Actually, many Best Buys already have Half Life 2 on the shelves, ready to buy. Of course, you can’t play the game until the 16th - stupid Vivendi is holding up the release. Oh well, I pre-ordered via Steam, and will go back to playing CS:Source while I wait.
What’s odd to me is that no other studio seems to even attempt to match the inventiveness of HL (I’m thinking snarks) and I don’t know if AI of recent FPS’s (except Halo) has come close to that of HL. I don’t think Halo compares to HL either from a relative breakthrough standpoint or pure gameplay. The only game that rivals HL is Call of Duty which gets extra points for being historical. Half-Life 2 will be incredible and will live up to the hype.
If anyone’s interested, Gamespot will have a full review of Half-Life 2 today at Noon PST.. I’m undecided on whether I want to read it. They’re usually pretty good about being spoiler-free. I may just pop in to see the numerical score they come up with. I’m curious to see how HL2 stacks up (at least ostenisbly) to their other recent “superb” games:
GTA:SA 9.6
Halo 2 9.4
Not that a numerical rating really means anything, but I think they do pretty well to keep it reasonable (see: Doom 3 – 8.5).
(btw, the original HL got a 9.4)
4 more hours! Just four more hours!
Too bad I have work today and can’t get out of it… and then the girlfriend will probably want to do something… sigh
Could be a while before I get to witness the glory of Half-Life 2
Well, if things go as planned then we’re down to TWO hours.
I told myself I wouldn’t wait like this, but here I am. Maybe I should do a little Half-Life to get in the mood…
Gamespot is a bunch of console terds. I await that weird British Edge magazines review: they always come out late, so they never pimp themselves out for a good review exclusive, and they are tough as hell.
I’ve been a fan for a loooong time, even wasting a large portion of last year on the HL2.net boards (if you know of the infamous “Info” thread, then yeah, that’s the same Apos). Needless to say, when I basically left my rig to go work for John Kerry in Ohio, I figured I would miss out on HL2’s release, which was a huge huge downer. Luckily, Valve came through for me and delayed the game long enough for me to come back! 
now I can enjoy the release along with the rest of the community.
Spoilers on the link…
…look at the top review… 
I’ll wait to read the actual magazine before believing that score, but if Edge, the no-bs magazine gives that score, I’m off to buy a new computer first thing tomorrow morning… :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
…oh, and SPOILER laden reviews are starting to flow in…
http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/reviews/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=32810&subsectionid=1609
Bah, spoilers suck. We’ve already seen way too much of the game already: lets at least get the story fresh.
Very interesting, because I’ve always viewed their opinions as skewed towards PCs. The fact that GameSpot stemmed from a PC website doesn’t help matters either. What cinched the deal for me though is the way they right in their semi-weekly feature where all the editors write a topic in regards to whatever they want. It seems 60%+ of the time, they discuss PC games.
Sure we’re both talking about gaMeSpot?
Well we’re now officially looking at 15 minutes!!!
(Do you reckon there’s a chance in hell that we’ll actually be in game at 12:01?)
I’m not the hugest fan of Gamespot, but I find them somewhat reasonable. I do actually kinda like the video reviews they do sometimes as it can actually show you some good in-game footage.
Oh and by the way, the Gamespot review gave Half-Life 2 a rating of 9.2 which obviously is still really really good, but it kinda irks me that it’s less than Halo 2 when it seems like the only real criticism is that [spoiler]There isn’t anything incredibly new and groundbreaking
and
they claim the story is somewhat disappointing[/spoiler]
However, both those things are supposed issues with Halo 2.
As always, I’ll make up my own mind.
Jeez, I’m excited!!
Given that every other mag and site is gushing about how cool the story is and how it is told (plus the ending), I have a hard time buying Gamespot’s take. Especially since Halo2’s story apparently just
[quote]
irritatingly dies midgame.[/spoiler] Given that the level design is supposed to be teh suck in Halo2, and it has no physics gun, I don’t see how it can rate higher. Maybe for and alongside console games.
Crap. Spoiler tag, er, didn’t work, or something! Damn, er, hamsters!
I agree. Not to bash Gamespot too much (again, check there a fair amount for just the basic “is it decent or not”) but I checked their super-duper-all-time games review list. I was curious if they believed it was possible for a game to be a 10.0.
You might be suprised at what I found.
Indeed the moral is to take it with a grain of salt.
1 minute!!!
The time is NOW!!!
Unlock the gates Valve!!!
Right now Steam’s website is slower than…than…well I’m too excited to finish the analogy with something witty.
It’s unlocking right now. 31% complete. Going veeerrrry slowly, but going.
It’s unlocked. Goodbye, real world.
Video Games are a very time-subjective medium. While I’m not a fan of Tony Hawk, I can see why it would have gotten a 10 during its time. However, I believe Zelda is one of those classics that can withstand the test of time.
I don’t believe anyone can truley ever predict what games will maintain their integrity; whether Half-Life 2 will be one of these titles will be interesting to find out. We should know within five years.