[DEFINITIVE] Half-Life 2 Thread

[FatCat]

everyone is ****ed at gamespots forums, a new thread about the score is popping up ever 2 sec.

[sin-ergy]

freakin hell. that's it. i'm getting up an hour earlier tomorrow to play before i go to work. this is stupid. i got a quiz on wednesday, midterm on thursday and working 8-5. I WANNA PLAY HL2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :p

[theyarecomingforyou]

http://www.half-life2.org.uk/check.php - Find out how HL 2 will run on YOUR system. I thought this was a nice little web tool.

It's hardly conclusive... reading the box would tell you the exact same information. :no:

[Elmo]

awesome stuff

[jackwanders]

This is going to be a hectic week here at Neowin. Hopefully I'll be able to wade through the HL2 threads and find a few dealing with MGS3 (Yes...MGS3 comes out this week too).

Poor Solid Snake. Won't anyone think of the spies? :cry:

It's a damn shame I haven't used my PC for games in so long. At this point, it'd cost me at least $250 just to run HL2.

...yes yes, i know. "It's worth it". It'd be worth it if I didn't have car payments to make :)

[sto110]

Does MGS3 come out only on PS2 i really liked the (7 or 8 GB :() version that came out for PC of MGS2 Sons of liberty

Love that game and cant wait to strangle someone on my pc soon!

[jackwanders]

everyone is ****ed at gamespots forums, a new thread about the score is popping up ever 2 sec.

584925976[/snapback]

That just goes to show how deep into the 'fanboy' mentality some people get. They're so convinced of this game's revolutionary status that they refuse to accept any criticism on the game's behalf, even when:

A: The score will have no effect on how much you enjoy the game. If it does, that's troubling news.

B: The reviewer has played the game, and

C: The 'fanboy' hasn't

Some people just need to let off some steam I suppose.

Ha! Get it! STEAM!

I kill me.

[Dotdot]

UPDATE ::

plz re-download as the following is now fixed

- Hangs on last set of images

- Added rolover sounds

[vincent]

G0rdoN 0wnez S0L1D Sn4k3!, sorry i couldnt resist :D

[vincent]

Just seen this in the Seattletimes newspaper:

I didnt know that Valve was based here in Bellvue,WA which is right across from me like 5 minutes away .

Video-game review: Crowbar at the ready? "Half-Life 2" is righteous

By Mark Rahner

Seattle Times staff reporter

"Half-Life 2" (Sierra, rated M for mature audiences, $49.95 ? $89.95, for PC only): They didn't have to physically throw me out of the Valve offices.

But the lights were dim, most of the staff had gone home and eight hours into what was meant to be my short test drive of "Half-Life 2," before its release tomorrow, I was still stalling to stay until the last possible minute. My host made a point of retrieving the guest key-card for the building.

To sum up: Action gamers better have saved some adrenaline and some dough after "Halo 2," "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "Doom 3."

Published in 1998, the original "Half-Life" ? a first-person shooter with a creative science-fiction story line featuring bespectacled, crowbar-wielding scientist Gordon Freeman ? became one of the all-time top-selling PC games. Still, I have yet to speak to anyone who could make it past the giant, mutant baby at the end without cheating.

Selling more than 8 million units (including add-ons and a subsequent PlayStation 2 version), it gave the Bellevue-based developer Valve a George Lucasian financial independence to do things its own way ? not to mention blow off deadlines. The company was already running behind on its announced September 2003 publication date for the sequel when hackers made news for busting into its network and stealing the game's code, Valve Marketing Director Doug Lombardi said.

It wasn't just a nerve-racking hit to the morale of the 65 full-timers there, Lombardi said. They had to go back and reconstruct the code, to keep cheaters from having a blueprint enabling them to spoil online multiplayer games. Arrests of culprits in several countries were announced June 10.

Thrilling preview footage of "Half-Life 2" in May at the Electronic Entertainment Expo made spectators drool. The game lives up to it and then some.

For starters, the environment graphics are diabolically photo-realistic. Peeling paint on cinder-block walls, cracks and filthy wrappers on sidewalks. I was as prepared to say "Sorry" to a panhandler as I was to get roughed up by a mutant.

As with "Doom 3," it takes a powerful machine to run "Half-Life 2" in its full glory. An Xbox version is in the works, but no release date is scheduled. Unlike "Doom, "GTA" and other M-rated hits, it probably won't draw controversy for its violence ? which is plentiful, but in such a science-fiction context that it doesn't seem nearly as harsh. (And besides, parents, it's rated M.)

Valve estimates total playing time for an intermediate at 25 hours, so I had to skip around some in my preview. The story finds Freeman sent to "City 17," where blue-goggled stormtroopers enforce martial law and a Big Brother figure who looks like The Architect from "The Matrix" speechifies on screens everywhere. He's really a character from the first game, and this chaos is tied to those events and a transporter device.

You're sent on assorted missions to save humanity, presented with intuitive puzzles (which never get as tedious as they can in the "Resident Evil" series), and go up against mutants, giant killer bugs and zombies along with the goggle-boys. Nothing radically different from the first game, just an order of magnitude better.

The weapons are familiar, too. What would "Half-Life" be without a crowbar? You get a gravity gun that picks up, moves and launches objects; and an organic "bugball" that rallies to your aid the killer bugs who menace you on a white-knuckle dune-buggy ride earlier in the game.

That raises the game's only real annoyance, and it's a profound one: The bugs ? and humans who later team up with you in the besieged city ? are just as deadly to have as friends because they get in your way. On the other hand, you can send both bugs and humans into a melee ahead of yourself to test for flying lead. You'll learn to enjoy doing that.

You'll enjoy it all. And you won't have to relinquish your key-card

[thankins]

I have download this, but have a noob question. How in the hell do I back up my steam files? Can I just copy the contents of the folder over to a dvd ? I have preloaded all of HL2

[Varsity]

That just goes to show how deep into the 'fanboy' mentality some people get.  They're so convinced of this game's revolutionary status that they refuse to accept any criticism on the game's behalf, even when:

584926040[/snapback]

Perhaps if the review wasn't clearly biased there woldn't be so much of an issue. The score doesn't fit with the text and the quote I gave above for starters. :no:

[Crunch]

HALF LIFE 2 DVD FRONT END

Designed to aid steam users wishing to backup there Halflife 2 files to dvd. This provides a usable front end much like an auto installer. However this will only launch the install for steam and once then you may click the options to load Halflife 2 or borwes the disk for your own GCF files :)

DOWNLOAD HERE http://www.colicab.com/Hl2dvd.zip

584925417[/snapback]

thnx your the greatest

[DoNuTs]

The End is near - 16th November . . . Will we survive?

[aldo]

See the problem with the whole connect via dial-up is that I don't have a 56k modem in my PC, tha'd add to the cost of the game, seeing as the places here don't know how to price 56ks lately.

584925940[/snapback]

You are telling me you don't know anyone you could borrow a modem off? I can buy them brand new from ebuyer for ?1 or so, which is about $1.80.

Look, activation is bad, yes, but saying you don't have internet access is even stupider. Nearly every computer these days is internet connected. I guess about 0.3% of home PCs ain't.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

GRANTED, I have not been able to play the game yet, just like everyone else here I would like to remind everyone, but I just read the Gamespot review from beginning to end, and I really fail to see what is so wrong with it.

All I can think of, and again this is just speculation, is that they have actually done an honest review that was not effected by the Hype of this being dubbed as "the best game ever made."

Now that we are finally all sitting here on the day before HL2's release (for the lucky few of us just a mere 7 hours away) I now have a feeling a decent amount of people are going to be let down come tomorrows end.

Why would I even dare to say such a thing?

Because Hype is DAMN powerful.

So even though I am fully ready and willing to label the game in instant classic without even playing it (thanks to the Hype), I have to think that it has been so Hyped up that we are ALL, yes including myself, possibly expecting just a bit to much out of the game itself.

Believe you me, I hope I am wrong. I hope without a doubt HL2 is completely groundbreaking and an unbelievable experience, and it is indeed a new step forward for the genre itself.

However, I just cant help but take a step back and wonder what if HL2 is just going to be another of the great games to play? Will people be disappointed if it is just that?

Even though that should be good enough for us all, I cant help but think the answer to the last question would be a definitive YES.

[Soviet]

Very nice. Could do without the music though.

[qdave]

I got the special edition from Futureshop.ca when they had the mistake of $69.99 CND on there, since i bought it then I get it at that price, altho now they have it for $99.99CND like everywhere else around here.

584925924[/snapback]

man, you are so lucky!!!!!!!!!! i will order it morrow for 99:(

[Dejon]

I posted this on backpage news but curious to know here as well.

Anyone know if they are doing a midnight release for this.?

e.g Ebgames, Bestbuy, Future Shop.

[Blackima]

@DirtyLarry

Thanks for that, I think we all needed to be slapped back into reality. Yes, it is very likely that half life 2 will not be the key to true happiness and will not revolutionise our lives, and to be fair, all it is is a computer game.

The worst thing thast can happen is for valve to have speant 5 years making a game, a fantastic game, and yet just because of all the hype and the ridiculously high expectations, we will not think it to be enough and so we might all look at hl2 in disgust, for dissapointing us, even if it is an amazing game.

[sin-ergy]

yeah let's just hope we don't have another doom 3 on our hands :(

[CbbLe]

If you live in Sweden you can get it for about 35euros at Siba (http://www.siba.se)

[stanley porkchop]

Agreed. Very, very rarley does a game live up to its hype. The last truely great game was GTA3. That game broke new ground on so many levels.

HL2 will not break new ground - it will be an improvement on HL. It will be what Vice City was to GTA3.

584923498[/snapback]

No, no, I very much believe Half Life 2 will break new ground. Just look at the physics. But I know the kinds of bugs/problems that will most likely arise from that physics exploitation, and while they may be patched, I'm guessing we'll be seeing some iffy things with the environment related to enemy movement. I'm not sure how well the vehicles will control, either.

But basically, almost every big release I've ever seen has been praised and praised by critics and shunned by others, when really, they should be somewhere in the middle: great games with a few flaws. I don't see HL2 being any different. It'll be better than most, that's for sure, but definitely not the best ever.

[leftyflip86]

EBGames and Gamestop web sites say they're already shipping :ninja:

http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/235059.asp

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=645118

[Dejon]

What.. :ninja:

That's in the states though right.?

I just called Ebgames (Toronto). They're selling it next day, I thought they were doing midnight sellings they do with big games.