That’s the demo, right? Just be aware that the early phase of the game presented in the demo is distinctly unimpressive.
The crossbow made such a satisfying thud/twack 
But it was in the original Half-life, not only (if at all) in Opposing force. You first found it in that crazy science outbuilding, same place as you find the awesome Guass gun (which was far more useful in multiplayer mode than SP).
The sewers were the damndest part of Op For. Those huge purple spewing beasts kept squashing me out of nowhere, and I had almost no health or ammo left.
In addition to the great games named here, I HOPE they make a No One Lives Forever 3. I just finished NOLF2, and I don’t want it to end. Yeah, I could deal without the insane load times, but the great story and jaw dropping graphics of zany locations made it worth every minute!
Dammit ISiddiqui I didn’t need to hear that! I just got a new machine and am working through my game backlog (I know, cry me a river!). As I get sniped by Germans in Medal of Honor I sometimes look over and see the NOLF2 box on the shelf…I can hear it calling me…
Must resist temptation…
NOLF2 was great until I got to that map with the big robot guys in India tearing up the town. Couldn’t pass it, and it pretty much put my experience to a halt.
If we have the same memories, does that mean we’re the same person? Hmm… where are you between 11:00 and 8:00 AM when I’m ‘asleep’? 
Time to ressurect this thread, because real half-life footage has exploded out of e3.
I’ve been able to get two movies (no links I’m afraud: do your own hunting) so far, a teaser from IGN, and a fan video.
I’m going to use spoiler tags here, because these ARE spoilers: some neat stuff that you might want to just encounter naturally in the game, instead of having the ideas spelled out for you. On the other hand, if HL is any guide, hearing about it is nothing like playing it, especially because of all the new options that make gameplay different every time.
And there are surely plenty plenty more surprises in store.
Anyway, movie 1
The teaser features a bit of action: a headcrab zombie on a broken boardwalk with you: it tosses a barrel, with rolls and bounces very convincingly, then get shot back by the player, rolling to a stop in a hole between boards.
A dank city crawling with hovering police robots and telephone wires.
Then the second neatest part of the game so far: the Alyx NPC character. The effect of the light on her face is amazing as she’s glancing around the room, then suddenly turns and looks at you and smiles: it’s totally convincing and almost creepy: the way the eyes move before the head, and then the other way around, the way the face changes expression.
Then an incredible monster, as big as a building, with huge wobbly legs, coming towards you…
Then the money sequence: Alyx and you are in a sewer, and she’s looking at you smiling, but then suddenly her view shifts to something behind you, turns from a smile to shock, and she mouths “oh no!” (the teaser has no in game sound): you spin around and a soldier you must have just dispatched is climbing to his feet, gun ready… and then something takes him, his body falling limp as it smashes him into a ledge, then pulls him down and away…
But that’s nothing compared to the second movie. The second movie reveals how trully revolutionary the physics engine is. I thought the barrel was cool: this is amazing. It’s just a running gun battle with a squad of soldiers, nothing more than that. But I can’t even explain it until I explain that the map, which is a series of abandoned tentaments, is full of everyday objects. For instance, there’s a table full of stuff: cans, a mayo jar, an old propane gas tank. But you bump into the table, and the stuff wobbles. Some of the cans fall off. It’s amazingly real. And it becomes part of the game…
Anyway, the sequence is that a soldier is coming up towards you. You pull out this strange weapon and use it to “suck” up a cardboard box and levitate it in front of you. Some paint cans that were on top of it wobble and fall off as it moves. Then you “kick” the box like a projectile at the soldier. You miss, and he starts gunning for you. You hide behind a old barrel, then use the weapon to pick it up as well, holding it in front of you like a sheild from his bullets. You toss this at him as well, glancing him a little, giving you a chance to run into a building.
Here you quickly shut the door, and then hurriedly shove the aforementioned table in front of it to block the door as the soldier tries to bang it open: objects spilling off the table onto the floor. Suddenly, the soldier starts shooting through the window, glass shattering, and you take cover behind an old washing machine. But, no luck: the solider finally kicks in the door with one kick, the table and objects flying over backwards through the room, and you hightail it up the stairs.
Only, there’s another window there, with blinds covering it. As soon as you reach it, it shatters, gunfire coming from the street below. Amazingly, the gun fire knocks up the blinds, which flutter as if they were really being hit by machinegun fire before falling back down. And before you can react to that, another solider at the top of the stairs opens up at you. You use the weird weapon again: ripping a radiator out of the wall, using it as a sheild, and then hurling it up the stairs at the soldier. It smacks him right in the chest, sending him flying into a soda machine behind him: the machine breaking open and spilling cans down the stairs at you. The soldier lies crumpled on the ground, underneath the radiator.
You head up th stairs, where two matresses and a pile of junk are sitting above the landing. Hearing soldiers coming up the stairs behind you, you grab a matress and slam it into the pileof junk, sending it all tumbling down (presumably blocking off your pursuers).
You then head outside onto the roof, sending some startled birds flying off, and then look down into a courtyard where five or six soldiers are amassing, not yet seeing you above them. You take careful aim at a beam on a crane, and then shoot it loose: the huge beam swings, picking up speed, and crashes into several of the soldiers, killing them instantly and smacking them and some barrels across the courtyard. It misses one soldier, who sees you and then opens up at you… but then the swinging beam catches him on it’s return swing: SMACK, he goes flying and crumples.
But one soldier you didn’t see is still down there, and his fire cuts away what little cover you have. You pull out a grenade and toss it under this huge metal container that’s on the roof on a wooden platform. The grenade demolishes the platform, and the container tumbles into the courtyard, spilling out it’s contents of beams, which grusomely crush the remaining soldier. You hope down onto the container, whip out a machine gun, kick a barrel down the stairs and… fade to black.
You immediately run out and buy the latest PC and 3d card so that you can totally be ready for this game when it comes out in September.
Damn. The first game to try and use real-life physics as a gameplay element was a disappointing disaster as a game (Trespasser), though a brave attempt as an innovative new concept. HL2 looks like it’s gotten things right: real life objects that react like you think they would, and really becoming a powerful and amazing part of the game: just one of many many options to give the game depth and replayability. The above movie seemed as if it was a pre-rendered action sequence.
I can’t wait…
Here is a link for the 1st movie Apos mentioned.
Again, be aware that it does spoil some things: you see some of the game’s weapons, and you see two creatures/events that might better be left as in-game surprises. If you’re strong enough to remain in blackout mode, avoiding HL2 reviews, previews, screenshots, movies, and heck: avoiding this thread, then definately do that.
Just got another movie downloaded.
Even more incredible than the first one seemed, and this one was just a physics demonstration (so no spoilers).
They started by suddenly deforming the floor of an entire room, as if some huge beast was pressing up underneath it, and the floor was bending and buckling.
Then they shot apart a complex wooden frame bit by bit, with wood splintering, and the structure deforming as supports were broken, finally collapsing in a heap. They dumped stuff into the water to see what floated and what didn’t (really great water effect too: defracts images through it and everything, and shadows can fall upon it when you see it from the right angle to make it opaque and reflectory). They used some tool to drag all sorts of objects around, matresses (which looked and acted spongy), a dead body (which was like a ragdoll), barrels, etc. Dumped them in the pool, sliding down the side into the water some sinking fast, others slowly. Then they shot down a platform of barrels so they all fell down through some pegs on the wall, bouncing around like a game of plinko. Very convincing.
They showed off bumpmapping and various glasslike textures, all realitime generated stuff.
They showed how just by applying a texture, they could make a human model look and act like living water (with fire behind the watery figure, refracting through him).
Then, coolest of all, they had a video camera set up. In the game. It was focused on the Gman, and there were all these screens: some single, some multiple screens making up one big image, all displaying what the camera was (the Gman). Then a headcrab knocked over the camera, sending the images on the screen spinning. Then you pick up the camera to focus it on the gman, but now it’s upside down! Then they toss the camera through one of the multiple screens, shattering the center screen, but leaving the others intact, still displaying what the camera sees.
No game I’ve seen has ever done anything quite like this. I’m getting more and more skeptical, however, about the claim that it will run on low end machine. I mean, they’re dynamically calculating tons of moving objects all at once: not just their motion, but all sorts of special qualities like weight and bounciness, and so on.
Still… wow.
Oh, forgot. They shot apart a watermellon too, which broke in half, and then into smaller chunks, very realisitically.
wow, the graphics are astounding. Will it rival doom3 in graphics?
I so much want to play this game, but I’m not yet ready to upgrade my computer (well, I am, but it’s not going to happen this year). I just finished upgrading just to play Morrowind 
I certainly think that Doom3 willl surpass it in graphical specs (higher res models, more polygons, better lighting model)… but after seeing what the HL2 source engine can do with animation and physics, I’m just blown out of the water.
I mean… they used a dead body, hanging limp by one leg like a broom to sweep a whole tableful of junk into a pool. They grabbed a matress floating in the pool and draped it over some other floating junk, and it deformed over it just like a real matress. It wasn’t a scripted out thing. They were just messing around. And it all looked real.
And what I meant to say was “pachinko machine” not “game of plinko.”
I’ve got a 700mHz P3, 192RAM, and a Viper3d(TNT2, I think) card. I think this is the bare minimum requirements, and I can’t imagine it’ll work all that well. My choices are either to get a better 3d card, a faster processor (not sure if that would require getting a new MotherBoard, dunno much about the P4 line, or how Athlons currently stack up), and more memory, but I can’t even begin to afford all three, plus shell out 50 bucks for a game.
Good God, I now have nine - count 'em, suckers, NINE! - movies of footage from Half-Life 2. OH MY GOD! Yes, I will conclusively say that this game, as it appears now, blows Doom 3 out of the water (and this is coming from the guy that used to practically jerk off to Doom 3 stills). There’s one video showing Freeman driving around in some little buggy-type vehicle, and the map is HUGE! Enormous! It’s got a dilapitated nuclear submarine (yeah, a submarine) sitting in a ravine, and even THIS is dwarfed by the canyon that the action takes place in!
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, this game is going to be just TOO amazing for me to describe. This game is so amazing, I am lowered to stuttering “oh my god” like a raving fanboy.
Apos…
Here’s what I recommend: At least a 1 ghz processor, 512 megs of RAM, and at least a GeForce-3. Here’s what I’d recommend for someone on a tight budget: An Athlon XP 1700-2000+ (processor and mobo can be had for around a hundred bucks combined, if you shop around), 512 megs of PC-2700 DDR RAM (around $50), and a GeForce-4 Ti4200 (or at least a GeForce-3 Ti500… both are around $100). Total: $250 worth of upgrades. You’ve got three and a half months to come up with the goods, buckaroo. Good luck.
NOTE: I’m betting those’re the specs necessary to run the game comfortably… I bet you’ll still even need to turn down some of the prettier graphics.
I dunno: after seeing the E3 vid, DOOM3 has a less complex environment (less junk strewn about) and looks like a basic cooridor environment, but it’s still intense, graphically a little better (though I couldn’t tell from the vid if scenes were scripted or even pre-rendered), and seems to have its own fairly neat looking physics engine at work. I think both games will be good for what they do. I just think HL2 looks more ambitious in the sheer number of different experiences they let you try out, as well as some really kewl innovations as far as gaming ideas.
I’m slowly downloading the character interaction vid.
The strider video was intense too: still using spoilers for all the good bits.
[spoiler]It starts you out in a HUGE city street environment, with a tram passing underneath, a crowd of armed guys conferring down below you, who then all run off in one direction, out of sight. Then you look right: a huge alien citadel is sitting right in the in middle of the city… and it’s… EATING it. Huge metal “teeth” raise up, stretch father down the street, and then crash down in a hail of granite. You run away, down the road, turning to look where the men went, under a little bridge. You can’t see much: just a bunch of rubble down the road. Then screams and an explosion of dust. Out of the dust comes the men, running and firing backwards at something, screaming “GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!” and “STRIDER!”
Suddenly, the “strider” appears: it’s several stories tall, a strange alien pod on three spindly legs. It’s looks wobbly on the uneven terrain, but starts to come down the street at you, firing a mini gun at the retreating men. You retreat too: back out under the bridge. The bridge, however, is too low for mr. strider so he… and I don’t know how to describe this… sucks up reality and then blows it out into the bridge: an amazing world distortion effect weapon that completely vaporizes most of the bridge. Looks almost like Neo at the end of Matrix1: bending the entire world around him.
Unfortunately, for all that, some of the bridge is still intact, melted steel and burning splinters. After trying to destroy it further with the minigun, the strider takes a new tack: creeping down underneath, then heaving it’s huge body back up on the other side. You use the gravity gun to launch a an ornate dresser (which was just lying in the street with all the other junk from blown out buildings) at it: it smacks it in the back, shattering to pieces, and knocking the strider around a bit. It starts off gunning down men and blowing up cars.
Then you hear the men yelling again: STRIDER!!! To your left another building starts to break apart: huge concrete girders cracking and tumbling to the ground. A second stider emerges from the rubble, it’s guns blowing out windows in nearby buildings, and then exploding a parked car on the street. After navigating through the rubble, it uses one of it’s legs to skewer a man alive, then shakes him off the skewer as it he were dog doo.
You turn to look at a marque sign with large metal letters. Using the gravity gun, you rip the letter “F” off the sign and hurl it at the strider. It smacks it again, causing it to look in your direction and begin gunning for you. You toss the letter “U” at it, but miss. Then, it’s gun halts. It arranages its legs more squarely, bends back, sucks in reality again… and as the screen goes black shoots this strange weapon directly at you.
Whoa.
[/spoiler]
I’d reckon that, after the big hullaballoo about “no pre-rendered footage” that the ID guys made when first announcing Doom 3, none of that stuff is pre-rendered. I’m sure some of it is scripted, though.
The thing with Doom 3, though, is that everything looks too smooth and fluid. The lighting effects are definitely the big thing, and the models look great, and don’t get me wrong, the whole game looks wonderful… but HL2 just looks far grittier and rougher, and more jostled and… real.
Doom 3 looks like a really, really cool game. HL2 looks like someone took real life and put it in a game. That’s the best difference I could think of.
And yeah, that Strider video was NUTS!