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.

No net connection

[psergiu]

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

timezone

[Bog Standard]

I was wondering if this was going to be 12.00 AM GMT, EST or PST. Looks like it was PST.

Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[citizenc]

I've seen a number of reviews say that Half-Life 2 is the best FPS of all time. After playing it even for only the hour that I have (I have a Social Psychology mid-term tomorrow morning ;), I can tell you that it is, hands down.

I have to commend Valve for doing it right. They didn't rush. They didn't over-hype. They didn't fuck it up. =)

I believe Valve deserves a round of applause. Half-Life 2 is a masterpiece.

*Applause*

Re:No net connection

[Anonymous Coward]

You still can't play it without connecting to steam during the installation.

The 3 way battle: Halo, Doom, HL

[MightyPez]

I remember all the previews and special edition magazines that had the same theme, "Who will come out on top: Halo 2, Doom 3, or Hal-Life 2?"

To be honest, I was rooting for Half-Life 2. I always respected Valve's commitment to their community in their support of their game(s). Halo 2 was more of the same (yet somehow more fun than the first). Doom 3 was pretty, but had the personality of a tray of ice cubes.

I guess what I am trying to say in my own biased way, is, I'm glad I was backing Half-Life 2. So far I am not disappointed.

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

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[citizenc]

Agreed. I remember seeing the first screenshots of Half-Life in PC Gamer (it was a guy in green, in a checkered hallway, if memory serves), and thinking "wow, that looks like Quake".

Releasing Half-Life: Source was a pretty kick-ass idea as well -- I know a lot of people who have never PLAYED Half-Life, but given that the graphics were rather dated by today's standards, I don't think I could get them to pay attention. Now I can. =)

Wow..

[BrookHarty]

Been playing it for the last 2 hours, simply Amazing.

AMD 2600/ATI 9700PRO and I'm getting 60-100FPS with 2X AA, at 1024x768. Smooth as silk, fast, and great.

Only problem, Its a tube chaser so far, just run and run and run. But damn if it dont look amazing.

BTW, she looks cute in those Jeans, Good job Valve.. ;)

Soundtrack MP3 based?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming since you can download this version that the music is no longer on the cd. The music for the first one was excellent and key during parts of the game so I hope they don't have bad compressed MP3s, or some other proprietary compression, for the music this time around.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Coryoth]

The truly amazing part is that unlike id, who up until (and some would argue, including) Doom 3 simply made an engine and slapped some quick levels together to show it off

Anyone who thinks the levels in Doom 3 were "slapped together" to show off the engine should spend a little time designing levels. The general design, lighting, sound design (which was surprisngly important for some levels), and all around attention to detail in Doom 3 was very impressive. Whether you were a fan of the gameplay or not, you would be a fool to claim the levels were "thrown together".

Quake I... well, you might have an argument there. Some truly excellent levels, some appalling levels, and a surprising hodge podge of inconsistent design - that speaks of a certain amount of "slapped together".

Jedidiah.

Re:Insomnia tonight

[KapnShak]

Strange, the Steam Status [steampowered.com] says their using less then half their available bandwidth. Maybe its just a really big download?

Awesome tech support

[junkgrep]

So mygame kept crashing loading the very first level. I wanted to cry. Not knowing what to do, I did the only geek thing I could think of: I simply posted my tears on Shacknews [shacknews.com]. But within minutes a Valve guy showed up asking if he could help. Then Erik Johnson himself popped in and started troubleshooting. I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first. And all this at like 2am in the morning. That's some pretty sweet support kids: they tracked ME down instead of me having to beg them to help.

Re:why $49.99?

[DrXym]

That was my thought too. There are no printing, distribution (see note) or stocking costs, the middle man and the retailer have been removed from the equation and the end user is expected to use a large chunk of their bandwidth allowance to grab it online and burn the game if they expect to keep it.

$29.99 seems fairer. That's $29.99 of money that goes to Valve as opposed to the $8 or whatever it is that goes with the retail version. Everyone wins except the legacy distributors - Valve because they get 4-5x the profit, the customer because they get the game for less.

Okay, so there are some distribution issues surrounding online downloads, but these can largely be mitigated with P2P. For example World of Warcraft uses a (very sucky) custom Bittorrent client to download the game. I have no idea what the savings are for distributing via a .torrent but I can well imagine that bandwidth consumption is slashed to 1/50th.

Expecting people to pay what they could reasonably expect to pay in the stores, is a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Norton / Symantec do something similar.

As an aside, the WoW custom torrent app is so abysmally slow (as in broken slow) and requires various open ports, that I followed the advice I found somewhere, and split the .torrent out of the executable to download through a normal BT client. It was about 5 times faster.

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

[Pulse_Instance]

Lots of exploding barrels, and damn this thing called college, need to sleep so I actually might learn something tomorrow. I completely agree Half-Life 2 is the best out of the 3 and that is judging by the first hour alone.

Played it for 2 hours

[Tibor the Hun]

steam kicked in at 2:04 CST (according to my PC) and the game was decrypted/enabled by 2:15.
the feel of it is just right.
(if you get the great idea to whack the combine soldiers with the telephone be prepared to run)

My impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing for like two and a half hours straight, possibly an hour more than is healthy for me and I'm about halfway through the (first, only?) river-runner level.

I have that unpleasant "I've stopped playing but my world-sense is a bit skewed still" feeling that accompanies all good games. So: Half Life 2 is a winner. It's fun, kind of frantic, you know.

I haven't yet seen what I liked about half life 1 yet apart from the great dialogue.

And a final thought: nice movies leave me with a 'the world is fantastic' feeling, but games never do. They're all conflict-based and quite negative. Someone should release a happy, immersive game where nothing goes wrong. Just to see what happens.

Re:why $49.99?

[gonzoxl5]

I'm sure there are elements of the contract with Vivendi that prohibit Valve undercutting the retail price when distributing via steam.

The same type of restrictions stopped valve from activating clients purchased via Steam before the in-store release date

However, that doesn't stop me disagreeing with the previous poster about the price of the game.

I personally think that $49.99 is a pretty good price for a game like this irrespective of the distribution medium.

Re:No net connection

[222]

The point is that millions of gamers will be left in the cold when they realize the game they just bought is a painful paperweight.
Remember, not *everyone* gets online.

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[spuzzzzzzz]

Water looks sweet, but the humans look a bit flat compared with the dynamic shadowy bump-mapped goodness of Doom 3.

Maybe I'm just biased because this bloody game is Windows-only.

Re:Finally some realistic humans

[strider44]

actually I think the half-life humans look like crap. It's their skin - there's no pores and it's too smooth. Doom 3 did a whole lot better representing humans, though there wasn't many of them.

However, I haven't played the game, and if the animations are done properly it may account for the bad texturing.

Re:Valve Deserves an Appaluse

[Traa]

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

I played and finished Doom 3. I just played 3 hours off half-life2 and I can tell you that when you compare the two you too might get that feeling that the levels in Doom3 where "slapped together". As far as I am concerned, the Doom3 engine and every other game engine just became obsoleet. Yes hl2 is that good.

back to the game, I don't have to show up for work for at least another 5 hours! Muhaha...

Re:Yeeeeehaaaaaa!

[patonw]

Does cortana count? I mean, there's no way she can put out but check out the curves on that hologram!

Re:Infidel

[Jugalator]

That's actually a comparison that matches better how I think. Good replayability => fun a longer time => more value in the game since... well, you have fun a longer time. I'd be much more easily convinced of buying a game if I knew it would last for at least a few months rather than a weekend or two of hardcore gaming. But of course, I can have fun with short games too, and it's not the only deciding factor (and why I don't play Tetris all day long).

I'm sure many game developers know this too, otherwise we wouldn't have all these games where the story have different endings depending on how you play the game. RTS games usually have different races you can choose for this reason too, with multiple strategies, and so on. I just think these steps should be taken to FPS games as well, if they haven't already (which was why I asked, I didn't know how HL1 and HL2 played here -- I have only played Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, and UT2004 in the past, since their replayability comes from the multiplayer factor).

Complex missions, side quests, large open world, as much elements of randomness as possible, multiple character classes playing vastly differently compared to each other, yet fast-paced action with glorious graphics, and so on. Morrowind was kinda cool, but that wasn't really an FPS but an RPG. Too slow and boring for my tastes. :P

Re:My impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

And a final thought: nice movies leave me with a 'the world is fantastic' feeling, but games never do. They're all conflict-based and quite negative. Someone should release a happy, immersive game where nothing goes wrong. Just to see what happens.

Find SNES9X and a copy of (English) Chrono Trigger. It takes a long time to play, but if you're looking for a game that leaves you feeling euphoric, I can't recommend it enough.

No, don't just close this comment and forget about it. Hit google right now, and download it right now. You need to play this game.

Re:Possible Linux support?

[lowe0]

"Valve hates linux users, they have publically said this."

Got a link to a quote from someone at Valve saying they hate Linux users?

Re:No net connection

[The Slient Progenito]

I think he would have been in the same position as me - Being in an university campus with an http proxy. I can access/download from the web at great speed, but yet I discovered today that I was not able to run Half Life 2 because my "internet connection" does not support steam. I am just wondering if any of you fellow university student has found a way past the HTTP proxy?

LANning with your bro allowed?

[MunchMunch]

"From what I hear though the game's DRM is pretty lenient. You can install on as many PC's as you like, they just can't use the same key simultaneously. This isn't activation in the "Windows XP" sense of the word."

Two questions then:

1) Does this mean that it not only needs to check an internet database during installation, but also every time a game is loaded up (and closed, to affirm a time frame)?

2) Does this mean that you can't install a copy on your brother's computer for LAN play (i.e., you and your little brother have to buy their own copies just to play versus each other)?

People can argue about how under strict legal interpretation, you and your brother should have to buy their own copies to play against each other, but in actuality, I feel that that's pretty restrictive. Conversely, LAN-enabled games often were pretty consistent in allowing players to LAN with a single copy, even when the capability existed (heck, comparing CD keys could have been done any time LAN and CD Keys were both used).

So, if that's the case, it's one less reason for me to buy this game. If it's not the case, somebody tell me please!

Half-Life 2 Finally Pirated

[Anonymous Coward]

10 hours since activation, not bad guys!

http://www.izonews.com/release.php3?releaseid=93 95 1

Check your local torrent listings for showtimes. :)

and yes, before anyone points it out, there are various issues and it's being nuked, though they are working on a patch..

INSTALL WARNING / Disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

I purchased the HL2 game today, but I was so eager that I installed it on my work computer just to see that it works.

And now that I got home to _really_ play it on a less-than-lousy computer, steam just tells me I'm not allowed to play it because I already registered the cd-key once.

Then going on to Steam support, I see this:
----
You must include the following within the message in .jpg format:

1. A picture of the actual game CD.
2. A picture of the HL/CS packaging which clearly displays the CDKey number.
3. A picture of the sales receipt.

NOTE: Please allow up to 2 weeks to receive a reply from Sierra / VU Games
----

I had been looking forward to this game for 1 1/2 year. Now I either have to buy it _again_ to actually play it, OR borrow a digital camera from someone, pray that I can still find the receipt, and wait two weeks...
BEWARE!

Reviews fixed!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No outcry about reviews being fixed? I am astonished. There was outcry about the halo2 reviews. Seems like a dubble standard to me.

Re:Read the requirements...

[Wizzzbit]

In those terms I consider myself to have an internet connection, but I agree with the first poster. I'm at university with an 'Internet Connection' in my room provided via the uni LAN (described as an Internet Connection by the uni), I have no phone connection though. The internet connection is heavily firewalled, with a default-deny policy and all web traffic having to go via their proxy. It is impossible to get steam to work and play HL2 despite meeting all the requirements.