Will the children be neglected? The wife denied sexual favors for the next 6 weeks?
I finished HL after investing about 60 hours (no cheats, I couldn’t get them to work on my machine) on the damn thing, mostly hour long sessions before work in the morning. For this reason alone I resisted buying HL2 'till just the other day. And it was finally on sale for $29.99.
I have it installed and am now in the Canals…How much longer will this addiction last? Should I install the cheats to make life easier or try to grunt through the game au natural? I want the gravity gun like now! That helicopter is shooting my ass to pieces damnit!
Help!?
PS, the .357 Magnum rocks! But where the hell’s the shotgun (or am I thinking of Doom)? How can I take out the helicopter?
Oh boy do I envy you. How I’d love to be able to play through it again for the first time. Glad you’re liking it. As it happens, the canals are by far the weakest part of the game. Just wait until to get to Ravenholm. Or better yet, inside the Citadel.
I wish they’d release a non-Steam version. I tried the demo last year and it was a pretty miserable experience. I particularly enjoyed waiting 2 or 3 hours for it to decide to boot up (even over broadband). The game seemed okay, but by the time I got to it both times I tried it, I wasn’t in the mood to play it anymore.
A few weeks later, somebody pointed out that the Steam launcher probably has a setting to disable the update thing, which is most likely what was slowing me down. Of course, by that time my view of the game was pretty much poisoned, which is a darn shame because the first one kicked mucho ass and HL2 is supposed to be majorly awesome.
Yeah, what’s the deal with the need for an internet connection and having to get Steam involved in the whole setup? Can’t the game be run on a non-internet connected machine?
It’s like the four disks the game came on couldn’t hold all the install info so you had to download the rest from the Steam website.
What’s going on there?
The short answer is anti-piracy and the long answer is updates & patches and online digital distribution.
There were quite a few problems with Steam and quite a bit of fervor over it when it first launched. By now, though, all that remains of the negativity are malcontents, technological conservatives, and people (like slortar) who had bad experiences in the past and still have a bad taste in their mouth (most certainly no offense intended). It’s pretty much a rock solid distribution system that cuts out the shitty middleman (not surprising if you know Valve’s history with Vivendi) and is pretty much going to be the wave of the future. The catalog of new and re-released games available through Steam grows every week including complete catalogs of Sid Meier’s games, Activision, 2K Games, etc.
Well then I suggest you use the Backup Game option and burn it to a DVD-R.
I, on the other hand, want to have access to my game anywhere, anytime, whether I lose the discs, my house burns down, or I happen to be visiting a friends house in Japan using his computer.
Can you elaborate on this?
How, specifically, does having a steam account make what you say possible?
If I loose my copy of HL2 will I be able to reclaim playability on another machine (if the house burns down or of the PC is stolen)?
Yes. All you’ll ever need is your username/password to log in to Steam (which I should think is still somehow retrievable even if you forgot that). Steam knows exactly which games you own, due to them being either purchased or registered through Steam, and if you need to reinstall for any reason you can easily do so through Steam. This could be as simple as a fresh reinstall of Windows, CDs getting scratched beyond repair, or even your house burning down. Likewise, I once found myself over at a friend’s house blabbing on and on about how good HL2 is. Then it hit me – Look, I’ll show you. All I had to do was download Steam on his computer and login mith my usrename/pass and install HL2, Counter-Strike or whatever else. Obviously a given user can only be logged into Steam on one machine at a time.
See I’m pretty solidly opposed to copy protection. When it became clear that even if you bought HL2 in a box in a retail store you stilll had to log into Steam the first time to register it, this seemed incredibly draconian. However, in this case Valve actually gave you something in return (see above). Compare that to iTunes where they likewise know full well which songs you’ve bought and downloaded. However, they explicitly state that they won’t replace them if you lose it from your hard drive. Or perhaps Windows XP’s compulsory activation (again even from a retail box) that gives you absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
Of course the pirates and criminals easy and quickly found ways around all three of these copy protection schemes. So it really only punishes the honest people. Only difference is that Valve’s system is willing to offer you something in return.
Whatever you do, don’t cheat. I tried playing through a few spots again after I’d finished and it just wasn’t as engrossing as it was when I was always waiting to see what happened next. I’d hate to have cheated myself out of the experience by doing anything to get on through parts, even as aggravating as some of it was. Remember to save the game often so you can work through those tough spots without having to start at the beginning of the level.
I wish it would have been 100 times as long, some ot the stuff in there is just so cool you don’t want it to ever end.
I recently lost my saved game and have been delaying playing again. I’m not sure why since it’s really really good. I think I preferred deus ex though.
