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Half-Life 2 - Aftermath
Eurogamer.com has word that the expected expansion pack for Half-Life 2 is already in the works. Reporting on information gleaned from PC Gamer UK, the site has learned that the expansion will be entitled 'Aftermath' and is currently slated for a summer release. Aftermath will deal with the fallout from the events at the close of the PC title as the residents of City 17 make for the hills in an attempt to get to safety. Alyx Vance, heroine and robot wrangler, will play a larger role in the expansion, but the article doesn't give specific details on what exactly her relationship to you as the player will be. From the article: "The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now..."
Will it have an ending? Because Half-Life 2 sure as hell didn't.
Steam is probably the most hated delivery system currently in existence.
The real reason Valve decided to release HL2 expansion packs is because it has the name "Half Life" preceding it. And if Valve had decided to release it six years later, there would be no interest, atleast not nearly anywhere as it is right now, and they would have to infact "fight" for shelf life. Right now, retailers would love to offer shelf space for a product, that they know will sell half a million copies, especially for a game which left us all hanging.
In six years, a lot of things can happen. Valve wouldnt be so stupid to wait six years.
Rapid Nirvana
If valves suddenly stops supporting steam in an X number of years, I suspect they'll release a patch that will allow steam to function unhindered.
Doesn't Half-Life 2 still need Steam even if you get the retail version? If Steam dies, you're screwed, at least if you want to reinstall (does Steam let you play games single player in offline mode indefinatley?)
Personally I think Steam is a nice system for getting games, keeping them up to date and the like, but this sort of thing does have the "What if Valve go up the spout / decide to screw you." sort of thing.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
I actually acknowledge the convenience of Steam for some folks, but requiring Steam-based activation is abhorrent. While I am supportive of any company trying the counter piracy, there are limits to what they should require of customers. I know it's easy to sit here and complain without offering another solution, but it's not my job to come up with a solution that makes customers happy, it is the developer's/publisher's and they would be much better of if they were to work out a more sensible solution. I bought HL2 and I'll probably pay for the addon, but if there were a method that did not require Steam (and were legal) I would use it in a heartbeat. But it is really not all bad, when I reformatted my machine and reinstalled HL2, I only needed to reinstall Steam and Steam did the rest. Now I can play HL2 without the CD and without using a no-cd crack, so I have done nothing immoral/illegal. So it's in interesting blend of freedom and restriction, in my opinion.
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I really hate steam and the direction in which video game distribution is headed
You are solidly in the minority on this though. When polled, the vast majority of gamers say that they would rather download their games, and pay a little less, than get a boxed version, and pay a little more.
In fact, many people would rather download their games, even if they didn't have to pay a little less, just to skip a trip to the store. To those people, downloading + paying less is a double-win situation.
Alyx and Barney never gave me a problem, but the squad mates drove me nuts.
... scarier.
... Woo. :-)
I recently finished replaying HL2 with my ultra-cack-handed increased-difficulty tweaks. Somehow, that section of the game became way better. Instead of hundreds of squadmates excusing themselves as I tried pushing past them in narrow corridors, everything became
Other things improved too, and I got to see bits of the game I didn't know existed, and saw battles how they were presumably meant to occur. The strider battles became awesomely awesome, for a start, with holes being blown in walls of buildings I thought were invulnerable, etc.
My theory is that HL2 was playtested on people not so familiar with FPS games - for instance, Combine soldiers do take cover and flank the player, but on standard difficulty settings a decent FPS player is likely to have shot them dead beforehand. Bump up the difficulty, and
I'd release my 'fixed' difficulty settings mod (basically just a tweaked skill.cfg) but I'm sure there are more numbers in the game DLL that can be 'adjusted'. But I ain't got no Windows C++ compiler - anyone want to help?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
"I also heard stories about people getting sick when playing the first Descent game, which I guess was among the first full freedom full 3D games."
In Descent you flew a robot ship through tunnels and mines. There was no gravity and you could rotate on every axis. It was extremely easy to get disoriented in the game, see there wasn't really any true up or down. I never had a problem with space oriented games that used this type of control, but I guess it had something to do with the enclosed spaces.
I never threw up but I do recall bouts of nausea. I remember one head to head match I was playing over direct modem connection with a friend. After a particularly hairy match he just had to stop and go lie down, being on the verge of puking.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
This is often brought up in discussions of Steam, but unless they've changed it in the past few months, this is only partially true. I used ZoneAlarm to keep Steam from phoning home, and I could play in offline mode, but after a few days of this HL2 would complain and refuse to start until it had a chance to update.
So yes, you can play in offline mode. For a while. But eventually you have to be connected to the Internet to play the game.