Half-Life 2 previews

I installed it, without installing counterstrike. I have a 56k modem connection, so I have no interest in counterstrike. On disk 4, I received a 1334 error (several times… 45 minutes in several installation attempts) – unable to read cab file. A half hour searching the forums on planethalflife, I discovered that this was a bug that happened if you didn't install the counterstrike files. Amazed that noone at Valve would have though that some people might not have a broadband connection.

Shaking my head at this pitiful initial experience, I nevertheless planned to have HL2 redeemed in my eyes with an awesome intro. I hit the HL2 icon, and… it says “register steam account”. My jaw drops a bit, but I nevertheless connected with my dial up and let it start to download. I expected a 10-second activation, like Windows XP activation. Instead, I wait OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF while the “STEAM UPDATE” occured. It timed out several times, forcing me to restart.

Finally, after two hours, it finished the update. I prepare to play, and, to my astonishment, I get a “THIS GAME IS NOT READY FOR OFFLINE PLAY.” Mouth agape at this new development, I hunt around until I find a “register product” option. AT this point, it;s been sitting at the “UNLOCKING HALF LIFE 2 GAME FILES” screen for AN HOUR AND FORTY FIVE MINUTES NOW.

UNBELIEVABLE!!! I'm so mad at this ridiculous nonsense I could scream. HOURS and HOURS wasted, just trying to play a damn single player game that should have been available out of the box. After waiting over an hour, I get the “STEAM SERVERS CURRENTLY TOO BUSY TO HANDLE YOUR REQUEST.”

GRRRR!

In terms of design it's superb. The weapons, the character models, the enemies and the locations look great. I just didn't find it much fun to play. After a while it gets a bit dull. There are no missions or objectives to speak of. All you do is fight your way aimlessly through one location after another. There's the occasional scene where you'll interact with some characters and the story is advanced a bit but mostly it's just the same old slog to the end of the level. I concede that plenty of gamers won't have a problem with that.

In an attempt to vary the gameplay and make it more interesting the designers rely on having you run regularly into some obstacles that you have to figure out how to get around or open. Interesting now and again, but boring and frustrating to have to do it again and again.

Toward the end of the game freedon fighters start to follow you and fight at your side. This was cool at first but you quickly start to hate it. Although their AI is impressive and a joy just to watch, I found them just getting in my way. They also unavoidably, and tragically die. There's no option to command them to stay put, they follow you relentlessly to their inevitable and violent deaths.

At some parts enemies respawn, which is something I hate, and sometimes they pop out at you when you hit an invisable point on the map.

Finally, it's rather short and has the most unsatisfying ending of any game I can think of. I agree with the grumbles about Steam. You've paid for the game, it should be ready to play right out of the box. End of story.

A brilliant game but stream ruins it every time you got to play the the game stream starts to update the game. I am lucky because i have got broadband. Otherwise its an execlent game but the game takes ages to load and i have got a new really fast computer.(Sometimes it takes 50 minuites + to update the game so watch out)

As I did not play the original half life, I didn't really know what to expect,but with the hype for such a prolonged period I had to have it.

First of all, installation, what a load of #@*?, you would have thought you were applying for a job with union aerospace or something.

This ruins the game a lot for me as I can't help feeling that this developer is hijacking my computer (I paid them for a game to play on my computer, not for them to have the right to install steam/source or whatever they call it,and start downloading god knows what)

That aside the graphics are excellent and not to demading on hardware, particularly the characters movements facial expressions etc, some of the weapons are awesome, the middle of the game on the airboat made me feel like I was playing an arcade game a bit, and when you start gathering team members it gets a bit frustrating as they follow you around getting in the road even when you order them to stay put. Generally a pretty atmospheric enjoyable game but far too short for my liking.

Wow, the graphics in this are out of this world and the interactivity of everything ingame is insane. You can pick up and move/destroy pretty much anything you would be able to in real life. The story follows Freeman trying again to escape from the baddies with help from the underground resistance.

People talk to you properly, their faces move and facial expressions change and they react to your presence. You have to see it to believe it.....

The game is fun/worth finishing. The plot has a few holes. The game runs wonderfully [when it works].

The whole Steam validation for offline play etc is ridiculous. All the problems a large group of users are getting, such as the Sound Stutter bug, Memory crash, loading freeze etc, which have been around since the game was released, over 2 weeks ago, and still no working fix, though their other fixes have made the game unplayable for a large group of users.

This game is a must have! I am not joking, it has to be one of the best games ever. It's a bit short, but still, it's so cool! Everything is good; graphics, sound, gameplay, you name it!

The only bad thing I can say about this game is just the loading times. It takes a while to load, but other than that, it's all sweet.

Many people say this game is too short, it is, if this game took 1 year of play-time it would be.

THIS GAME ROCKS! plus it runs nice, even with my 9600×t, I can put everything on high, and get about 35fps average.

You have to buy this game, its really awesome, everything about it kicks A$$!

I'm going to talk about Counterstrike Source which I have been playing for the last month. For those of you like me who may be thinking of getting Halflife 2 just to play the new Counterstrike I would like to point out that currently Condition Zero offers the best version of the game.

Counterstrike Source has the best graphics in the Counterstrike series, provided you have at least a Directx 8 capable card. Speaking of the Graphics card, you will need something more powerful than a Geforce FX 5600 (which I use) if you want to play the game silky smooth.

The sound is better too in terms of sound quality. You'll need to relearn the different sounds the weapons make to a certain extent because they are using new sound samples.

Map selection is currently very limited, but they do have all the favourite maps except for my personal favourite, de_inferno. Once that map is in I highly recommend the new game, and if you don't care for de_inferno then you can buy now! Otherwise stick with Condition Zero, unless you want HL2 for singleplayer…