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First Person Shooters (Games) Entertainment Games

Half-Life 2 Coverage Appearing 48

Posted by simoniker from the agonisingly-slow-disclosure dept.
scottcha+4 writes "When it was released in November 1998, Half-Life redefined the action gaming genre by combining fast-paced action and an intelligent, intense story. Players quickly began clamoring for a sequel, but developer Valve Software responded with silence. Five years later, the call for that sequel is as loud as ever. Get the details via this CNN story." The CNN coverage has a couple of amazing-looking screenshots and some brief details, but there's going to be a whole lot more after magazines like this arrive in stores and the press embargo is fully lifted.
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Half-Life 2 Coverage Appearing More

Half-Life 2 Coverage Appearing

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  • I must PLAY, evaluate, rank, AND WIN!!

  • What will they call it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28, 2003 @06:49PM (#5830226)
    Quarter life?

  • Nice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aafkqj3628 ( 596165 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @06:58PM (#5830292)
    This has been waited for sooooooo long.

    But how long before this becomes the next TF2? Hopefully, Valve is serious this time and manages to make a great game (like what TF2 could have been). Too bad we'll have to wait until E3 before they break this silence.
    • The CNN article said TF2 news would be made available closer or after the release date of Half-Life 2. Wouldn't it be awesome if TF2 was available right as HL2 was released? It'd be absolutely to have this game, and not be able to play your favorite mod on it. Speaking of mods...anyone know if a new version of Counter Strike will be released around the time of HL2? I imagine they'll have some form of CS (their most popular mod) available for it, whether it be in alpha/beta form, or (maybe I'm pushing it
      • No it wouldn't as that would be a horrible marketing strategy to release two games that are going to be very popular at the same time, from the same company!

        CS seems to be slowly dying from it's own problems and I don't think anybody knows when that thing will show itself again (because hopefully valve is focusing on HL2 and not a 3yr old MOD).

    • Re:Nice (Score:4, Funny)

      by buffer-overflowed ( 588867 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @10:44AM (#5834541) Journal
      When games are delayed and/or waited for this long, I always think of one game....

      Daikatana.

      Yes, I said it. I appologize for my vulgarity.
    • I have a copy here of PC Gameplay (the Belgium magazine featuring HL2). It has a long interview with Gabe Newell, and he states that TF2 was delayed because it uses the HL2 engine which they did not want to reveal before HL2 itself was revealed.

      As for a date, all he says is "coming soon". I'm sure that makes you feel better ;-)

  • What? (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 )

    "fast-paced action and an intelligent, intense story. "

    Fast-paced--yes.
    Intelligent--no.

    Give me a break--half-life was many things, but smart wasn't one of them.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @04:15AM (#5832458) Homepage Journal
      The story in itself was just as stupid as the story of Doom: "There's a portal to some hellish place, and now monsters are swarming around you. You have a crowbar. Can you save the world?"

      That's actually quite unimportant for an action game. I think what people perceive as "intelligent" in the story of Half-Life is the way it's told. It makes you wonder what is happening, what happens next, who are those people and why do they want to kill you?

      Doom and Unreal were just card games with shooting in them: find the key card, find the door, shoot some monsters. I think the story Doom was based on was about the same as Half-Life, but it never made me curious of what was happening. That's the difference of intelligence levels in the "stories". Half-Life had a more intelligent way to tell you what was going on, and that's all you can expect from a story in a game. It's not high literature.

      After all, you don't expect an FPS to be The Brothers Karamasov or Orlando, do you?

      • There's what we have learned to expect, and there is what could be. Either way, the game wasn't intelligent--and i *do* expect that as games evolve the gameplay should evolve and become more engaging with it. The industry's fascination with rendering and effects has unnecessarily hampered efforts to actually improve game play--and I haven't seen nearly as much improvement in FPS gameplay as we should have over the last 6-7 years.

        I shouldn't be fondly remembering MARATHON; I should be captivated by what has
    • intelligent - yes.

      If I can believe the 3 reviews I've read, the game seems to be really intelligent, not in the story, but the way everything (everyone) around you reacts to you.
    • Alright, I'll bite, as in I disagree. Back in the day, Half-life had an amazing and intelligent story line, especially when compared to most games. I mean, the whole problem was more or less caused by yourself (Freeman) and his nutty scientist co-workers meddling with stuff they didn't understand and Freeman shoving in that unusual material that he was testing in too far. For computer games, the story was intelligent. Or are you comparing it with Shakespeare, Twain and other authors of note? But, I digress.

  • Half-Life 2? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nathan Ramella ( 629875 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @07:11PM (#5830377) Homepage
    Merely a means to an end: Counterstrike 2! Lets hope they do some rigid security enhancements to limit cheating.

  • Ending (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday April 28, 2003 @07:37PM (#5830521) Homepage
    All I'll say is that I sure hope that Half-Life 2 has a better ending that the origional. Half-Life was one of the best games I've ever played, but it had one of the worst endings I've ever seen.
    • I forget, how did it end?
      • Gordon Freeman is on a Black Mesa Tram going nowhere, and the G-Man offers him a job. If Gordon takes it, credits roll. If he doesn't, he gets teleported into the middle of a pack of Xen-ites, with no weapons.
  • there seems to be nothing available out there...
    what sort of engine will hl2 use? quake3? castlewolfenstein? doom3? ut2k?
    when will counterstrike 2 follow?
    • half life 2 uses an in house engine. counterstrike 2 *cough* condition zero *cough* will be out in august
    • From the site:
      The new engine is called the Source Engine.
    • I think valve wrote a new engine for the game. That would at least partially explain what took them so long. Of course they did mod Q2 engine the first time... Bah, now I'll have to buy a Radeon 9700 or something.
    • Castle Wolfenstein uses the Quake 3 engine! (Which is old now anyway)
      The UT2k3 engine usually is a preface to cluttered levels with lots of snags. This can lead to all sorts of graphical courruption with lower end cards.
      Doom 3 isn't out yet, so I doubt that they'd license thier engine alredy.
      By process of elimination, they'll most likely make thier own engine....or you could just read that comment above....

  • Name of the game... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dbirchall ( 191839 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @08:19PM (#5830728) Journal
    Half-Life 2 == Whole Life, but "Life" was already taken by a cellular automata game, and "Whole Life" sounded too insurance-oriented.

  • Just out of curiousity... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is this section hidden from the majority of users? This is the first time I've seen the "games" section (in all of its purple and black glory), and the 3 previous articles have < 10 comments on them. What gives?
    • There are a number of sections like this (e.g. Apple, Developpers, Science) some or all of which which one must turn on in one's user preferences in order to see. The different colour schemes are the (relatively) new way of showing these "sections" of slashdot.

  • Screens from article (Score:5, Informative)

    by br0ck ( 237309 ) * on Tuesday April 29, 2003 @12:31AM (#5831950)
    For those that haven't seen them, 12 full size pics here [gamer.nl] and 30 more here [geeknewz.com].
  • We have detected that you do not have a recent version of Flash.
    To view this site you must have Flash 5 or newer.

    To download the latest version of Flash, click here

    oh, that's that sketch knackered then
  • With "Half-Life 2", Valve will once again offer the source code to modders.

    So when will they let the guys from icculus.org re-write the code for Linux? I know Valve has been asked but they seem to ignore the requests...maybe they won't be as rude with HL2?
  • Bring on the multi-player! Nothing more satisfying than hearing the crunch of your crowbar thudding off the skull of some poor sap who missed you at close range with a rocket launcher. Woo, and thanks /. for the games section!

  • For the IQ lacking out there. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    HL2 is NOT based on anyother engine.

    valve started work on TF2, which was planned to be based on the HL engine. They then started the project and then foundout that the HL engine had too many limitations. They then started work on a fresh new engine. But, alas, along came Battlefield1942, which is VERY VERY similar to what valve had planned TF2 to be (except TF2 wouldnt be set in WW2) so i understand they pushed aside the idea of TF2 and started on HL2.

    as for the cheating problem, they better have written
  • ... going to be the next Sin?

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