I was addicted to the orginal HL and haven't bought HL2.


Anyone have it?

Do buy it. Not online through steam, but a hard copy at your local store.

It takes the cake, imho

why not through steam? I did that and it works great.

Steam worked fine for me, too. Finished HL2, it's great...

Same quality as HL 1?

Plan on buying a new PC to play it as well.

I think the quality is vastly higher in HL2. The characters are much more realistic, with very realistic movement and facial expressions. The game itself is fun to play. The gravity gun is wonderful. It's everything HL1 was plus more (with a less annoying endgame than the hop fest the first one was). It's a fairly quick play, though, and there's no replayability...

any mods on it yet?...counterstrike, day of defeat, etc?

Because if you're on anything less than 3mbps cable you'll be waiting FOREVER. Also a few friends of mine have STILL been unable to download due to server congestion. They're at like 80% of their download and i've been playing for a week plus.

HL2 requires an internet connection. Albeit, not your generic ISDN or 56gay.

CS:S is out. DOD:S is coming soon ($10), and the SDK is out. This week they implemented HL2:Deathmatch so you can play online and throw toilets, explosive barrels and cars at people.

Most of all... it's fun!

Steam worked great for me, but then, I was preloading it via Steam a month+ before it released, and was therefore playing CS:Source for about a month prior to the actual HL2 release. 'twas a blast, CS:Source, especially has been a ton of fun, just like the original CS, but with modern graphics...so pretty...

It requires a connection, but not a super fast one. Downloading the whole thing might take a day or so, but that's only a one-time thing. I only have an ISDN connection at the house (bonded, so 144K up and down), and it's plenty fast enough. I haven't been able to get the Deathmatch to work, but that doesn't interest me as much as the single-player stuff.

I know the creators mother-in-law. She said he went from struggling trying to make it to multi-millionaire over night. She told the whole story in class and it was pretty amazing.

Speaking of internet connection... I can't figure out how to play in "offline" mode. I'm super bugged that I HAVE to log on EVERY time I want to play. Does anyone know how to do it?

how to make hl2 work in offline mode

Hmmm...thanks for the info! Kinda misleading... Why doesn't it drop into offline mode when the steam servers are too busy to handle my request to play?

I consumed many hours last weekend on HL2. (I actually took 3 days off for T-day weekend...including Sat & Sun )

The graphics are probably the best I've ever seen on a PC and I only have a "midrange" system. I have Doom3 as well but I was having more fun with HL2.

I kind of got stuck at one point and couldn't figure out how to continue forward, but maybe I'll try some more tonite. I'm playing offline mode for now (downloaded thru Steam though) as my satellite connection's latency sux for online gaming).

I've been through the game twice (easy and normal). This game is the bumdiggety and a worthwhile sequel to Half-Life (which I've played countless times). The grav gun (and it's cousin - sssh - don't want to spoil it) is the most ingenious "weapon" ever devised for a first-person shooter.

I got a free copy with my ATI card and downloaded it in chunks over the past few months before release over my cable modem. My experience with Steam was completely seamless and trouble free. I have yet to burn a backup copy of my game to CD, but I hear it's possible. I don't have a problem with the required internet connection or any of that. The whole thing has gone quite smooth and my PC is online all the time when it's on anyway.

The game runs pretty smooth on my machine: AthlonXP2000 (nominally a 1.6ghz cpu), half-gig RAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB. I have all settings on medium, models detail on high and 800x600 resolution. I could probably get away with 1024x768 resolution, but I've got no complaints. I wouldn't mind a faster processor - levels take a while to load, and a 256mb video card might be nice.

Plot-wise I wish they would explain just a wee bit more. But there's a good story summary available. Be warned - the game may leave you with more questions than when you started.

Additionally, there's a lot of good info on the Steam forums. A lot of people are bitching about sound stuttering problems and such, but I've had a great experience playing the game. It's very intense from the word go and it immersed me in the story more than any game since Deus Ex.

went and bought the collectors edition today. (hey, it comes with a free t-shirt!) ...


i'm installing it right now, be back in a week ...
Andy

if you guys are going to play CS:S or HL2:DM, search for [nth]... If i'm on, you'll see [nth]demnogis. Join up! use www.gametiger.net