Half-Life 2 Demo

JethroXP

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 2, 2003
Messages
1,181
Ok, call me a day late and a dollar short, I haven't yet played Half-Life 2. It's on my Christmas list.

So when the Half-Life 2 demo came out yesterday, It was a must grab. I had some issues with it, like the fact that it tried to re-install steam, and then still took nearly as long as the original download to finally be ready to play (almost as if it were downloading itself again). And then there were some horribly long load times, with no progress indicator.

However all of those gripes melted away within seconds of tossing my first saw blade with the grav gun. OMG, this is cool.

I drooled over Doom3 visuals (when I could actually see them of course) however the interactive environment of Half-Life 2 simply blew me away. It felt like one of those genre changing innovations, much like the first time I played Quake 2 on a 3Dfx Voodoo card.

No more are environments simply static passage ways. Sure, Doom3 gave us the occasional soda can to kick, or terminal screen to power off, but it was still very limited. I mean, when I can pound rockets into a glass window and not so much as crack the glass, its sort of hard to maintain my willfull suspension of disbelief.

However with Half-Life 2, I was amazed to see that I could pick up a bottle, throw it, watch it break into pieces, and then go pick up one of the pieces, and throw it too. Compared to Half-Life 2, Doom 3 now feels like being on a rail. Yeah, I love the Doom 3 graphics, and the sound was incredible, but for pure "fun factor" I think Half-Life 2 stole the show.

I can't wait to play the full game.
 
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