Below are user reviews of Half-Life 2: Collector's Edition and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Half-Life 2: Collector's Edition.
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User Reviews (181 - 191 of 476)
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Great game ruined by Steam interference
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 5 / 11
Date: June 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User
The game is top notch--no complaints there. My gripe is dealing with Steam. Yeah it took a long time to download (several hours) and register with Steam. All was fine for many months until I foolishly let Steam update it's files while I tried to start the game while still connected to the Internet (I just do single player, no multi for me). The Steam update (which I suspect I didn't have to have) totally screwed up my game. It won't let me play now. I can't access the game at all. I've tried a myriad a way to figure out this puzzle. Be cautious of this game unless you are a total geekmeister. I do OK, but I'm no geekmeister. After numerous emails and FAQ searches with Steam, I gave up and haven't played since my ability to do so was STOLEN by Steam--which really means a Steaming pile of poo!
Excessive gore ruins the fun for me
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 6 / 15
Date: January 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User
I really enjoyed the original Half-Life game, and was very excited about the sequel. I recently upgraded my PC, got a top of the line video card, and couldn't wait to try out the new engine. Luckily, I waited till the demo came out, and ran that first. There are two chapters in the demo. The first is chapter one, where you (as Gordon Freeman) arrive at City 17 on a train. You wander around a nearly deserted train station, and see some very impressive graphics and digital actors. They still look pretty polygonal, but they are a lot more realistic than anything else out there. Facial expressions, the whole bit. They ain't Gollum, but still, very impressive.
There's a very eerie feeling in the train station. The emotional impact is quite strong. Something horribly wrong has happened, and you are in some kind of relocation station. A PR film runs over and over telling you that this is one of the few remaining cities... Remaining after what? you wonder.
As a big science fiction fan, I was immediately drawn in. After encountering a bud from the first HL, I manage to escape the station, and find myself in an open plaza. This plaza was just amazing in its photorealism. You can almost tell what time it is just from the lighting and atmosphere--it is that real. Soon, though, the chapter ends as you enter a building.
The other chapter in the demo is chapter 6. Now you are much further in to the story, you've got a gun, and it's dark. There are some very impressive crows in a yard, flapping and cawing. Wow. (Sounds dull, but you have to see it. So real!) But there are also...lots of body parts and blood strewn around. Corpses of people who seem to have died in extreme agony. Skin ripped off their bones. A torso cut in half, hanging from a tree.
At this point, I lost interest in the game. This video world I have entered has convinced me quite solidly of its reality, and now I am presented with some very realistic, believable, stomach-turning horror. I had no wish to be here any longer. I could not feel anything but pity for the poor souls lying dead around me. I did not feel that killing anything that moved was going to help anyone. I shut down the game and deleted it off my system.
If you've gotten this far in my review, you may be surprised to know I like shooters. I just completed Thief 3. Wonderful game. You rely on your cunning and skill. However, it did bother me a bit that it's "me against the world" in Thief. Can't trust anybody, and there's no remorse when you have to kill somebody to achieve a goal. What I liked about Thief more was its "adventure" side, more than its shooter side.
I'm intrigued by the MMOG phenomenon, though I haven't tried any of them. But I'm intrigued by the idea that people (strangers, no less) get together in these games and cooperate to accomplish a goal. And they enjoy exploring vast video worlds.
I think eventually we'll see an adventure game (like Myst) that is as highly rendered as HL2, allowing the interaction Myst currently lacks. It will be gorgeous to look at, convincing in its reality, and it will have an interactive storyline (with you as the protagonist) that involves more than simply making your way through a maze (such as a building complex, yawn) filled with zombies and monsters. You can see the interest in such a game based on the success of "The Longest Journey", the Sims, and the Myst series and its clones.
When I want to play, I want to pretend I can save the world, sure. But not by shooting everything in sight. The encouraging thing about playing this demo was that it showed the potential video games have now. I'm looking forward to the day a developer with imagination takes this technology the next step forward.
Disappointing
2
Rating: 2,
Useful: 7 / 19
Date: November 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User
Just another run n'gun, Valve failed to fullfill their promises when it comes to a groundbreaking game. Pretty much everything that has been done in this game has been done before.
Not fun at all.
Great ! BUTwith problems
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User
this game is the top of the list of great games out there, however, Valve should use another format than STEAM (the online set-up program). All who buy this Half Life 2 will need to log in to steam to be able to use the game. And steam has problems that will disallusion most players. Ie. you must log in using your internet system. For most this means having an IE connection all the while you play the game even though they say you can go off line and play. not true! But that aside the game is truly top notch..
Graphics
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User
Now to all you people who keep saying Doom 3 has better graphics? GIVE ME A BREAK. Doom is consistently dark and the rendered normal maps are tiring. It's like looking at marshmallows all day... or should I say night because the game is dark dark dark. Doom 3 is afraid to inject lighting into it's game because the normal mapping breaks down somewhat.
Half Life 2 is stunning visually. I work in the industry as an artist and I have to say it's polished to a fine mirror shine. The environments are lit with beautiful lighting and the lighting actually enhances the levels as you play gradually getting darker as you move into key moments of the game. Now that is using all aspects of a graphics engine for gameplay... with that said... look at all the eye-candy pouring out of the video card I used (Radeon 9800 Pro) real-time world reflections and super looking specular highlights and bump mapping.
Second to none. It plays like the old Half Life with some nice new features. Physics are a key element of game play as well. Valve made some nice integration in that respect.
Get it. I'm glad it's not on a console.
REGISTRATION NIGHTMARE
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User
I spent hours,...hours trying to acivate this game, shutting of software, virus control, firewalls deleting programs, all to no avail. could not activate the game. What a drag, I keep reading that the game is great, but this corporate, headless, inconsiderate, inhuman, non responsive entity wont let me play the game. so the game is probably good if you could activate, but good luck if you buy a used game. Beware if you buy a used game .The first owners have probably pirated the game and you are going to be stuck with a inoperable piece of software. Good luck!
probably 10 actually
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 13 / 46
Date: October 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User
In the 25min high def video i saw, my jaw dropped and i had to pick up the pieces one by one. As the mysterious G-man says at the end of it : "Well, well, Mr. Freeman, isn't it just like...ooold times?"
This phrase, for some reason, is the one that told me most :" this game is gonna kick major ass." I think that Half-life is probably the greatest pc game ever made, even maybe the best game ever made.
So these "old times" are such a great memory that this sentence pretty much sums up how good hl2 is gonna be.I mean, the graphics for one, are so advanced it's going to take a long time for competitors to even broach that level. (except maybe for doom 3 devellopers, their graphics rip too) But the most impressive thing in hl2 is the physics engine. The way the player can intereact with teh environment is simply awe-inspiring. For exemple, when you see a guy take out a futuristic-orange-glowing-electromagnetic gun, and use it to levitate a wall radiator in front of them as a sheild, and tehn hurl it at the enemy like a massive wreck ball, you say to yourself: "This, is COOL."( for lack of better word, because there is no possible good description of the feeling you get at that time)
I sincerely hope that it will not have the same fate as other recent sequels, like jak 2, which tried to add some to their very good first opus, thus making it confusing, rough and left a feeling of unfinished in the gamers mouth. I hope that hlf life 2, will be not only a good looking game, but a good playing game as well. But since valve has pretty much turned out only great games, i trust them for this one.
"And we thought Black Mesa was bad..."
half-life & half-life 2
2
Rating: 2,
Useful: 3 / 5
Date: October 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User
The actual game is fairly good. The reason I give it low marks is because I had to download data that should have been provided with the game. I feel I should be able to play a game without having to download updates. Downloading updates should be optional. If your download speed is only 56 k then be prepared to have your computer download for several hours prior to playing.
Steam? Don't believe everything you hear.
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 5
Date: October 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User
Seems that most folks are more interested in talking about Steam than HL2, so I might as well add my 2 cents (Everybody knows the game rocks, so I don't need to say anything there). Valve has straightened out Steam since the original release, and I've had absolutely no problems with it in the past 6 months I've been playing this game (No, I didn't get it right after the release). If you have a decent (i.e. broadband) Internet connection, you're not going to have any trouble with Steam. If you don't, well, you're patient with all your other downloads, so quit your complaining.
And there are actually some very good things about Steam:
1) Automatic updates to the game. No more searching through File Planet and what have you.
2) It's the only place to get _Rag Doll Kung Fu_.
3) (And this might be the best one of all) You DON'T need to insert your CD to play the game.
Got to go--I'm off to play _Lost Coast_. Now if they'd just release _Aftermath_ already . . .
The definitive single player FPS experience
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 5
Date: February 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User
This is the sequel to 1998's popular Half-Life, and it provides the definitive single-player first person action experience on the PC. It will also convince you beyond a phantom of a doubt that a nerdy, thin-as-a-rail scientist can singelehandedly repel multiple alien invasions with naught but a crowbar. Thus it is a perfect fantasy for the computer geeks of the world. Also the gravity gun is cool.
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