Others say...

"buyer beware"
All the reviews bitching and moaning about Steam? They're spot-on. Steam simply ruined this game for me. It was HOURS from the time I unwrapped the box to the time when I could actually PLAY it. And the trouble never stopped. For weeks I stubbornly kept playing, in spite of system freezes, interminable delays between maps, and frustration with one of the damn dune buggies, which was terribly difficult to drive because the graphics kept jumping and stuttering (in spite of my pretty decent system, well above minimum requirements). And all this for the single-player game?!?!

I would say that I was playing the game maybe 50% of the time I spent trying to play it. The other 50% was spent waiting for a map to load, waiting for Steam to authenticate me, and rebooting my damn PC every damn time the game brought it to a screeching, frozen halt.

And then one day, I had an epiphany. The game play was pretty good. The puzzles were pretty good. I really liked that gravity gun. But it just wasn't worth the hassle. And it certainly wasn't worth relinquishing control of my system to that invasive Steam app. So I stopped playing. I uninstalled it. And I never looked back. I've not even been tempted this year to reinstall it and see if maybe some of the early bugs have been worked out.

I'd give the game away or sell it, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone with whom I'm on speaking terms -- or even an unwitting stranger. And I will NEVER, EVER buy another game that uses Steam or its ilk. I was shocked when I installed the game to see what kind of control I had to hand over to Steam in order to run the single-player game. I crossed my fingers, ignored my instincts, and let it run anyway. Dumb, dumb, dumb. What a terrible precedent to set in the PC software world. I won't succumb again.

"REGISTRATION NIGHTMARE"
I spent hours,...hours trying to acivate this game, shutting of software, virus control, firewalls deleting programs, all to no avail. could not activate the game. What a drag, I keep reading that the game is great, but this corporate, headless, inconsiderate, inhuman, non responsive entity wont let me play the game. so the game is probably good if you could activate, but good luck if you buy a used game. Beware if you buy a used game .The first owners have probably pirated the game and you are going to be stuck with a inoperable piece of software. Good luck!


"Bug ridden engine, uncreative level design"
It's been a few years since I played this "masterpiece" but I remember it well.

Half Life 2 is a sci-fi/first person shooter that follows the adventures of Gordon Freeman. And by adventures I mean, shooting stuff and being denied information about what's going on by everyone. Of course you can infer a vague aliens took over the planet plot in the first 2 minutes, and the inference is about all you'll ever know. Cliche ridden sci-fi ambience aside, the real problem with Half Life 2 isn't the monsters in game but the monsters in the programming.

You see, when it came out there was a bug that seemed to randomly hit people. The bug caused stuttering with sound and hitches in gameplay, even on high end machines. The bug STILL exists and shows up in Source licensed games. I can only be confounded at how a development studio which as much money as they have can't make a stable game. id can do it. Crytek can do it and beat the pants off everyone else's technology. What's up with Valve? Aside from the infamous stutter bug, there are the load times that don't make any sense. Load times that are as if you're defragging your entire HD each time, it takes so long. How do you play a game under such maddening intermissions taking you out of the action? This is a problem that also has NOT been fixed despite Valve's ability to update their game. Add in the sloppy jalopy that is Steam, a piece of software you are forced to run to play their games, and I am utterly fed up with Valve's software practices. They just aren't up to par.

The last point I would like to bring up is the level design of HL2 was a joke. It was linear. As in, well a straight line of gameplay. It's almost shocking, like, am I playing Star Fox? Am I playing a 2D scrolling shooter for the NES? Why on Earth would they take the ability to make open 3D designs, and make every level a linear walk to point A,B,C... ugh, some of the worst shooter levels I've seen, although the office areas of F.E.A.R. trump it I guess. The thing is, Far Cry came out before Half Life 2, and you know what? It was wonderfully open ended. Sure you had to complete the objectives, but you weren't in a little of tube of gameplay with no other choices. Valve seemed to have gone backwards gameplay-wise, like another bigshot that crashed, id with Doom 3, they could not capitalize on the things that make gameplay great and so the game was just a hollow tribute to lots of money spent on art and self worship.

That said, I think Valve is very gradually trying to overcome the criticisms levied at them. It's not happening overnight, but I wonder, maybe we'll see a Half Life 3 that makes everyone happy and not just those who like their games dead simple.

"Excellent game with a few flaws"
The gameplay, graphics ad story are superb. What I found disturbing are the trshy weapons. They all "feel" like toys and shoot that way. Why didn't they take weapons like in CS:S?

"Very good Mr. Freeman!"
Ever since I first Slumped the Specimine into the the anti-Mass Spetromitor in the first game. I've been addicted to Half-life. and found that leaving me with more questions then answers worked when this game first came out.

I was ungry for more! and more is just what I got... More action, More cool weapons to play with, and yes... More Questions then answers.

But this time around. the characters and allies in the game tore my heart out and tugged on them so hard tat i emotionally connected to teir plights. Then again their rebal AI was pretty bad. I ended up not caring if the NPC folled me or not and if they did, I tended to lead them into a mine field or two before I did anything more important later.

Still the game was fun fast and action packed. I loved swinging the Crowbar once more and a new gagit like the gravity gun was great too.