Half Life 2

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

Anyone get it yet?

[Izret101]

No and i don't plan on getting it because it would not run on my computer.
I heard it is spectalur and extremely submersive though. I never played the original either.

[Zimbacca]

If I had a computer that would run it I would get it.

[Sureshot]

Meh, I'm not really a fan after playing through most of it.  It's very basic in features, you can tell it should have been released a year ago.  The plotline is weak and the game itself is pretty short (roughly 16 hours of play).

On the plus side, the engine is excellent, and they seem to have tweaked it a little since CS:S, meaning it feels very much like the old Half-Life, plus excellent physics and graphical effects in general.

At the end of the day though, in terms of gameplay, you could as well be playing any of the major FPS releases from the last few years, and perhaps even before that.  Only buy it if you want to see the excellent engine in action, you want to play CS:S and other forthcoming mods (which promise to be superb), or you're a fan of the original.

[Lord Nepenthean]

My cousin went out and spent the $60 to buy this yesterday, but wasn't able to play.  He said that Valve requires you to register your key online before playing, but their servers were down.  Way to go, Valve.  Bad servers on launch day, after all this hype, made me decide not to go buy it.

Thanks for the review, Sureshot.  That makes me even gladder that I didn't spend $60 on it, even if the servers are back up and running fine.  I'll wait for a few cuts in price.

[Hydrobond]

Their servers were not down when I registered.  And you do not need to register to play, you just have to have a registration pending.

Anyways, I have baan playing CS:S non stop since I got the game, with the little of the single player on the side.  (When I feel like winning again.)

I would recommend it.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

  My friends got me the game for my B-day and I can't play it cause my PC sucks.

[Lord Nepenthean]

Hey, good job, Valve.

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

This problem is characterized by a sudden massive drop in frame rate when turning corners or moving into new areas of the game. These drops are usually accompanied by looping or stuttering sound during the frame rate drop which is how most people become aware of the problem.

It occurs on both Intel and AMD CPUs of all speeds.

It occurs on systems with 2+ GB of RAM although it appears to be worse for users with 512MB of RAM or less.

It occurs on both ATI and NVIDIA video cards, including video cards with 256MB RAM.

It occurs with multiple sound cards and chipsets, including the Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, Audigy 2, NVIDIA SoundStorm, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Realtek, etc.

It occurs after disabling sound in-game, disabling the sound card in device manager, and even after removing the sound card entirely.  

It occurs regardless of in-game screen resolution.
It occurs for both CD/DVD installations and installations downloaded via Steam.

It occurs on all supported versions of Windows including Windows XP Service Pack 2.

It occurs on all supported versions of ATI CATALYST and NVIDIA ForceWare drivers, including the CATALYST 4.12 and ForceWare 67.02 beta drivers that contain optimizations for Source engine games.

It's not like the game was in development for ninety years or anything.  Surely we can't expect it to actually work properly.

[Izret101]

LOL
So it fucks up with EVERYTHING.
I agree with Nep.
Way to go Valve!!

[RyanHicks]

Well said.

[Hydrobond]

This problem is due to poor programming.  It will be fixed in a patch, soon hopefully.  It is charactaristic of a semi-infinite loop, i.e one with an escape value well beyond the maximum allowable for smooth operation, or one that is rarely met.   All in all, the game is still amazing.  

[Lord Nepenthean]

I've been playing this yesterday and today, and after a few hours of gameplay, I really like this game a lot.  I tend to agree with Sureshot that it's average as FPS's go, but the engine is top-notch.  The textures are amazing.

P.S.  I really don't like the hovercraft mission.  It's about ninety billion years too long.

[Lord Nepenthean]

Wow that looks awful when I upload it.  I'm not sure why, but the sky lost a lot of quality between my computer and the board.

[Izret101]

Do hands ever appear on that steeringwheel while you are driving are there never any?

Even with the low quality i can imagine how nice it must look.

[Lord Nepenthean]

There never are any hands on the handle bars.  At first I thought something was wrong, but I think that's how it's supposed to be.  Dunno why though.  I'll post more screenshots later.  The graphics really are amazing.