[HeX]

Got my preorder from EBGames at 5:00 PM yesterday (was in bed sick until then). Had it  installed by 6:30 (many problems in this regard...grrrr). Had it actually authorized by 7:00.

Beat it on Easy by 7:30 AM the next morning.

Will I be playing again? HELL YES.

[.::Tin Can::.]

I got pretty far. Haven't gotten to face up a Strider yet with my resistance boys, but I've seen some.

[Fineus]

I... er... finished it five minutes ago.

Don't let that fool you - I'm a lazy uni student so perhaps I have spent more time playing it straight than anyone else. At any rate -here's my final analysis of the story (generally and some thoughts - it'll be broken down into spoiler and non-spoiler.

Non Spoiler:
Very good game. That said, perhaps a bit to vague about where the Combine have come from, what they're doing and why everyone is so oppressed. Breen also isn't explained to clearly and the ending does leave things wide open for Half Life 3.

Don't let me get you down though - I really loved it. I would however have loved it more if I knew a bit more of the storyline - even Doom 3 managed to explain exactly who everyone was, why they were there and what they were trying to do in the great scheme of things. Half Life 2 seems to get by a bit more on assumption and coincedence than anything else... for instance, the fact that half your allies are from or related to people from the Black Mesa incident. An introduction sequence to lead up to events or dialogue added throughout the game between NPCs etc might have gone a long way to dispell some of the confusion.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Some things are made apparent throughout the game, such as Breen being an emissary for humanity in a deal to try and save the human race - although this seems to er towards enslaving it. Also, the G Man does continue to feature as the engimatic sort who shows up at the beginning and end of the game to imply that everything you have just experienced was some kind of job contract - despite the fact that Earth seems to have become an alien battleground - he seems to be continuing to call all the shots. This does leave me somewhat confused as to what the heck is going on overall (was the alien menace that much of a menace, or was it all in hand as far as G Man was concerned?). Certainly there's a lot that could be answered or explained in expansion packs or future games - but I feel that perhaps these things should have been explained "now" - so that the player has some idea of why they're really playing the game...at least with the original you knew that you were attempting to prevent an alien invasion. (or, escape the facility / whatever in the expansion packs).

I guess time will tell... it could have been better - but not much.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
[warhol of some rocks]
Hehehe

I don't get the monochromatic Half-Life rock. All the HL2 screenies I've seen have been very colorful.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB


Hehehe

LOL.. Right on the spot!

[Ace]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
I... er... finished it five minutes ago.

Don't let that fool you - I'm a lazy uni student so perhaps I have spent more time playing it straight than anyone else. At any rate -here's my final analysis of the story (generally and some thoughts - it'll be broken down into spoiler and non-spoiler.

Non Spoiler:
Very good game. That said, perhaps a bit to vague about where the Combine have come from, what they're doing and why everyone is so oppressed. Breen also isn't explained to clearly and the ending does leave things wide open for Half Life 3.

Don't let me get you down though - I really loved it. I would however have loved it more if I knew a bit more of the storyline - even Doom 3 managed to explain exactly who everyone was, why they were there and what they were trying to do in the great scheme of things. Half Life 2 seems to get by a bit more on assumption and coincedence than anything else... for instance, the fact that half your allies are from or related to people from the Black Mesa incident. An introduction sequence to lead up to events or dialogue added throughout the game between NPCs etc might have gone a long way to dispell some of the confusion.

I guess time will tell... it could have been better - but not much.

Yeah, a little more exposition in the game through conversations with the civilians in the beginning would have been nice.

As for why all of the Black Mesa people are at City 17, it seems that as the capital of the Combine on Earth and with Dr. Breen there most of the other folks tagged along to organize resistance efforts/conduct research where there is more Combine tech on hand.

Anyway:

Spoiler:

While throughout HL1 I assumed the G-Man was a human working for some very... nasty employers (such as the Combine) and thinking that HL2 would involve you betraying him and such, it seems things are a little more complicated.

It's pretty clear that G-Man's natural form isn't human, and he's working for some group of beings that's very powerful and meddles with the affairs of other species.

From what I'm assuming, the Black Mesa incident happened pretty much all over the planet and the aliens stopped teleporting in when Freeman freed Xen. The Combine then attacked the Earth or was preparing to attack shortly after this, with Breen making a deal.

Since Breen's contact was willing to let him flee Earth to another Combine realm, it's probably safe to assume that they understand to an extent that Freeman is working for another group.

I'm thinking that to an extent G-Man is behind the gaining the xen crystals and the whole resonance cascade mess on HL-1. Then he has Freeman save Earth at a moment after they've realized how nasty the Combine is by loosing all liberties. I can't help but assume that this is all intended by G-Man or his employer(s). Earth might become it's own 'Combine' with the Xen critters, pushing back the Combine and Freeman will be sent in again. (probably this time telling the G-Man and his employers to get lost)

What is interesting is how the G-Man states that Freeman really has no free will. Hrmm... "G" man... white doors... pseudoreligious overtones?

[Setekh]

Interesting. The G-Man's always intrigued me. That's about as far as I got into the HL storyline. Does anyone know of a good story synopsis? I might just Google one up, but if anyone can recommend one that would be nice.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Setekh
Interesting. The G-Man's always intrigued me. That's about as far as I got into the HL storyline. Does anyone know of a good story synopsis? I might just Google one up, but if anyone can recommend one that would be nice.

Um...offhand

Spoiler:

Gordon Freeman goes to work
Causes an accidental resobnance cascade error and opens up a portal to an alien dimension
Has to escape
US Military sent in to clean up, kill witnesses as well as aliens
Gordon ends up in alien homeworld, kills big baddy thingie
End shows the G-man talking to Gordon in a train flying through space - describes the US army haven managed to take an initial foothold in the Xen(?) universe, offers Gordon a 'job'.  It's left a wee bit ambigous whether he accepts or not, but given that the alternative is death.....

NB: I don't even know if I ever completed Half Life........

[Slasher]

Over my 56k connection, Steam took a while to unlock the game for me.  Granted, it was during the evening the day after the game was released, but I literally fell asleep and woke up some time later and it still wasn't done unlocking the game.

[aldo_14]

I've had nothing but grief since I started installing it.  

Insofar as I can tell, it won't copy a single HL2 file until it has had a nice lengthy conversation with Steam.  For each file.

Frankly, i wish I'd looked for a hacked copy instead now.

[redsniper]

just don't get the warez that valve leaked or you'll get banned from steam.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by redsniper
just don't get the warez that valve leaked or you'll get banned from steam.

I don't give a **** about that - I'd welcome being banned from steam.  In fact, had I previously used that piece of pish software beforehand, I'd not have bought the game.

  It is the bane of my existence - having to wait 5 minutes to be told I have the right to play a game I bought with my own money.  It has a CD-key, for ****s sake - I resent being treated like a criminal.

[Fineus]

Originally posted by aldo_14

  It is the bane of my existence - having to wait 5 minutes to be told I have the right to play a game I bought with my own money.  It has a CD-key, for ****s sake - I resent being treated like a criminal.

Exactly.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Spoiler:

Did anyone else think that at the end, when the G-Man turned and walked into the white light, that it was so freakin cool looking?

[Fineus]

Originally posted by .::Tin Can::.

Spoiler:

Did anyone else think that at the end, when the G-Man turned and walked into the white light, that it was so freakin cool looking?

[/B]

Yeah, very much so. I was highly impressed by some of the uses of camera effects and control of time in game - if nothing else - HL2 does prove that the way forward is in building a world where everything really does relate to everything else (IE: slow down time, and charachters can move slower.. that sort of thing).

[Liberator]

Originally posted by aldo_14
It is the bane of my existence - having to wait 5 minutes to be told I have the right to play a game I bought with my own money.  It has a CD-key, for ****s sake - I resent being treated like a criminal.

Somewhere along the line, Valve drank the Kool-Aid and started believing what the fanboys were drooling:  that they and HL are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The facts are this:
No copy protection can be foolproof, especially when a Beowulf-Cluster can brute force it in a matter of a day if not hours.  The kind of Digital Rights Management that they are trying to develop with Steam is what I fear is the Next Step in an effort to control the flow of information.  I fear the day is coming where you won't own anything on your computer and Microsoft or their successor will be able to access and control what you do without you're permission or knowledge.  They already do it to some degree if you don't know how to turn off XP's automatic updates, granted that's fairly innocuous, but you get the idea.

Don't misunderstand, I fully support a companies right to protect their product, but treating your customers like a bunch of criminals is not the solution.  The solution is to fix the situation so that it's easier to buy the product than to download from the nearest crack site.  I don't pretend to know how to do that, but it's quite obvious from everything that I've read, that Steam, at least in it's current form, isn't the solution.

[aldo_14]

There's a point where customer convenience overrides piracy protection.  I mean, how many people will be put off Half Life 3, or whatever, by this?  I certainly am - it's the most obtrusive system I've ever encountered; Steam is basically a trojan horse that comes with what is - almost sadly - a very good game.

Of course, you try and say that on a Steam or HL2 forum and you'll get burned at the stake.

[Fineus]

I don't know, a LOT of people on the PlanetHalfLife forum have complained about Steam and the problems they had with authorisation etc.

Of course there were the die hard group of fanboys who tried to flame anyone who said a word against the system. However so many people pointed out the flaws in their arguements that even they had to stop trying to fight it. Nobody has found a good thing to say about Steam and - piracy control or no - it's critically damaging the end user. That's something that no piece of software should be able to do.

[Gloriano]

Steam is biggest joke since...err something

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by Holy Imperial Gloriano
Steam is biggest joke since...err something

yeah, steam is a *****, i'll admit that... i'm even under the impression that steam is really just spyware in a legit program's shell.

and the registration process, well, i found Win XP's product activation more efficient. and that's saying something.

let's face it, Half-life's avid devotees are pretty blind to the obvious, and most of them are teens, who wouldn't /really/ know/care about how a computer's software works, only so long as they can run their precious little uninspired Counterstrike sessons, and talk bull**** over the 'net, or at least leetspeak.

now, i do realise that they're quite possibly a lot of people who'd take offense to this, but this is really meant for the trolls, flamers, etc, who can't really see the forest for the trees.   which, are quite possibly the few, compared to the others, but they also have the biggest mouths, and the smallest brains.

Spoiler:

oh, and if anybody knows of a way of "enhancing" the gravity gun  (y'know, like the blue one?), you'll earn my thanks