Homey_V

Now, everyone seems to love HL2 and think its the best game ever... Well not everyone, but alot of people do. And yes it is fun at times, but overall it dissappointed me. Now, remember all the things they said that would be in it at E3? The super Smart AI and whatnot? Remember how all the reviews gave it a flawless score? Well watch this video and see how 'flawless' the game actually is.

Half-Life 2 Video

Bear in mind, that I did not make this video, but I Have tried everything they did in the video and it all worked exactly the same for me...

Anyways, Enjoy. If for nothing else but the laughs.

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You did what with a duck?

Ace_O_Spades

I'm really sick of people hating on HL2

So It's not flawless... It's LESS flawed and more awesome than over 99% of the rest of the market

I don't even know why I open these threads anymore

[edit]

less flawed

leave me alone, its early

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Feh.

Homey_V

And Im really sick of people blindly stating how superior it is to every other game in the world. Hence the thread. Im not trying to make everyone hate the game. I just want people to be informed of everything so they can make an educated decision on the game.

Fine, you love the game. Good for you. I didnt like it. It was fun at times, but it was far from perfect and thus I posted this to voice my opinion. Last I checked, thats what a message board was for. Thanks for your intelligent response.

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You did what with a duck?

Carno

Hating on it? He's pointing out flaws when people said the game was flawless.

More power to him.

Ace_O_Spades

whatever dude

take my response as a personal attack if you want.

I'm not "blindly stating how superior it is"

I've played virtually every major FPS that has come out in the last few years, and I can state, as well as the vast majority of the gaming press and gamers, that HL2 is superior.... I don't call that making a blind statement.

How about we settle this over a nice cup of personal opinion? k?



Peace?

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Feh.

Homey_V

I too have played almost every major FPS that has come out in the past few year and I dont think that HL2 is superior. The gaming press is well known to be wrong (Black and White anyone?) And not all Gamers harbour well educated opinions (*Cough* Counterstrike Community *cough*), not anyone on this board mind you, but a large majority of people.

Either way, A nice cup of Personal opinion sounds like a rather good idea rather than a pointless argument. Here's to that.

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You did what with a duck?

Ace_O_Spades

Hahaha, very true... the very reason I loathe and love CS: Source at the same time...

Cheers

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Feh.

Rdr4evr

It's all a matter of opinion, who cares what the reviewers say.

Although I can't judge HL2 because I am the only person on this planet that hasn't played it yet because my computer lacks horsepower, but I can say that HL1 is probably my favirote game of all time, and it will be hard to surpass, even with HL2.

That said.....can I state my hatred for Halo in this thread Homey_V?

Homey_V

Oh hell yes! I hate that game with the passion of a thousand burning suns...

Either way, Love HL2, or hate it, the video itself is just damned funny.

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You did what with a duck?

shadowalker

I have not played the game eather, although it is sitting on my desk unopened for a week now, after watching that video and others like it, i'm going to take it back tonight and get my money back. I love the last part of the clip, Hard mode, picking up the can of workout shake powder and blocking/sneaking up on the guy with the gun emplacement. 7 maybe 8 out of 10, but that game is no 10 out of 10 like all the reviews!

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Coppertop

edit - just watched the video

sinjien

thanks guys!!!?!?!! that video single-handedly crushed all hopes i had that HL2 was the "FPS to rule all FPS games". The AI isnt bad...its piss poor!! Theres better AI in Call of Duty...and this game is supposed to be the best ever? Yeah right. That being said, thank you for bringing this ignorant lost soul into the light of truth (damn its bright here).
Oh, and one last thing, "Long live Master Chief"!!

Homey_V

Dont overlook the good parts of the game, what few it had.
It did create a good atmosphere at some parts, and the characters were very life-like. I just dont see it as perfect, as shown in said video

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You did what with a duck?

Coppertop

Well, the pistol thing is a bug. Bugs happen. In all games. The AI isn't the greatest out there sometimes though. I hadn't tried the blocking the door deal. But is this a bad thing per se? I mean, it's not as if in the demo they guaranteed enemies wouldn't be able to unblock doors (even though that was an awful lot of shit in front of it), I take it as more of demonstration of the physics engine. Oh well.

I wouldn't say the game is flawless, as that is asinine. But it is greater than any other FPS I've played recently. Doom 3 and FarCry are the only others that have stood out, really.

Hanabal

dont you be dissing black and white. thats one of my favourite games.
and over the years, the only game that in my opinion is completely different to the reviews is halo 2.

and why do people compare the two games, they are different on different machines. nothing relates them. and of course master chief will win in a fight, hes a super soldier, gordon is a physist. but halo is still the inferios game in my opinoin

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Ace_O_Spades

You can say this from watching a short video outlining a few flaws, without even playing the game, and automatically giving it a 7 or 8 out of 10?

mmkay

also... Links to other vids?

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Feh.

shadowalker

Yes i can give it a 7 or 8, a "few flaws" as large as these are in this game is more then enought to justify a lower score, Maybe in a few months when thay are patched and fixed i may pick it up again. and if you want videos just google search them, i dont download and keep everything i view on the web.

this game was another case of overhype by the developers and gameing communty, it has not lived up to all the promises. And that is my opinion.

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I'll make ya famous!

Ace_O_Spades

Hmm, i did a quick google search for "Half Life 2 Flaws video" and all I could find in the first few pages was the one that was posted....

I'll keep searching though

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Feh.

Fate

The game royally pissed me off. It also ruined me with it's spectacular physics engine, no other fps is going to be able to live up to that, and it's superb graphics. What pissed me off the most was the ending. That made me felt more cheated then when I found out my girl was blowing other men. I was crushed... I guess I get emotional when it comes to epic games like Half-Life. I just don't see how they could have screwed HL2 up so much based off of HL. Don't get me wrong, the game is worth buying, it was hardly satisfying at all. Only real thing I loved was the vehicles and the ant lions. The rest was too shallow and unsatisfactory.

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Coppertop

Says the person who hasn't played the game? Yeah, I give that opinion lots of weight.

blitz.fenix

My major flaw with HL2 is how addictive it is

Homey_V

True, bugs do happen in games, but the amount that existed in HL2 at launch were unexcusable for a game that had been in development for 4+ years. Especially when it was being put out by a company like Valve. And a bug as major as that? Should have been caught well before the release date. And the AI not being that great? More like non-existant... I encountered more instances of AI stupidity than was shown in the video than I care to remember... In excusable.

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You did what with a duck?

blitz.fenix

True, but how long would they have delayed the game? It was already over 1 year late, and games have been released with far worse bugs than w/e it is your complaining about. I've noticed hardly any bugs at all through my playthroughs. Just seems that some people want to pick out the most insignificant things and blow them out of proportion. In the end HL2 is a finished product that was ready to sell when they released it.

Coppertop

I didn't find any bugs. I'll admit I don't play the game to find bugs or break the game like some people I know (*cough FngKestrel cough*). I found the experience totally satisfying. But then again, I didn't follow the hype (I learned that lesson from the Phantom Menace). I bought it via Steam, plyed the shit out of it, and loved very bit of it. That's my standard for gaming excellence. I enjoyed it thoroughly, therefore it's good for me.

fckm

I just finished FL2 yesterday. I've been playing it off and on for the past ever since it came out. I haven't been playing non-stop like some people, so maybe I wasn't that immersed with the game. But, I didn't feel pissed off or anything by the ending, I enjoyed it.
With regards to the bugs in the game, I never noticed them. The only problem that I had was texture corruption which was fixed by the newest Catalyst 4.12 drivers. I bought HL2 on steam, preloaded, decoded, and never had a single problem. All in all, I've been hugely satisfied.
Regarding the video:
1) hitboxes. There are some hitbox issues. This is apparently very noticable in CSS. However, I have not noticed it personally.
2) Door Blocking. I have blocked doors. The guards couldn't get in. I don't know what the problem with the video was.
3)AI. The AI isn't on the same level as FarCry. But I've never had a problem with it. When I shoot people, they shoot back.
4) Blocking with barrels. Whenever I use a barrel to block. I've always been shot at. Always. Always. Always. If I use something wooden or small, I get hit.

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FngKestrel

Just got done watching the video. I was hesitant because I haven't finished the game yet, but wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Anyhow, I'm vastly amused by this. Sure many magazines call it flawless, they get caught up in the hype. When everyone else is calling a game the most awesome thing ever, it doesn't pay to be the one magazine that turns their nose at it. In fact, most magazines are just taking the same marketing material submitted to them and adding their own captions. Take any two ZDNet magazines that cover similar material and read the reviews and previews. You'll probably find the same pictures and copy in each. But that's what marketing's supposed to do. They're supposed to hype up their product. They're bullshit artists. More so than politicians.

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.

Hit boxes. Probably a tradeoff of having a detection area that was accurate with with a hitbox that wasn't so detailed as to chug the machine that the game was running on. Don't know, I don't have access to the 3ds files.

Door blocking. I didn't see what the big deal was. It looked like he didn't successfully block the door in his second skirmish.

AI. Now this is a tricky thing. As AI gets closer and closer to approximating real behavior, there's this thing to contend with called the Uncanny Valley. Basically, human behavior is very attuned to human movement and appearance, so much so that we gravitate towards the inaccuracies. Would it be more forgiveable if it wasn't a human character, but jerky looking robot? And since we focus on the negatives, what about the positives that don't register in our mind because they are accurate. What about the times that the AI didn't get stuck? AI has a hard road ahead of them because while the AI can get ever more complex, and the scripting can be more in depth to create AI type behavior, the human mind is, at the moment, infinite in its ability to outthink the designer and the AI coder.

Blocking with a pill bottle. That was comedy. How about we just say that Combine troopers are more accurate than stormtroopers and G.I. Joe combined?

Flawless, of course not, for reasons stated above. But attacking what someone said at E3? That's like asking a used car salesman about the condition of a car. 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.

The final benchmark is the end user.

xerraire1

Kestrel; I found that a great and unbiased decision , but it was from your personal viewport. Personally I agree with all of the points except for the flawless part;

Flawless means it can be played throughout without many flaws (2 or 3 is understandable as long as they don't affect combat and play in general?) and is perfect, everything is in balance. I found that.

If you go out searching for flaws, good on you, your slandering the name, but on the good side you are tellling valve. None the less, nothing you will do will change it.

I found it flawless, and I thought it was the best game, just not the best plot.

FngKestrel

I'm definitely not trying to slander the game itself. I have more issue with the video than with the game.

The game has definitely raised the bar significantly for future titles.

Rlyss

I've spent much of the day wondering why headcrabs are covered in blood. They come out of Gonarch (a gonarch?) and are translucent, right? No blood on them. Once they attach to a person and the zombification commences, I guess the blood comes from that host. Now. zombies are the undead, right? Once we kill a zombie with fire, or with a crowbar or a gun or a circular sawblade, it's dead and the headcrab seems to die with it, or at least not unattach itself. So I wonder why every headcrab is covered in blood, since the ones that would get blood on them (ones that have attached themselves) seem to stay attached to their hosts. The only theory I can come up with is that the blood comes from when they attack a person but do not attach themselves, they just take some bites. My sister says it's just mucous seeping from their mouths in their bellies. (It can't be their own blood since their blood is yellow.)

So that's about the only flaw I've felt the need to mention, and it doesn't even seem like a flaw.

About the video, what's the problem with the pistol? (Where the player is in the duct and the Combine soldiers appear in the gap in the fence.) Is it because the soldiers just stand in the same spot over and over again waiting to be shot? Is that the 'pistol bug'?

MooseMan3000

My main complaint with everything is that everybody seems to be expecting too much out of the game. I would give it a 10/10, but not because it's perfect. It is, however, as close to perfect as it could have been given the enormous pressure and numerous problems with development the team had.

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.

And that's making an engine based primarily on other engines out there, with a few graphical upgrades, and maybe a minor physics change.

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.

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.

The aim of the AI is, as the name implies for those of you capable of rational thought, to make artificial INTELLIGENCE. Sure, you could go through every single map and find every possible contingency and program that in. Sure, I could make it so the soldiers look right at you when you're in that dumpster looking through that fence. But that wouldn't be intelligent. Remember in Wolf3D when you fired a single shot every soldier in the level heard that shot and immediately came running to YOU? Not to the sound, but they knew EXACTLY where you were. Sure, we could do that for new games. But that's not what we're trying to do.


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.

cyrnel

It isn't blood, it's hair mousse. Gertrude's gotta look good to get a hubby. The rest of them are just trend followers.

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.

The swamp boat is a blast. Add a road-course and a couple Combine competitors and we have the next NeedForSpeed.

I was a bit disappointed by the combat repetition and finishing in two nights, especially being a rusty gamer.

The alien interior sequences were fairly awesome.

There are flaws but all in all, I'd buy again.

Homey_V

Alright, I'll bite and post a reply at the risk of everyone swarming over me like a wave of hungry ants
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I totally agree there. Steam is just a giant PITA.

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.

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You did what with a duck?

MooseMan3000

Well, I'm not going to take the time to write a very long response, but just a few points I'll mention.

Farcry AI. I don't think it's better. They're better at killing you, but they don't react more intelligently. You can make a game hard without having good AI. This is, of course, purely a subjective analysis, but I don't think it was that good. I liked the game a lot, so I'm not complaining, just noting. Same goes for the marines in Half-Life. They may be better at killing you than the enemies in Half-Life 2, but they're not smarter.


As far as the game companies you mentioned, I totally agree with you. There are many very good game development companies. I'm just of the opinion that there are many more that are more interested in making a dollar than a good game. id, no doubt, is a very good company, and I very much enjoy their games. No argument here.

As far as Doom3 graphics setting the bar... I disagree. Again, this is entirely personal, but I believe that Doom3 looks good, but it's not as flexible as Half-Life 2. No, I can't prove it, but that's what I feel whenever I play the two games. Doom3 looks nice, no doubt, but it's essentially a very specific implementation of very specific effects. Feel free to disagree with me, but that's the way I see it.

STEAM. Of course they make more money on a copy of Half-Life 2 bought via STEAM than one bought at retail. That's part of the aim. The other part of the aim, however, is to take out the middle-man in delivering the game to consumers. Ultimately, distribution just causes problems, and if it can be done by the development company itself, I fully support it. How many games do we see that are pushed out too fast and are buggy almost to the point of being unplayable? I would argue that most of the time it's because a publisher is breathing down the development company's neck to get the product out there. How many people want to put out a game that doesn't work?

And this brings me to my main point, and the reason I say Half-Life 2 is revolutionary. They're taking a new approach to everything. They want a world that is entirely interactive. Until this point, we've seen a few walls that can be blown up, and a few chairs than can be kicked around. Half-Life 2 goes a long way beyond that. The gameplay had to be rethought entirely to accomodate the freedom of movement inherent in this design. The AI isn't perfect, but it's not going to be. It's essentially built from the ground up to react dynamically, not to a specific set of conditions (the main reason I think the AI is better than Farcry). Of course this isn't entirely true, but again, I'm talking goals here.

Everything about this game is designed so as to push development forward. I don't think this is the best game ever. I think the design, plot, and gameplay of the original Half-Life are all better than Half-Life 2. There are lots of games that are more fun than Half-Life 2, but there aren't any that are as innovative. I totally agree with you that there are issues, and some of them interfere with the gameplay. There are issues. But I think this game does more expand the field of FPS and gaming in general than any other game since, perhaps, Half-Life.

So my response actually was long. Sue me.

FngKestrel

Not really looking to post a long response, but I'll clarify the gun bug for people.

If you fire the pistol with your primary fire button, press and hold secondary fire while continuing the hold down the primary fire button, wait several seconds, release the secondary fire button only, then the gun will unload all of its ammo in a burst. That's the bug. As for the AI walking stupidly into the path of the user when it "sees" all of its teammates dead, well, I've seen human players do that too.

Jakes

and the pistol flaw was fixed in the latest patch

Homey_V

I'll try to keep this short too

What Im seeing here is that it largely comes down to personal opinion and expectations of the game. Farcry's AI in, my mind, reacts more intelligently to situations (Definately better at killing you ). I dunno, Personal opinion I suppose, but I rarely saw HL2's AI reacting intelligently, let alone to kill me. Again, personal opinion. I totally agree with you that there are far more companies out there to make money rather than games, but thats just how the industry works as far as I can tell. Its a shame really. I can see you disagreeing with me in saying that Doom 3 sets the bar graphically. The game itself was designed to show off the strong points of the engine, Lighting and shadows and Bump-mapping, and it did that very well in my mind. Once we see some other games out there (Quake 4) that really show off the power of the Doom 3 Engine, Im sure your mind will change. To me HL2's engine just looks dated. Bad lighting, low polygon models and levels, and just plain ugly textures. At a glance it looked good, close up I thought I was playing HL1 at times. Again personal opinion. I wont get into a techincal comparison of the two engines because I dont know enough of the two to argue it properly or effectively. As for STEAM, well to me, thats just Valve's way of attempting to completely control what people do to the game and a big "up yours" to the community. If it were implemented differently, my opinion would change, but until then, it just seems like a giant money grab by valve, not designed to benefit the customer. I would have to totally disagree that HL2 pushed the bar more than anything since the first HL, but again personal opinion. To me it just seems like Valve resting on their laurels. I didnt think that my expectations were too high for the game, I tried to curb them specifically so I wouldnt be dissappointed, but apparently I failed to do so adequately. I had fun playing the game, but only sporadically, and at times I just plain hated it. Anyways, I should cut this off now and return to my studies.

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You did what with a duck?

MooseMan3000

You mean you "couldn't" resist? Good work there, chief. Besides, this isn't an argument. I leave those to Tilted Politics... and Fark.

If your comment on being able to view porn was serious, take a look at our names. We both sport spiffy avatars, which come long after luscious titties. So good work there, too. If it was in jest... I salute you and your lightning wit, he who posted a second reply a mere minute after his first, rather than editing said first post. Excellent work there, dweeb.


Heh.


And Homey_V. I'll concede that Doom3's engine did the things you mentioned very well, but that's what I was talking about when I said it did specific things very well. I'll wait till it's used a few more times to pass my final judgement on it, but currently I'm of the opinion that HL2 does more for advancing graphics. I could be wrong, it just seems that way to me.

Would you mind explaining your view on STEAM a little more? I'm not sure I quite understand why it would be considered an "up yours to the community." As I see it, it's designed to get the product to the community faster and easier, and it's instead an "up yours" to the publishers. But I'm curious what exactly you mean by that... care to elaborate?

And one last point... you say you don't think HL2 pushed the bar, but I'm not sure I'm quite getting my point across. Graphically, gameplay-wise, story, AI... I don't think they're outstanding. I think they're all very competent, and about what I would expect from a new game... close to Doom3 and Farcry, or Halo2, with personal preference deciding which one takes the lead. My main point, however, was the way Valve went about it. It looks to me like HL2 is designed with pushing games further in mind. Rather than pushing current technology to the extreme, which is what Doom3 looks like to me, it is a sincere attempt to develop new ideas, new concepts in gaming. Again, I don't mean to sound like HL2 is the end-all, most fantastic game I've ever seen; it's not. But I sincerely admire the things it's trying to do, and sometimes (in my opinion), beginning to actually do. See previous posts for what I'm talking about. Heh.

Jakes

you need to get out of this forum a little more cause that was clearly a joke about the porn just to maybe get a laugh out of some of you and homey_v 1,600 word post means he is trying to get his point across to you and you are trying to get your point across to him with fewer word that he typed but still too many to read when your drunk means your arguing on the internet and thats a long run on sentence.

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I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the best they're going to feel all day.
Dean Martin

I like my jeep to be like my girl, topless and dirty.
me i guess

Homey_V

Well, I doubt that very much, from the little I do know of the Source Engine, it still uses pre-calculated lighting (Direct X 7), At most does three passes per texture and rarely uses Bump Mapping. In DIrect X 9.0 Mode in the game, the only difference between 9 and 8 is the water. To put it nicely, HL2 is the last engine of the current graphics Generation whereas Doom 3 is the first engine of the next generation. Again, like I said before, I dont know enough of the technical details to get into a technical debate, but Im fairly certain Doom 3 is more advanced.

My problem with Steam is thus, and not short either. As a method of content delivery, I would have no complaints, but even though I bought the RETAIL copy of the game, I was forced to first, install, then connect, then unlock and then download then I could play the game. A hassle, but it worked. However, I discovered to my horror, with all these forms of protection, the cd still had to be in the drive to play . That didnt seem right. But oh well. Then, I had to validate my cd key with Valve, alright. Now all these individually, are fine, but when combined just tell me that Valve does not trust the gaming community to buy their game. Companies worry about Piracy, thats fine, but to go so far as to require someone to go through all those hoops just to play a game is fine. On top of all that, once you have the game installed, you still need Steam running to play. Why? I paid for it, I validated my CD-key, why do I need to run this in the background? I dont have a huge chunk of memory and I would like to free up as much as possible, but I cant because STEAM is always there and sucking like a baby at momma's teat. As a method of bypassing the publisher, fine, thats cool, I cant blame Valve for wanting to cut out the middle man. But to require STEAM to be open to run the game, even though its classified as their content delivery system is ridiculous. Why, if Valve trusts the community so much, are there so many restrictions on how we play the game that we purchased? It just boggles my mind. Numerous times I have been unable to play because the latest STEAM patch broke my games. I didnt want those patches, why did I have to install them? If HL2 could be played without STEAM, and Steam only used when it was turned on to check for patches, I would have no issues. Then It would be fine in my eyes and I would cheer valve on for cutting out the middle man, but as it stands, its just over-bearing, and ineffective copyright protection that could have been done without. I dont want to turn this into an Anti-Steam thread, because one of those exists already. I havent had alot of problems with STEAM, and my dislike of it isnt even because of those problems. Its the idea behind the implementation that bothers me.

Again, a difference in opinion on how HL2 pushed or didnt push the bar in Gaming. I didnt feel that it tried to innovate very much, you did. I dont feel it succeeded graphically much, you did. I didnt feel that it was an attempt to develop new ideas in gaming, you did. There isnt much in the world that can change our opinions on this so I'll say here's to yours and here's to mine and I'll leave it at that.

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You did what with a duck?

Coppertop

Maybe requiring the CD in the drive is Valve's punishment to you for giving some of your (their?) money to Vivendi (retail copy)?