Half-Life 2 (PC)

[Concept]

The Striders bink will rock your show - Trust me. Confronting one of those bastards first time is going to be a major highlight of the game.

And Alyx's facial expressions puts Spirits Within to shame in my opinion.

[Spatial]

Kleiners Lab is great, if not solely for the fact that its chock full of Alyx and really shows off her....... facial animation.

[Chadruharazzeb]

Striders =

[Concept]

They're nasty. I love the devastation it causes when it fires the beam into the bridge connecting the two buildings.

And the nice 'F' 'U' message with the gravity gun... I'm hoping for more creative opportunities like that in the full game to taunt the enemies with before getting owned.

If you watch carefully, there's so much information relayed about the game in those two minutes.

Large expansive city.
Multi-faceted Squad AI.
Huge enemies.
Destructable (although probably scripted) scenery.
Lots and lots of potential to play around with the surrounding physics.

Did you download the 800x600 version or the full-screen one? There's a smaller file of the same scene floating about which cuts the screen size down to a postage stamp.

[Kotatsu Neko]

are you sure? I was playing on steam from 7-9pm GMT yesterday evening(25th October) and everything was fine, no problems whatsoever.

edit: I've just tried it now(6.00am) and it's fine. My biggest worry would be if steam went down on release day so no-one would be able to get online to authenticate their copies of hl2

It was down for a lot of people, check the steampowered forums. 'tis back now, but it left everyone completely high and dry when it was down. Couldn't play ANYTHING from Valve at all.

Someone mentioned an 'offline' mode, how do you engage this? When Steam was down it wouldn't log in, and therefore wouldn't let me get to the 'my games' menu.

It had better be up and running on the 16th...

[Chadruharazzeb]

Must have been the 800x600 one I got... wasn't full screen or postage stamp.

So far all the videos have shown off exactly what I'm looking forward to in the game, with obvious intent. I take it that the mega bink thing - the 1.7Gb file - is a compilation of all of them? 1.7Gb.... must have filmed themselves playing the entire game!

[Concept]

Someone mentioned an 'offline' mode, how do you engage this? When Steam was down it wouldn't log in, and therefore wouldn't let me get to the 'my games' menu.

It had better be up and running on the 16th...

It will be. Just expect the usual teething troubles which accompany sprawling content distribution online. I doubt it'll be anything that'll vastly harm the event, because that's what it is. And a bloody big one.

Do you honestly believe Valve will be unprepared for the biggest launch in their history, (the flagship product to promote Steam)?

They'll have been gearing up to this moment for months.

As for starting Steam in offline mode... Disconnect from the net and re-start the application. As it loads you should be given an option to boot into an offline mode.

Chad, here's a link to the full size version of the Striders bink if you ever feel the need to download it.

http://files.filefront.com/2569401;/gamingfiles/Half-Life_2/Media/Video

[Chadruharazzeb]

Cheers man, I'll have a looksie when I get home

I'll be very suprised if there *aren't* problems authenticating. Time will tell. (Too much time if you ask me)

[Ish]

The Striders bink will rock your show - Trust me. Confronting one of those bastards first time is going to be a major highlight of the game.

Thats the bit I'm looking forward to most

[Zapp$ter]

I hope there's more enemies like the striders that we don't know about, would be a nice surprise. Some of the best moments in Half Life for me were facing off against that tentacle beast in "Blast Pit", coming across my first gargantua and icthyosaur, something I don't think I'll ever forget.

[Ish]

I won't lie. I nearly creamed myself with excitement when I came across the blast pit tentactle monster in the original. I remember ringing up my pals "you gotta see this you gotta see this". Nobody cared... lol.

[Spatial]

For me it was that massive One Eyed Garguantuan thing in the car port. The way it stomped towards you, kicking cars left right and center while you peg it down the corridor. Brilliant stuff.

And the air strikes were a touch of genius. Took me a while to get the co-ordinates but it made it all the better when I napalmed that mutha

[Chadruharazzeb]

http://www.sumea.com.au/snews.asp?ne...lated=Industry

Why in the name of sanity would the game get an 18 cert anyway?

[Chadruharazzeb]

Oh, and apparently HL: Source isn't a remake using the source engine, it's just a port with the odd source effect.

[Concept]

PEGI rated the game 18+ probably because there's blood in the game, realistic ragdoll physics, the characters are incredibly lifelike and can die, and things like Striders can impale people. The Source engine is so powerful, that while it might not handle content as immediately offensive as say something like San Andreas, the quality of its visuals could make by-the-numbers situations appear very surreal.

About Half-Life Source and the porting issue...

That's been widely known for ages.

Do you think Valve have the budget and resources to dedicate a complete overhaul of Half-Life? It took them six years just to get Half-Life 2 out of the door.

There was no way they were going to recast voices, redesign character models, remodel Black Mesa entirely etc. The resources needed for that would have taken away from the developments of Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2.

I believe the reason Valve are porting Half-Life to Source is to show mod teams that updates can be easily done, and inspire fans to perhaps go about a full overhaul themselves. Although legal complications would probably arise.

There's also the concerns relating to the original... Does Half-Life really need remaking, especially when remakes have been in rather disturbing favour for a few important historical titles this generation? Or would a new makeover detract from the impact of the original and muddy the waters, a la Resident Evil/Twin Snake?