only lit with one light does what...exaggerate the bump maps! And when you do that, it masks the low polycount of the level. That's the trick behind Doom 3.
Fire up a Doom 3 map in the editor and add a bunch of lights, the kind of lighting Half-Life 2 levels have. Try that office room where you get your PDA. Suddenly, you see how incredibly lame and simple the levels are, and how horrible the graphics look, when the room has a normal level of lighting and not the tomb-lighting that the regular game has.
Doom 3 is a trick of light and shadow--exaggerated bump maps to mask the low polycount detail.
oh, whew... sorry.
A HA !
Heh, heheh, hehehehehahahahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
HAAAARRRGGGHAAAAAAAAARRGGHAAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH
*COUGH, COUGH, CHOKE, COUGH*
ha ha, heh hee, hahahaha, harrgh haa heheh ha HEH
HAHAHAHAHA! HAHHAAAAAHHAAAA *COUGH* HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*COUGH* shit, I've got to quit smoking.
hehehe hahaha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
heh, oh damnit, nevermind. I'll never *snicker* get my point across *snicker cough* HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
By the time it comes out, Duke Nukem Forever will be a Holodeck game
They haven't passed a law yet saying that it's illegal to build a program that pretends to be steam.
Oh really?
Grade point average.
With the activation of prepurchased Half-Life 2 copies today, computer consultant billing rates are expected to skyrocket for the short term. Market demand is expected to drive the rates for available computer consultants to new highs, well exceeding those of the "dot-com" era.
Why, you might ask? In a market economy, goods and services are priced based on available supply and the demand for those goods and services. With hordes of computer consultants electing to "take a little time off to play Half-Life 2," consultants will be able to pick and choose among potential clients and price their services properly to compensate them for foregoing the thrills of Half-Life 2 for a few weeks.
Many political jurisdictions have passed laws designed to protect innocent consumers from predatory pricing after natural disasters. However, State and local "price gouging" laws are not expected to affect this market-based price rise, as the shortage of available consultants is not expected to qualify under the laws' terms. Politicians, reacting to constituents' concerns, are expected to quickly attempt to change the laws to treat "loss of email and/or web services" as a disaster.
I am tempted to d/l HL2 on my notebook and give it a shot while I am waiting to get my harddrive replacement from Maxtor for my desktop. My question is -- is there a way to "transfer" the game to my desktop? My notebook barely meets minimum requirements, which means it'll be crap, and so ultimately I wnat to play on my desktop... but don't want to have to buy the game twice.
So let me get this straight? If you purchase the game, activate it via Steam. It's now locked into your computer? You can't play it on another computer when re-installing?
If that's the case, would that mean you can not sell the game once you've finished it?
I hope that's not the case since spending $70 (CAD) on a single player game with limited replay value and not being able to sell if afterwards sounds like a problem.
Any decent AAA game has extensive modding capabilities and Epic have done well in encouraging mod-makers to expand upon UT2004. The NVidia-sponsored "Make Something Unreal" competition has resulted in some really impressive mods, from Alien Swarm to Red Orchestra and UnWheel, Clone Wars add to the fun. Hell - there is even a Golf game built on UT2004. Doom III will get it's top quality mods given time but for now UT2004 will continue to command my Linux gaming attention.
And while I spare a thought for Half life 2, I'm not going to fret too much. If Valve doesn't want my gaming money I'll continue shovelling cash towards Epic, id software, Grimm Software, Garage Games, Epic Interactive, Running With Scissors and any other company out there who feels that Linux gaming is worth the trouble.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Jeez, if you want five years to sound impressive, everyone knows you need to say "a twentieth of a century", or "a two-hundreth of a millenium".
WWJD? JWRTFA!
I've been robbed. Seriously. $55 plus tax, and I can't even take the damn thing back to the store, BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK.
Why this piece of crap didn't come on a DVD I simply don't know.
DOOM3 worked flawlessly out of the box with no need to mess with any of the settings. I suppose it was too much to assume that Valve, with one game under its belt, could actually make a second game that worked.
I am so seriously ticked off by this worthless piece of crap.
When I try to launch the Half-Life 2 executable on its own, I get an error that it can't find filesystem_stdio.dll, which indeed does not exist anywhere on my hard disk. There is a filesystem_steam.dll, though. How helpful!
Is this what I have to look forward to? Buying a game and being able to maybe play it from time to time, whenever their servers happen to be up and not too terribly busy? Way to go, guys.
I can understand requiring Steam for multiplayer. Fine. No problem at all with that. But I should not need to connect to their servers every time I want to fire up the game on my own.
The first hour of my experience with this game was incredible. So far, the second hour of my experience is frustrating, annoying, and completely dissatisfying.
Excuse me if I sound angry, but it's because I am.
I just want to say
Fuck Valve
Congratulations to them for making an apparently great game--seriously. I wouldn't know for sure, though, because I haven't played it, and don't know if I will.
I respect Valve for their skill at making games. But I could not be more angry with a developer now.
If Valve is so talented, why the hell can't they release it on a single fucking non-Microsoft system? They release a Linux server, but no client. It's obviously within their ability. Other competent development houses have no problem--UT, Doom, Neverwinter Nights--they all release their games for other systems.
Limited distribution, you say? What about their console releases? Maybe I'm wrong--and someone can correct me--but why not then release a console version for PS2 or Nintendo, which has a large share of the console market?
I am angry precisely because Valve makes good games, and because they choose to force gamers to use a particular computer system that I have ethical problems with.
Support for the community? Bullshit. If they supported the community they would release a fucking client for all the people who will run servers on Linux systems, at least to show appreciation for running a server.
If that weren't enough, you have Steam. I'm all for online distribution that cuts out the middleman, and giving it to the developers. But this obsessive control over IP is ridiculous. Epic didn't have a problem getting rid of the CD check after a certain length of time, and they're doing fine.
Add to that the promotional deals with MS, where they release joint press statements.
Bah. Valve is a greedy bunch of fucking bastards who make a good game but don't give a crap about their customers.
I'm more than willing to listen to their perspective, but I'm tired of their attitude toward gamers.
Half-Life 2 would have to be a fucking miracle of innovation in FPS to make me want to play it, but it doesn't look like that to me. Everything I've read makes it sound like the same-old FPS with better graphics, better AI, and the like. I think the IGN review even explicitly says something like "there's little innovation per se, just raising the bar on current gameplay."
I'm sorry for sounding so much like a troll. I'm just angry with Valve, and needed to vent.
I respect everyone who likes Valve and HL2 so much. I really do. But they tend to treat others so poorly, that I have a difficult time justifying giving them my money.
I'm so tired of the corporate bedsharing that takes place in gaming today.
Two questions then:
1) Does this mean that it not only needs to check an internet database during installation, but also every time a game is loaded up (and closed, to affirm a time frame)?
2) Does this mean that you can't install a copy on your brother's computer for LAN play (i.e., you and your little brother have to buy their own copies just to play versus each other)?
People can argue about how under strict legal interpretation, you and your brother should have to buy their own copies to play against each other, but in actuality, I feel that that's pretty restrictive. Conversely, LAN-enabled games often were pretty consistent in allowing players to LAN with a single copy, even when the capability existed (heck, comparing CD keys could have been done any time LAN and CD Keys were both used).
So, if that's the case, it's one less reason for me to buy this game. If it's not the case, somebody tell me please!
Yeah, got the game, spent a long time installing it, can I play yet? No! Steam Updating, this it taking forever, 30 minutes for 24% complete. Maybe it is my school connection and port limitations.
Check out the Steam Network Status. While I write this, they are using 11.3 Gbps!
there's no doubt that the die hard hl freaks are going to rush to the stores and pick up their collectors edition but you have to wonder how the market in general will take this very late release, especially since halo 2 was able to debut before hl2
Get your torrents...
I actually nearly did. The real scary part is that I don't see anything wrong with the.
BTW, I think the only way to describe this game would be as "the Lord of the Rings of computer games".
Just absolutly epic.
I agree with you. I cannot log on to Steam at the moment either and I can't understand why I should have to do so in order to play a game I have already paid for AND which has been unlocked! I would urge all of you out there who are having similar problem to write a letter of complaint to Steam - or can someone in America start a class action suit? Seems like a rip-off to me! Alas, this is all no doubt covered by the small print somewhere which I have signed up to...
http://web.uvic.ca/~mwquinn/hl.jpg
I never got around to getting this through Steam, and the systems sounds like it's really staggering right now; does anyone know if the boxed version comes with HL1-Source and CS-Source, or are those Steam-only?
Actually, it's amazing for about the first hour. I was blown away by every aspect of the game. Then I got to the damn hoverboat thing...
Another hour later and I'm still stuck driving around this stupid hoverboat, and I'm BORED. I'm tired of driving this damn thing around, it was fun for a few minutes but now they've dragged it on and on and on and... please NO MORE DAMN HOVERBOAT!
Silly me, I thought the sequel to one of the best FPS games of all time would have been another FPS, and not a damn driving game.
10 hours since activation, not bad guys!
3 95 1
:)
http://www.izonews.com/release.php3?releaseid=9
Check your local torrent listings for showtimes.
and yes, before anyone points it out, there are various issues and it's being nuked, though they are working on a patch..
In a Steam FAQ I read that you should be able to play offline without connecting up to Steam - you just need to disable your internet connection before you start up the Steam program. Alas, when I try this I get the message 'Offline mode is unavailable because there is no Steam login information stored on this computer. You will not be able to use Steam until you can connect to the Steam network again.' Why Steam occasionally loses my local login information I have no idea. Makes me want to LET OFF STEAM!!
Steam has been connecting fine for about a month. All of a sudden it wants my password. I tried the usual passwords, but no luck. Tried to retrieve the account about an hour ago...no email back yet. Every time I try to do anything with Steam it starts chugging and eats up 99% of my CPU. Anyone else having these problems???
I PAID FOR THE GAME. I AUTHORIZED THE GAME AND UPDATED STEAM (ANOTHER 20MB IN ADDITION TO THE 5 CD'S.) I UPDATED HL2 TODAY (ANOTHER 20MB) SO I COULD FINALLY PLAY IT. I CLOSED MY CONNECTION (I DO NOT LIKE MY GAMING PC ONLINE.) I DOUBLE, TRIPLE, QOUDROUPLE, ETC, ETC, CHECKED MY SETTINGS SO I COULD PLAY IN "OFFLINE" MODE. I CANNOT. THE EXACT ERROR IS ...
Steam - Error
This operation cannot be completed when Steam is in offline mode.
I will never buy VALVe software again, I don't care if they make a game where Trent Reznor comes to my house to party while Britney Spears* gives you head if you buy the game.
*fill in your hot chick/guy
AGAIN, I PAID FOR THE F'IN GAME.
I think you made that up, asshole.
Lying sack of shit.
How true is the title 'Half-Life 2 Finally Activated'? Ive bought the game, which needs authentication via steam (even if you bought it from a shop), and the damn thing wont connect to steam because it has been flooded. I have been hitting retry for 15mins now - game is installed, but it wont let me play until it talks to steam. Im really starting to hate this nonsense!!!!!
I purchased the HL2 game today, but I was so eager that I installed it on my work computer just to see that it works.
.jpg format:
And now that I got home to _really_ play it on a less-than-lousy computer, steam just tells me I'm not allowed to play it because I already registered the cd-key once.
Then going on to Steam support, I see this:
----
You must include the following within the message in
1. A picture of the actual game CD.
2. A picture of the HL/CS packaging which clearly displays the CDKey number.
3. A picture of the sales receipt.
NOTE: Please allow up to 2 weeks to receive a reply from Sierra / VU Games
----
I had been looking forward to this game for 1 1/2 year. Now I either have to buy it _again_ to actually play it, OR borrow a digital camera from someone, pray that I can still find the receipt, and wait two weeks...
BEWARE!
Steam automatically creates self-extracting executable files in its directory for you to burn to either CDs or DVD, your choice.
The torrent is out in the wild, go download!H alf-Life_2_READ_NFO-EMPORiO.torrent
Half-Life_2_READ_NFO-EMPORiO
http://www.thepiratebay.org/download.php/3256368/
you heard me!
+5 Genius
So like watching a plot driven movie, after the first time you can only really relive the moment. But the suprise is gone.
Some comedies like Airplane got so many gags that you might have missed some. A movie like the sixth sense you might watch again to see the build up to the brilliant ending. But basically you have been there.
Worse in a game like half-life is that you are there. You will have spotted every clue because if you didn't you wouldn't have gone passed it. In the sixt sense you might have missed the clues that something was wrong with the lead but if it had been a game you would have known.
It is the vital difference between a game and a movie. In the movie you watch the hero. In the game you are the hero. You might watch sherlock holmes and then go at the end "oh i never thought that would be the solution" but if you play sherlock holmes the games you either know the solution or you can't finish.
Half-life you can play 2-3 times depending on how much you like it but after that it is done. The multiplayer part was what kept it alive for so long.
As to your question, I play some games wich you can play again and again like say Transport Tycoon but some games I know you can only really play once. The heavier the story and the better the story the more likely I can only play it twice. The second time being years later and remembering the good times.
Even a game like Planescape Torment wich has a heavy story element but can be played in multiple ways can for me only really be played in one way. Some people can play through story choices in multiple ways but I like to play a hero, because in real life it is so hard to be one, and so will make the same choices during a second play.
So to me it is a choice. Story or replay. Pick one but not both. That is my choice. Yours may be different but I can tell you this. No story based FPS is going to appeal to you if you want replay. Half-Life least because there is no choice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Oh wait, I do, I just can't play it because Steam is...a steaming pile. Leave it to former Microsoft employees to devise a system that requires you to set up port forwarding (and thereby blocking many university students from being able to play) just to play a single player game, and then not even work because the connection was refused. Geez. Guess I'll just have to wait for the h4x0r3d version to come out.
I bought it, i dont control my firewall, so it doesnt work. Its broke. EB Games is saying tuff nuts. Now i got software that doesnt work! What a POS software!
yeah the price is steep (think of this in $AUS dollars) but wait for a while when a patch or update comes out. Everyone with a *physical* copy will have to get a patch and install it.
the price is reflecting *the best most up to date build* not some snapshot weeks or months old.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Tell me about it. We just had a minor power cut (yes, I should have a UPS and will hand in my geek card forthwith) and when I tried to play again, it had logged me out of Steam. The servers are down (according to theinquirer.net) and might not be back up for three hours. No offline mode, no halflife2, no nothing. Thanks, Valve, not like you could have anticipated the server-melting demand, is it?
Sent the email my ass. Valve can suck a cock.
No one else can play it until Valve stops dicking around...great.
Who do I have to blow to get TF2?
No outcry about reviews being fixed? I am astonished. There was outcry about the halo2 reviews. Seems like a dubble standard to me.
So I went with Steam, where for US$60 (only AUD$73) I could get everything except the t-shirt. And I didn't have to wait until Wednesday either.
Oh, and rewarding Valve instead of Vivendi (manufacturer of fine buggy whips) was a nice bonus :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It has the highest-end rendering subsystem of any computer game released to date. It is NOT as trivial as you might think to port a high-end D3D 9-class renderer to Linux, or PS2, or the Mac, or the Commodore 64, or whatever your favorite platform is.
These guys worked on this game for six years. Can you blame them for finally deciding to shoot the programmer and let a few other people see how cool it is?
Is it me or does loading HL2 feel like the old days of loading Windows 95 from floppy disks?
Any questions?
I gotta give it to valve, they made an amazing game. The physics are just incredible and add tons of new gameplay options to explore. I am kinda pissed that it needs to be activated online, which in reality means the retail disks dont ship with all the files needed to play...makes me wonder whats gonna happen in a few years when i feel nostalgic and i wanna play HL2, will i be able to?
Might i add im in love with the most beautiful girl ever born and her name is Jen, might i also add she loves me back! Why am i telling the nerds of the world this? Because right now all i can think about is her when i should be playing Half Life 2 (because she is sleeping)...she makes me so happy i dont even wanna game!
(After downloading the 4.2 gig of cache files on a friend's cable...) Steam: Preloading complete. After the game is released you will be able to play it immediately! Me: Oooh, immediately. That sounds good. (Midnight PST) Steam: HL2 is released. Play now! Me: Ok... *clicks link* Steam: Unlocking Counterstrike Source Game Files... Me: This is highly irregular, but OK. *waits* (10 minutes later) Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files... Me: This is more like it! HL2 here i come. (20 minutes later) Steam: C++ error (abort/retry/ignore) Me: WTF!? *restarts steam* Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files... Me: *goes to eat dinner* (30 mins later) Steam: ...
Me: WTF?! *clicks on HL2...again*
Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files...80% complete
(10 mins later)
Steam: HL2 is ready to play!
Me: I know you're probably lying, but OK. *clicks play*
Steam: *updates some shit*
Me: WTF, the game came out like 1hr ago
Steam: Preparing to play...
(5 mins later)
Me: Oh how you taunt me... *whimpers*
(Familiar Valve intro sound...logo appears)
Me: Plays HL2 for 4 hrs straight (at least they did something right)
Well, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything other than empty promises from Steam, given that Mr Gabe Newell was the lead developer of it. Gabe should buy an Xbox and see how games are done online in the 21st century. That or hang himself in a toilet cubicle.
(After downloading the 4.2 gig of cache files on a friend's cable...) ...
Steam: Preloading complete. After the game is released you will be able to play it immediately!
Me: Oooh, immediately. That sounds good.
(Midnight PST)
Steam: HL2 is released. Play now!
Me: Ok... *clicks link*
Steam: Unlocking Counterstrike Source Game Files...
Me: This is highly irregular, but OK. *waits*
(10 minutes later)
Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files...
Me: This is more like it! HL2 here i come.
(20 minutes later)
Steam: C++ error (abort/retry/ignore)
Me: WTF!? *restarts steam*
Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files...
Me: *goes to eat dinner*
(30 mins later)
Steam:
Me: WTF?! *clicks on HL2...again*
Steam: Unlocking 3 HL2 game files...80% complete
(10 mins later)
Steam: HL2 is ready to play!
Me: I know you're probably lying, but OK. *clicks play*
Steam: *updates some shit*
Me: WTF, the game came out like 1hr ago
Steam: Preparing to play...
(5 mins later)
Me: Oh how you taunt me... *whimpers*
(Familiar Valve intro sound...logo appears)
Me: Plays HL2 for 4 hrs straight (at least they did something right)
Well, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything other than empty promises from Steam, given that Mr Gabe Newell was the lead developer of it. Gabe should buy an Xbox and see how games are done online in the 21st century. That or hang himself in a toilet cubicle.
When you rush into things without reading the proper legal agreements associated therein, you can get burned. Shame on you fringe free software zealots for championing fair use and online rights while conveniently ignoring the law when it suits you. You got what you deserved, now go back to Tux Racer.
Frankly, I'm impressed with how generous VU is by giving you a way out.
10 years from now when their immoral activation grap has gone down.
I can still get my old quake cd and play that - but this stuff? I doubt it.
If the law allows me to do so i wish they go out of business if it doesn't i wish them... something else.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I left work early yesterday to play and promptly got held up for over an hour on the journey home. Damned trains. Anyway, I finally got home and played the damned thing. Initial thoughts were as follows:
No problems for me in getting it running. I fire up steam, it starts unlocking automatically and in the time it takes me to go upstairs and get changed (about 5 minutes), it has the game unlocked and ready to play. Loading delay on starting the game is pretty epic. Indeed, loading delays in general were a bit of a pain. I'm on a pretty fast PC; P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig of RAM, fast HDD, but the loading delays, even the transitions between different parts of the levels, are pretty grim. Much worse than the equivalent delays in HL1, on the hardware I had at the time when that came out. It probably takes Doom 3 or Farcry longer to load a level, but once it's loaded, there aren't any transitions in those until the end of the level.
Usual array of configuration options. Nothing to see here, move along. I select "normal" difficulty, as I usually do on my first play-through of a game. Generally gives me a good benchmark of the difficulty level.
Then I play for a few hours, interrupting my play only briefly to log into FFXI and check up on my sales at the Auction House. WARNING: from here on, there may be some spoilers, although I'll do my best to keep them to an absolute minimum.
It's a long, long time before you get to any combat... longer than I've seen in any other fps. Not saying that this is a bad thing, as I've got nothing against a bit of plot development. The setting strikes me as a bit odd at first; not really what I'd expected from HL1 (and I've avoided previews like the plague). However, it starts to make more sense as I get a bit further in.
For those who are also playing the game, I've just got past the section where you play "fetch" with "dog". Judging by the chapter list on the "new game" menu, I'd judge this to be about 1/4 of the way through the game, although of course, I'd expect the later chapters to take longer. It's taken me about 3 hours, maybe 3 and a half, to get this far.
Graphically, the game's OK. It suffers a lot in terms of its first impressions from having followed Farcry and Doom 3. It doesn't do large outdoor areas as well as Farcry and it doesn't have the jaw-dropping beauty of Doom 3 inside. The best word for the graphics is probably "functional". Character models are nice, very detailed, but the movement is sometimes a bit unnatural and I think this seems even weirder because the models themselves look so realistic. Locations are fairly drab. Obviously, this is at least partly deliberate. However, some of the areas which probably weren't supposed to be drab also looked a little sparse after Farcry. The weapon graphics are surprisingly blocky and primative.
I don't tend to notice sound much in games, providing it isn't outstandingly good or bad. Half-Life 2's seems generally fine. Voice acting is actually very good, among the best I've heard in a game. Background ambiance noises are also quite convincing. However, the weapons sound a bit... well... unconvincing. Combined with the blocky models, it kind of contributes to the feeling that you're running around with a toy gun.
As for the gameplay...
It's OK. At its core, this is a straightforward run-and-gun fps. You follow a pre-determined path, killing enemies, picking up weapons and items and doing all that usual fps stuff. It's something of a shame that I've not seen anything like the branching paths that Farcry offered through a few of its levels, but I can live with this. Slightly unusual is the amount of time you spend early in the game having to run away from enemies rather than fighting them. I thought Doom 3 was supposed to be the game to incorporate elements of the survival horror genre, but in that, I just blasted everything away. In Half-Life 2, it seems better just to run away from a lot of the early fights.
The fights themselves are a bit underwhelming. The AI
Steam does not work! piece of crap, stupid licensy system, unable to play offline! rap, crap crap that's all. Don't buy it, screw valvle and screw vivendi!
They could have at least supposed I was not a thief and allow me to play the 1st few levels, bot NO! all reg has to be done before all! thats the most important, satisfaction of customer goes second!
All I hope is a good trial valve/vivendi, where both of them losse a huge amount of money, and then disappears in bankrupt.
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
Actually, they didn't, which was dumb. What they did do was get a court order to bar Valve from selling the game for a lower price over Steam, because that would have really hurt their retail sales.
Even though opinions seem very mixed, I thought I'd try Steam so as to encourage non-distributor (Vivendi) based game distribution (i.e. online). It took 3 hours to download Half-Life 2, but then it just hangs on the loading screen! Based on the amount of activity on my cable modem, I think it must not be done downloading, and they are just lying to me! http://steampowered.com/forums/ has no help on this (search is disabled!), and I can't find any option to email tech support. If I can't get any help on this within a few days from Valve, you can bet I'll never buy from them again.
A petition to Valve regarding Half Life 2 and STEAM: http://www.petitiononline.com/cg1d0915/petition.ht ml
Please tell everyone. And don't forget to sign, though! ;-)
greetz, Schattenreiter