Duck and Cover

Strangely enough, I think the magnum takes the role of a sniper rifle. Seriouslly, the bolt is visibly slower and now has an arch to take into account. Just because something has a zoom function doesn't mean it is a sniper rifle.

The airboat and buggy levels were awesome, though. And it does blow Doom 3 out of the water. But that doesn't say too much now.

Mad Max RW wrote:You find the crossbow which is essentially a sniper rifle. Same as in Half Life but it fires uranium bolts or something.

Guess what it really is:

Super heated metal bolts... yup... notice how the bolts look like normal pieces of long metal before you pick it up?...

So I'm thinking, wtf is he doing? Does he have a zippo with him?
And everytime he stands still, does he whip out the zippo and starts heating bolts?
lamest weapon ever, and probably the weapon I used the *least*!

Sovy Kurosei wrote:And it does blow Doom 3 out of the water. But that doesn't say too much now.

kind of like saying, a Fiat Punto is better than a Ford Escort, eh?
hehehe... HL2 is a decent shooter, but I must admit, if I had to put it up for any awards what so ever, it'd be "Most overhyped game", "lousiest story", "most failing plot-line" and "game most concentrated on marketers profit".

Notice as there's no manual? almost nothing in your dvd-case, but that quick ref-page?

They saved as much as possible, by doing as little as possible on those fronts. This game, is a 99% "made by marketers, for braindead consumers".

Mad Max RW wrote:Half Life 2 is way the fuck better than the first game. And Doom 3 isn't even in the same league.

Nah, HL1 was way superior in both entertainment value, and weapons. Not to mention weapon skinning, god the standard assault rifle looks like something from counter-strike alpha!

As for doom3 in another league.. yeah, more entertaining league.
At least there you get to blow all kinds of things up, instead of your regular zombies and combines.

The standard HL1 weapons are pretty lame. And the alien weapons were useless. No matter what you'd always fall back to the assault rifle, which looked and sounded like shit. They didn't start looking good until Blue Shift.

I've used the crossbow quite a bit without any problems...

The Doom 3 monsters were nice...to look at. And that was it. They are boring and easy as fuck. And always spawn behind you or in closets. Zombies and imps made up 90% of the monsters you encountered. The original Doom had more variation.
At the very least Half Life 2 isn't cheap about enemy placement and spawning. And it's a much more entertaining game overall. Environments aren't all the same pitch black corridors. The coolest parts (driving the buggy, etc) isn't over in 5 minutes. In Doom 3 everything looks the same until you get to Hell. And when you finally think it's gonna rock they toss you back to the same old bullshit minutes later.

Anyway, I didn't hate Doom 3. Hell, I liked it. But Doom1+2 with a good source port, or even Painkiller, is so much more fun.

the .357 was my favorite

Although the gravity gun towards the end became really fucken funny

The weapons were as crappy as the halflife 1 weapons and the driving parts sucked. The game was reasonably fun though, but I'd say Farcry was more innovative.

Doom 3 was shitty. Nuff said on that subject.

I spent the whole day playing and just finished a few minutes ago. I'm trying really hard to think of something I didn't like and the cliffhanger ending is all I can come up with. Still, it doesn't piss me off all that much. Your goal is to save humanity by killing the Dr. Breen fellow and ruining their shit. The story is kinda thin, but makes more sense if you played Half Life 1 before and fully understand it. Maybe I wasn't as disappointed because I already knew they didn't answer many questions or tie things up at the end.
The G-Man character is never explained. Although it's implied he's a higher power than Breen and has the ability to warp time (you experience this first hand by accident). I'm fine with that, because Valve could have forced him into the story as a central character and fuck everything up. Still, it pays to have experienced the first game early on.

The last level was good. It was shorter and a lot less frustrating than Xen. They waited until the end to take away all your weapons and trade for a suped up gravity gun. I liked the long ride on the pod dealy. Looked like the inside of the mothership from that trashy movie Independence Day.

Fighting in the streets with the combine troops, rebels, and giant fucking strider things was cool as hell. Several areas were nearly impossible, especially when rocket ammo is lying right in the open under tons of enemy fire. Definitely had an epic street war rebellion feel in the last few levels.

There's a lot to talk about. The puzzles are way better and somewhat logical. All the levels are so different and you're constantly driven to keep going to see what the next cool thing will be. Running from soldiers, trying to survive at night in a zombie infested town, speed through all sorts of craziness on a swamp boat thing, cruise down a highway along a post apocalyptic looking landscape, and tons more shit I can't remember. Half Life 2 is like the most ridiculous action movie you've ever seen.

Heh. I guess it might be worth downloading after all.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick ... 9&warned=y

Teh truth!!!

Smiley wrote:http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick ... 9&warned=y

Teh truth!!!

Cunning edit ! I almost didn't notice it !

ITS CHESTER FROM LINKIN PARK OMG

Half-Life2 is tite and so is Doom3.

I beat them both twice back to back and once each in the hardest difficulty. Doom3 Nightmare was way harder than HL2 hard mode.

Domo3 is still boring.

**** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*****


I second Max's comments. I really enjoyed HL2 although the whole Steam experience (trying to activate it online at the same time as most of Europe sucked) didn't impress me as having both the disc and the unlock key has equalled playing the game in 15 minutes with all the other games I own...

The atmosphere and scenery are breathtaking and I've lost count of the number of times I got killed while just standing still admiring the different settings. The vehicle sections were enourmous fun and I can see that Halo style HL2 stunt movies will be all over the place shortly.

It feels a little linear in some places, but that's because Far Cry really opened up FPS players to having the choice of routes between objectives/set piece battles. I didn't get the "game on rails" feeling that I did during CoD, although that game made up for this flaw with huge cinematic battles.

HL2 could have used a little back story to get the people who haven't played HL into the not entirely obvious storyline of HL2.

I feel the weapons are well balanced in that you can rely on firepower alone to win any firefights - I found I still had to "shoot and scoot" even in the final levels to stay alive.

The .357 Magnum (looked like the old Colt Python to me..) was the tool of choice to pick off distant Combine troops as they attack. The crossbow was vital for picking off stationary enemies partially hidden behind the energy screens. I don't see why you can't have a crossbow that heats up metal bolts in a universe where you have teleporters and portable gravity manipulators.. I was slightly surprised to find the SMG more accurate than the pulse rifle at medium ranges, but the latter makes up for being a bit spray and pray by having quite a punch and by ebing able to launch those energy bolts!

The trusty SPAS 12 is still the Daddy for dealing with pesky critters and general room clearing!

It's my opinion that Valve's new initiative to integrate steam into their product and this whole online registration thing. It's nothing short of criminal.

I refuse to pay money for something like that. In fact. I haven't.

Yes. Remote authentication is necessary to play a single player game -you- bought. It's for your protection after all. Yet it's a shitty inconvenience that only the people who paid for the game are enduring? Way to treat your customers right Valve.

It's horse shit. The only way you as an end consumer could possibly justify it is if you were some arsch licking Newell'ite that blindly accepted whatever that company did because you have no life.

I believe in paying for good software, but I would proudly defy Valve for what they're doing right now, as it's simply not right. Steam is a travesty in of itself.

I simply can't, better said; won't play halflife online anymore because of it.

Alas, the connetion is required ONLY to register/decrypt. Then you can play all you want in offline mode. So hard?

One more thing: I live in a country where telecomunication sucks, I have crappy ADSL 124kbits/s, and I never - I say again - NEVER had any trouble connecting to server.

You have to disconnect your internet connection to play offline. I personally leave Steam on all the time. It doesn't matter. Logging off and logging back on is fast.

There's a lot of potential disasters in the making, though. Every patch is forced on you, so if the latest update breaks HL2 it's impossible to roll back to previous versions.
These kind of systems are ALWAYS hacked. Gamespy Arcade was hacked countless times. Even I had a hacked Gold account. Gamespy's advantage is they have years of experience. Valve is all alone starting from scratch.
Monthly fees are definitely going to happen. I give it a year. Steam will offer a regular free version, but they'll figure a way getting people to pay extra.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they charge extra for HL2DM. They're already screwing people over with DoD:S.

So, if I don't have an internet connection on my gaming comp I'm screwwed?

That's correct. Idiots in the Half Life community like halflife2.net or even the official steampowered.com forums will claim you can install it on a computer with the internet, unlock HL2, burn a DVD, then copy everything to your gaming computer and it will work. They are dead wrong and haven't tried it themselves. Nobody has been able to get it working that way and a couple Valve employees confirmed it as an impossibility. Yet idiot fans will continue spreading false information.

On the box it says "Internet Connection Required" in the system requirements but nothing about Steam or how the internet is required for installation. A regular person who never heard of the game before, or is getting the game as a gift, will most likely assume the internet connection bit refers to multiplayer. The idea of it restricting singleplayer as well is completely ridiculous. Half Life 2 will never compare to Doom 3 in the number of units sold. It's a shame Valve had to shoot themselves in the foot like that.

Blargh wrote:

Smiley wrote:http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick ... 9&warned=y

Teh truth!!!

Cunning edit ! I almost didn't notice it !

That's what I thought!! it is: teh ultimative truthzor!! w00t


Anyway, since I finished HL 2 1+½ week ago I haven't opened it since.
How about you guys? do you still play it?

and what about that "surprise" valve is talking about? Could it be... MULTIPLAYER???? O.O

I fucking hope so, otherwise I wasted my money >=/