I haven’t had a computer that could run it because money is tight, but my current lap top seems to run Half Life 2 reasonably well. I have the settings for graphics all the way down and most stuff has run smoothly. The only choppy section has been fighting the helicopter at the end of the hovercraft section.
I’m in the chapter “Follow Freeman”, which is nearly the last one in the game.
My thoughts:
This game is 5 years old! Man, I’m getting old.
Even on the low graphical settings, it looks quite nice.
Great physics system. I love the gravity gun, especially with the saw blades.
Dull storyline. Could have been a lot better.
I hated the Highway 17 level, mostly because I don’t like driving in a PC game. Worst level of the whole game.
Best levels so far? I liked Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt, actually. I wasn’t a big fan of the “zombie” aspect, which has appeared throughout, but the actual use of the physics in Ravenholm was cool.
Overall: I see what I missed. Good game. Not great, but a really good game.
I like Half Life 1 better. I think I might get Half Life One: Source when this is done to see how it is…or I’ll get Episode One and Two for HL2.
Can I uninstall Half Life 2 to conserved space and still install Episode One and Two? Are they add-ons, or will they run as unique programs?
It actually bored me when I reached that point because it became the “I win” button. Completely drained any challenge out of the game.
I think Half-Life 2 was more revolutionary when it came out. It’s impact is diminished when everyone and their brother use those floaty, awkward havok physics. It does have some terrific level design and I played through the second half the game using the gravity gun exclusively; it’s just that the march of technology has continued.
And Half-Life 2 commits one of the cardinal sins of game design when it comes to the story. Stopping the player and forcing them to watch their terrible story. Locking the player in a room with characters I don’t care about who are saying poorly written dialog about the most generic storyline possible is a bad idea.
Episode 2 is standalone; you don’t need HL2 installed to play it (though you do have to have it available in your Steam ‘My Games’ list). I don’t remember if you needed HL2 installed for Episode 1.
I actually liked the storyline a lot, although IIRC it doesn’t really get good until Ep1.
If you didn’t like the zombie aspect, there’s one segment of Episode 1 you won’t like at all. It was intense enough that I was actually deeply physically scared. I might even have soiled myself a little.
Make sure you try some of the single-player mods before uninstalling it, especially Minerva: Metastasis. They’re free, so no risk.
Are we talking about the train (I was looking for the “give Alyx a hug you cold-hearted bastard” button the whole time) or the really annoying elevator section of doom?
I agree that Highway 17 was the worst level. Oddly enough though the hovercraft/boat/whatever portion was maybe my favorite (maybe that’s because they stopped using manhacks for a while there). It can be paced poorly at times though, I think Ravenholme should have stopped at the giant battle royale where Gregori tells you that you went the wrong way.
I disagree that the story was dull, although I’ll admit I played all three episodes in succession and it really doesn’t pick up until Episodes 1/2 so my perception is somewhat colored by that.
My only wish for Episode 3 -
No fucking antlions unless I have a pherapod again.
I was talking about the bit where you’re with Alyx in a mineshaft, and she’s trying to activate an elevator… and then all the lights go out and you’re left with just a flashlight and a veritable zombie horde starts pouring from all over.
I also hate antlions. Let me rephrase that- I hate that there are infinite antlions. If there was a limited number and you could pause for breath after dispatching them I wouldn’t mind as much.
Better narrative? Well if you prefer nearly non-existent then yeah. The narrative in HL1 is only noticeable because it existed at all which was unusual for a FPS of the day. I think a lot of people tend to remember it as deeper then it was.
I’m not knocking it as it was revolutionary for its time. It just was a very very tiny portion of the game.
You got bored during ep1? I can see we have nearly opposite viewpoints on that as well. I found HL2 to grow tiresome about halfway through whereas the Episodes remained fun and better paced throughout. It really felt like the designers wanted to make every part of episode packs ‘cool’ and were willing to experiment a bit more. I do admit ep1 gets a little clunky and you do spend too much time in similar environments to HL1 so ep2 is my favorite out of all three parts.
Narrative, not story. The story was next to non-existent, but the narrative was anything but. The manner in which the (little) story was conveyed was fantastic, and when combined with the brilliant atmosphere, is near unmatched.
And I presume when you say “deeper” you’re again referring to the story. I am under no delusions that the story was deep, or really even that compelling. It was just there.
I will concede the ending of half-life is a steaming pile of horse-shit. I just pretend it ended when I hopped into the dimensional-rift machine and that the stupid alien would doesn’t exist.
Well, I also got bored halfway through (if not sooner), but I trudged through as I wanted to see why the game was “OMG THE BEST GAME EVAR.” The opening was great though and arguably was the best part of the game.
And I can’t speak for anything beyond the first half an hour of Episode 1, but that shit was just grating. So I just escaped the Citadel…and now I have to go through the Citadel? God dammit. Then I had to do some stupid shit with those energy balls–it was boring and I didn’t much care what happened in the story, so I was out.
I loved the upgraded gravity gun, which I think they were wise in giving you only for a brief level. The novelty was just wearing off and the game ended.
What do they do about the gravity gun in Episode One? Someone made another?
Anyway, stupid ending, but I knew that was coming. I think the story got muddle during the long production time of the game, but it doesn’t really matter.
Cool game. I’ll probably play Episode One as soon as possible.
Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly evil and/or bored I go to the part of the assault on the beach of Nova Prospekt where you have the infinitely spawning soldiers and watch as the infinitely spawning antlions fight them to an infinitely spawning standstill.
I actually like Highway 17 a lot. It’s very… pastoral. Drive a little, look at the view, listen to the seagulls, shoot some people. A perfect day out in the country.
The folder you selected to unzip the file to should contain 2 files. One will create a the folder you described. The other will actually attempt to fix the problem, if it isn’t already fixed. If you’ve run both of them, you should be good to go.
If that doesn’t work, the Microsoft knowledge base page says that the problem file is called Msvcirt.dll, and you must have a version greater than 7.0. So search for that file using Google, make sure the version is right, and replace any occurrence of that file in your file system with the newly downloaded file. (Use search to find them all.) Back up the old files by adding .bak to their name.
Anwyways, the file you found is most likely the password protection file and completely useless to you. After everything is working, you should be able to delete it and the folders you mentioned, but, as always, make a backup copy, just in case, and don’t delete the backups until you are sure everything is working correctly.
