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Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast Released On Steam
Hatedlegion writes "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast has been released on Steam." Gamespot has details, and a hands-on look as well. From that article: "If you've played through Half-Life 2, the gameplay in Lost Coast isn't going to set the world on fire. You fight your way up a sheer cliff face, trading fire with those pesky Combine soldiers every step of the way. You'll occasionally have to deal with some of the more vicious sorts of headcrabs, and at the end you'll have to bring down a Combine gunship with Gordon Freeman's trusty rocket launcher. You'll have to solve a couple of light physics puzzles as well, which we won't detail for the sake of preserving at least a little of the surprise. You'll even get to talk to an old man at the beginning of the level, who provides you with the impetus to head up into the hills and engage the Combine in the first place."
It's just one short level. And actually, it's more like a demo designed to show off the graphics with a HL2 map attached to it.
Yup. To get the best enjoyment out of the game side of things, play on Hard with the commentary turned off - the latter is important because otherwise you'll be stuck in an invulnerable god-mode.
It is very short, but quite nicely constructed. I still think that Day of Defeat: Source was the better demonstration of HDR, but this new map is still worth the download. The recommended specifications seem pretty generous too - I played on a 128MB GeForce 6600 (non-GT) without any real problems.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
There's one shipwreck which can be targeted from the elevator and probably right at the beginning, if you climb over the rocks behind you (?), that features a comment node which talks about it being a puzzle they had to leave out because they thought people would prefer the rappeling soldiers (hint: I don't, but then I enjoy playing Myst :-P ). Also Gabe specifically asks for feedback and gives his email in one of the last nodes.
The comment nodes are fun BTW, but I would have prefered the whole game to pause (they can get difficult to hear well if a certain machine is close). Additionally you go into god-mode when activating the comments, which is bad IMHO, since I started it with comments on, because I wasn't sure I wanted to run through a second time...