Alright, I'll bite and post a reply at the risk of everyone swarming over me like a wave of hungry ants
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First and foremost: they made their own engine. MAKING a game engine, not RENTING one that's already out there generally takes about 3 years on its own. JUST the engine. (Why do you think Unreal games are so light on plot and story? Because they make their own engies... duh) Add a fairly large single player campaign, trying to make it distinct, unique, and above all avoid repetition, and you're talking at least 4 years. Now add an internet scandal where your source code, along with a playable version of a pre-alpha game are released. Many companies would give up there and push for release before things get even more fucked up. No, Valve kept at it. Then add the lawsuit Vivendi brought against Valve for Steam. In all reality, that could have delayed the shipping date indefinitely. We may NEVER have seen Half-Life 2 after that lawsuit. But no, it came.
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Um so? Carmack made the Doom 3 engine in less time and it was technically superior, took less time, and had fewer bugs. id also made a distinct and original single player campaign and development time was far less than that of HL2. Now, You can add the source code leak and say thats why it took longer etc.. Well, I played the source code leak and it was nowhere near being done at the end, so really, if they had released when they first said they would, then we would have gotten an even buggier hunk of code. I'll give Valve credit for keeping at it, through all the crap they've had in the past year, but that still leaves almost 3 years of uninterruptible development time.
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Next point. EVERY game ships with bugs. Every one of them. I don't care what anyone says. It could be something minor like a bad texture, or something as major as deleting the contents of your hard drive upon uninstall. Having a 4 year dev cycle doesn't ensure that every bug will get squashed. The priority of the bug is up to the producer, who, in the interest of time and resources, may have to let things be Known Shipped. Most producer's would love to ship a flawless product, but in the real world, you pick and choose what to fix. Gun bug, not a big deal, and well, pretty damn amusing. And quite honestly, compared to the number of one-hit weapons in the game, pretty inconsequential. I would have KSed it too if I were in that position.
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Very true, every game does ship with bugs, Im not railing on them for shipping with bugs. My complaint against valve is that some of the bugs they did ship were Major. The Hit boxes? Come on. Thats unexcusable in a game these days. I dont care how difficult it would have been to fix it, they could have done, it. To me it just speaks of a rushed product. Im pretty sure the Gun bug is just trying to show how stupid the AI is, which it did.
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Past E3's have promised the world. Every time. And do they deliver? Rarely. E3 is where people wheel and deal and wine and dine. You tell people everything they want to hear so that you can close the deal. That's it. Anyone who takes more from that is asking for disappointment.
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Very true that Past E3's have failed to deliver. However, I didnt think they had that much to deliver on, since everything they promised had to do with Gameplay. Blockable door, intelligent AI etc. Now, We can all cop out and say that yes, E3 is a giant cock fest where everyone says "Look how big mine is" And none of it matters, but alot of games are starting to deliver on promises they make at E3, Farcry, Doom 3 and more. So why is it excusable for Valve to be the exception to the rule? I dunno, maybe Im just being a more demanding consumer, but when someone says "This is going to be part of the game", repeatedly, I expect that.
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As for the AI, my argument stands. It is as good or better than any other AI out there. There are problems with it. Of COURSE there are problems with it. Anyone who has tried to do anything regarding AI will know how extroardinarily diffucult it is. Even making waypoints for a bot is time consuming and taxing, trying to work out all the flaws and get it going smoothly. Now try making that bot. Now try making, instead of a bot, a real-time, dynamic AI that reacts to every situation you throw at it. Good fucking luck, chump.
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Farcry's AI makes HL2's look like a drunk retarded pre-school child. End of story. Half-life 2's AI is non existant. Its stupid, mostly scripted and not even comparable to the Marines in the first HL. Seriously, I tried playing through the first Half-Life and was totally owned by the Marines and assasin chicks. Now it is unfair of me to compare a NEW game to one that is 4+ years old, but come on, dont you think they could have even borrowed the code from there? It doesnt even seem like they tried. Really, I would have preferred they made AI like in Wolfenstein 3d, then maybe the game would have been a challenge.
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This engine, however, is different. The aim was to take physics and program it in. Not "ragdoll physics" or "Explosion physics" or some other game specific type of physics that all other engines claim they do so well. PHYSICS. ALL OF IT. Whether they succeeded in that aim is a matter of debate, but they're an awful lot closer than any other game out there right now.
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That point is Moot since they used the same physics engine that the Unreal Engines used, they just applied it to more objects. To suggest that this took them longer to do is just silly. Doom 3 uses a proprietary Physics engine, so that game should have taken longer to program right? Whoops, no it didnt.
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Mandatory Steam is a PITA, ridiculous for a store-bought copy. First play took forever on both cable and DSL. I finally went to bed and played the next night. My nephews are still on modem so no way they'll stand for it. Would have made my Christmas shopping easier.
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I totally agree there. Steam is just a giant PITA.
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People that complain about this game aren't looking at the big picture. This game IS revolutionary. It IS very good in most aspects that they were trying to acheive. Of course there are problems, but that's why we keep making games. I certainly hope Valve keeps with their idea of making newer better games, because when without them pushing the limits, who else would? (Cough... LucasArts, EA, COUGH). Most companies are out there to make money. Valve is out there to make games. I applaud them.
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I have played every other major shooter to hit the shelves this year and I dont see this game as revolutionary. It uses standard gameplay (Sub-standard at points) standard weapons with one addition (Which was improperly implemented in my mind), standard graphics (Come on, Doom 3 set and raised the bar with this one), and substandard AI, and delivery systems. How is that revolutionary again?
I really doubt that companies continue to make games because of the problems in the last one they made. I would go so far as to say that companies make games because thats what their development teams were hired to do for, but thats just me picking at semantics for fun
As for only Valve pushing the limits? Pay attention to the rest of the gaming world here. Crytek pushed a helluva lotta limits with Farcry. id has always and will continue to push the bar graphically and no one has even come close to it yet. Croteam pushed the limits twice already with both Serious sams, the list could go on and on. And as for your last sentence? Valve is out there to make money more than any other game company I can see. They make more off of a copy of HL2 bought of steam than any other company. Isnt it odd that they force STEAM down your throat? Oh wait, no its not, its so people buy stuff from it and Valve can rake in the cash.
Now, I want to clarify that I dont despise the game or hate it. I am just sick of everyone excusing a mediocre game's faults and calling it excellent. Now, this is all largely personal opinion, but I've seen games with worse faults that these released and been slammed by the press, the community, and every other slamming agency in the world. I enjoyed the game at parts, but I dont think its revolutionary or anywhere near a ten. I would give it a 6.5 for all the problems and other things that have come up. Everyone else in the world seems to feel that this game is great and I dont know why, none of my friends enjoyed it, and alot of them purposely avoided the hype. I avoided most of it too, but I was still dissappointed by it. I wont praise Valve for crapping on the toilet and I wont praise them for a sub-standard game either. They've put out better than this before, so is it wrong of me to expect the same excellence from them? I dont think so.