Slashdot Mirror
HL2, Jump to Lightspeed Demos
HomeLAN has details on newly available demos of two of the most interesting late-2004 releases. The folks over at Valve have released a Half-Life 2 demo, available where you download stuff, and FilePlanet has available a demo version of Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed should you want to try it out for 10 days.
The demo torrent can be found on 3dgamers here
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I'd have to disagree. Sure, it takes some time to download the demo, but unless you have to sit in front of the computer and pedal it to make it go, this really isn't an arduous task. Why download the demo? Because the full game costs $50 or $60. Once people do this, however, they may see how simple the Steam process is and decide to buy the game. But that's a different story altogether than "You need to get a Steam account so you may as well buy the game, so the demo is a stupid idea."
I can't dl it in Steam since I already have the full version and Steam isn't listing it in the avaliable games, however from other people's statements the Demo is basicly a few of the first levels and a bit of Ravenhome. No new content.
Keep an eye on Gametab's Frugal Gamer and you should be able to pick it up for ~$35 ($40 here). Whatever you pay, it's worth every penny.. it even just won Gamespy's GOTY award and a number of other awards (best character - Dog!).
One whose disdain for Steam overrides any desire to play yet another FPS, no matter how good it may be?
Where's the "Steam, for the most part, fucking rocks, but hell will freeze over before I contribute to its success as an authentication mechanism" option?
If it was quick (and free) to transfer a single game from one account to another, maybe (making separate accounts for each game so they can be transferred to another party is just lame). If they promise to remove all remote authentication schemes from it completely after 5-10 years (perhaps kept in escrow, so they can't renege), maybe. But a system that neatly kills the "pre-loved" market, the buddy system (borrow games from friends), and will eventually stop authenticating new installs (when I get all retro sometime in the future and want to reinstall), can go and get fucked.
I have the original Half-Life (released pre-steam of course), and have since installed Steam for it (free), so I'll be playing the HL2 demo for sure. But I won't buy the full game.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
You know, I heard this wild rumor about a year and a half ago that they were working on this ultra-secret project called "Counter-Strike: Source" that would be really nifty and actually come free with Half-Life 2. And I guess the original Counter-Strike was something like the most popular FPS multiplayer on the planet, with leagues and prizes and everything.
But it was just a rumor.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
I've got an old TI4600 and an XP1700+ CPU with only 768mb RAM and it runs really smoothly (certainly better than Doom 3)
Funny, i'm more interested in single player games lately. Don't get me wrong, HL spawned some fine multiplayer games, like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress and so, but i dunno... maybe i'm getting old or something, but i still preffer playing by myself better sometimes. And it's not like i can't enjoy an online fragfest :) it's just different. I don't know if people were that interested in HL2 as a game or as an engine for mods, which, let's face it, was what kept HL going to this day - i serioulsy don't beleive every single CS fan played HL. Mods it's what made Valve what it is now.
Anyway, i did play HL2, more or less half of it until the end (at a friend's), and it's good. Not the second coming of Christ, just good. The ending completely destroys the game IMHO, and while some parts were funny and incredibly dinamic others were plain boring - just like with the original HL. I honestly had more fun with Doom 3 (yeah, yeah, flame me) and Painkiller. I still would've bought it though (definitely, in fact), if it weren't for Steam. I like to be the owner of what i buy.