Half-Life 2 Finally Activated

Thomas Scovell writes "After over half a decade of development, stolen source code debacle, a promised deadline that was missed by a year, and a feud between the developer and the publisher that is still in court, Half-Life 2 has finally started to activate for those who have purchased online via Steam online or who grabbed the boxed version at the retailers that let it slip early. Go play!" Reviews are available via Gamespot, Gamespy, HomeLAN Fed, and IGN.

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duke Nukem Forever will be better !!

ahem...

Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[d2_m_viant]

Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...

HL2 = HL1 clone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not original at all. I've watched my roommate playing it, and it's the same old stuff with better graphics. Physics = eye candy.

Glad I passed on getting it now, because I buy games for their gameplay. Once the mods come along and the bargains hit I might consider it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:No net connection

[RonnyJ]

So this game is unplayable if i have no internet connection ?

I'm not quite sure how you've got first post then ;)

Re:I guess the idiots are happy

[Grandmasta]

...So I guess you're a Halo 2 fan?

But what about install speeds?

[King_of_Prussia]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Valve fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 35 minutes now while it attempts to Install Half-Life 2. 35 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, installing Doom 3 took about 15 minutes. In addition, during this install, Mozilla will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while installing Valve products, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Valve product that has run faster than its ID counterpart, despite the Valve products faster optimised code. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram installs windows faster than this 800 mhz machine can do Half-Life at times. From an ease of installation standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Valve is a "superior" company.

Valve addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Valve product over other faster, cheaper, more stable games.

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[thatJoshGuy]

You're posting to Slashdot dude, like there was a chance of that happening anyway.

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Kwaichang]

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months... Good to see you have your priorities straight.

Re:No net connection

[Jugalator]

Do not underestimate the power of the RFC 1149 [faqs.org]. They need careful fine tuning, but if done right, the results are mind boggling. :-)

Re:timezone

[DigitumDei]

The problem with working at an IT company, is all the managers know HL2 just got released.

Time to take some leave I think. :)

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[Doppleganger]

Finally some realistic humans

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/halflife2/screen s_6113062.html?page=10 [gamespot.com]

I'll say. That one looks exactly like my boss! Oh, wait, I can scroll this picture over a bit...

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Motherfucking Shit]

Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...

No worries, at least you'll be coming in contact with plenty of terrorists. That alone will get you on the network news, which in turn will get you plenty of chicks! Vive la guerre!

Finally

[JakeD409]

I feel like I am truly alive for the first time ever. It's like my life itself was finally fully activated at midnight PST on November 16th, 2004. Infanthood, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary school, middle school, puberty, high school, these were just pre-loads.

Opening....

[fishmasta]

And the opening train ride took less than 10 minutes! Thank you, Valve!

Re:But what about install speeds?

[rootofevil]

Even Emacs Lite

i think i found your problem...
try using vi or pico and save approximately 100% of those resources ;-)

Why lord why...

[FluffyPanda]

...did they have to release HL2 on my girlfriend's birthday.

Now I'll be looking over a candle in a romantic restaurant picturing gordon freeman's beardy mug.

I wonder if macdonalds would do...

Re:How's the replayability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you asking those who have finished the game in, uhm, 1 hour and 57 minutes?

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Zorilla]

Id Software took great pride with their maps. Each black pixel was meticulously rendered by hand.

Re:Opening....

[Zorilla]

Don't worry - I'm sure my brother will find a way to fall off the first tram ride without saving.

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Suuurreee, the games are the reason.....

Linux

[Kirth]

And what the hell am I going to do with that? Does it at least run in wine/cedega? Or does it look like this:
- Half Live 2: 59$
- Windows: 250$
- Having to repartition harddisk: fuck you.
Even the additional cost of windows (Microsoft-Tax), is very discouraging, but the general behaviour of said operating system raises the cost even more. I can't for instance just install windows on the third disk.
--

Cedega Support

[detain]

Cedega should support it if it doesnt already, last time i looked it almost ran counter strike source fine and it might run it in cvs by now. Its entireyl OpenGL i heard to help combat hacks (i hear opengl is easier to work with when writing hacks?). Either way great fucking job been playing it last 2 hours its incredible. I feel this is a valid reason to take off work tomorrow and my boss will understand.. im sure of it....yeah..

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Bega]

They didn't over-hype.

Who made the people then believe it's the best thing since orange-mango juice?

In the meanwhile this -might- provide slight entertainment while waiting for Duke Nukem Forever. Luckily they haven't hyped it.

Re:timezone

[Ford Prefect]

6 more hours at work before I can get home. This is going to be the slowest day ever...

I'm four hundred miles and over a week away from my (obsolete) PC, you insensitive clod!

Trust me to have to have to go on a business trip just before HL2 was released... :-)

Re:timezone

[DrSkwid]

tell 'em you shit your pants, no-one ever wants to check that one.

sadly I can verify that

WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

[JollyFinn]

Now it has taken ALMOST 2 hours since this came online, and no other stories in slashdot coming. Is this coincidence, or is there some correlation between those too.

Re:Linux

[CortoMaltese]

An alternative looks like this:

• Half Life 2 (X-Box): 59$
• X-Box: 149$
• Having to wait until May, 2005: fuck you.

But hey, at least the Microsoft-Tax is 100$ smaller!

Re:timezone

[omicronish]

6 more hours at work before I can get home. This is going to be the slowest day ever...

Dude, 6 hours is nothing. I accidentally marked the wrong date on my calendar for Half-Life release, and spent Sunday afternoon anticipating it. Midnight came and I was ready to burst, but then I was wondering why it wasn't activated. Then I noticed I was off by 24 hours ;(

Re:Awesome tech support

[TheLoneDanger]

I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first.

Valve's next press release: Valve regretfully announces that Team Fortress 2 has again been delayed due to injuries sustained by our techs during a massive free-for-all brawl. "Bob totally knew that glitch that guy was experiencing with his Gefore 6400 was mine, man. He already got the one with the problem that guy in Iowa had with the crashing during installation, and that was one sweet bug to fix. Bastard."

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[DJPenguin]

DDR man, DDR gets the chicks.

Damn and to think I just bought a set of RIMMs!

Re:No net connection

[Talez]

I call shenanigans! The latency using an RFC 1149 compliant transmission method would be far too great to achieve a first post.

Re:Steam is taking a pounding....

[Sj0]

My mind couldn't comprehend installing HL2 on 90 machines, so I read it as "90 minutes" not once, but three times.

Thanks a freaking lot for shattering my puny human psyche! :P

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[Sj0]

DDR man, DDR gets the chicks.

Yeah, but then their mother goes "What are you doing to my 9 year old daughter!" and it's a whole mess...

Re:Call me an idiot, but...

[Sj0]

It's because ever since that creepy mannequin arm in Tresspasser, I've yearned to be able to bitchsmack dinosaurs with more and more realistic physics!

Re:Activation went off without a hitch

[Mr.Ned]

"this is a 1.5 year old laptop"

That laptop was pretty new when the game was supposed to be released.

Re:The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[frog51]

What are you on about? They did this precisely so you could download or buy in the shops and not be disadvantaged timewise. Top idea, not "Screwing the customer!"

Sheesh!

Re:The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[Idarubicin]

And by the way, has anyone noticed the excessive use of exploding barrels yet? It's like City 17 is a giant nitro plant and they can't seem to keep track of the product.

Barrels (and their sister containers, the crates) are an essential part of any FPS.

One of the canonical pieces of FPS review literature is the Crate Review System [oldmanmurray.com], which measures the time in game until the appearance of the first crate or barrel (StC: Start to Crate).

Dupe?

[Vicsun]

Haven't I read this story before? I blame the editors.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[CausticPuppy]

Anyone who thinks the levels in Doom 3 were "slapped together" to show off the engine should spend a little time designing levels.

I agree. id meticulously designed one map, and then used it for the first 20 levels of the game.

Re:GORDON FREEMAN DIES in hl2

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't worry, he respawns!

A graphical timeline of my HL2 experience

[Jakhel]

6:15 am opens steam =|
6:17 am unlocking game and taking a shower =O
6: 45 am half life 2 logo comes up =)
6: 46 am menu screen =..)
6:50 am starts a new game =D
6:52 am starts playing =..D
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
7:30 am craps his pants =|
8:02 am takes another shower and gets ready to go to work =(
9:32 am posts on slashdot

Re:Wow..

[jayhawk88]

No no no no...that joke only works if it's a crowbar in his hazard suit.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Nosf3ratu]

"obsoleet"(n): Stop reading my post. I am a retard. Synonyms: lolz, d00d, and OMGWTFBBQ.

On behalf of the women...

[gosand]

So much for the rest of this college semester. Between this and Halo2, I'll be lucky if I even come in contact with a female during the next 3 months...

On behalf of all the women at this guy's college: Thank you Half Life 2, thank you Halo 2.

Hahahaha

[NitroWolf]

Hahahaha Steam is so slashdotted...

Oh wait... maybe it's not slashdot, I suppose it's *MAYBE* possible it's the million people trying to download multimegabyte files to activate HL2?

Naaa... gotta be slashdot.

Motion sickness cure + enhanced game experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Had the same problem. Solved it with a small dose of THC. No more motion sickness, instant automatic overclocking, and the most realistic game experience ver.

Re:Read the requirements...

[stanmann]

I have teh intarweb at werk and my bosses let me use it during my lunch break. but my computar at home doesn't use de phone, I don't use de fone at home I have wirles for my ony fone and it don't connect to my computar. but I have de intarweb on it too.

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[Tallon29]

But in Doom 3 everyone was covered in a highly reflective sheet of saran wrap

God it sucks

[JasonEngel]

6 years to make, 60 minutes to install (*FIVE* count 'em *FIVE* CDs), and when all is said and done, the game doesn't WORK! All I get is choppy audio, flashing screens, no ability to move around. Heck, once I finally got the game to start (it crashed twice just starting), and went in the menu to configure keys and mouse it crashed again.

I've been robbed. Seriously. $55 plus tax, and I can't even take the damn thing back to the store, BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK.

Why this piece of crap didn't come on a DVD I simply don't know.

DOOM3 worked flawlessly out of the box with no need to mess with any of the settings. I suppose it was too much to assume that Valve, with one game under its belt, could actually make a second game that worked.

I am so seriously ticked off by this worthless piece of crap.

Re:Finally

[SamSim]

Don't forget to save, then

HL2 ... TF2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who do I have to blow to get TF2?