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Buyer Beware!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 36
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm sure you've heard a lot of great reviews about this game, but before you throw away $50+ dollars, you should be aware of the fact that you may not be able to even play it.

In order to play the game, you are forced to download a program called "Steam." If you're lucky enough to be able to download this program, you must then create an account, and then you have to "unlock" the game.

Maybe you're thinking that these little hurdles are worth it for a game that is supposed to revolutionize the entertainment industry. Well the problem happens when you try to create the Steam Account.

The company's servers are all dead. They've been down all day. So, all across the world there are thousands of players who have purchased perfectly legal versions of the game, but are unable to unlock them. If you'd like to join this group of disgruntled fans, then by all means you should click the add-to-cart button immediately.

But if you think its ridiculous that you have to jump through all these hoops to play a video game, then my suggestion is that you wait for Valve or Vivendi or Steam or whoever is having the server problems to get their act together.

Its a very arduous process to get this game working, and what they've done is probably illegal. When you buy a car, you don't have to drive it to the Ford office to have someone check to make sure that you are actually the purchaser do you? And even if you were willing to put up with that, how would you feel if the road to that office was shut down because of an accident? And if all the employees had gone home? What would you do? Sit in the dealership parking lot staring at your new vehicle?

That's the scenario you'll be dealing with if you purchase HL2. The box art is pretty. It's just too bad you won't be able to unlock the game.

SPYWARE AND ADWARE ALERT! Valve thinks YOU are a criminal.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 38 / 55
Date: January 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm about ready to cut up the CD's into little sharp pieces and mail them to Valve, with explicit instructions on what they can do with them, and with their game.

Great game, blah blah blah, read the other reviews. Yes, it's outstanding, but it's definitely not worth the aggravation, or the insult. To get it running, I had to endure the longest, most frustrating, and most invasive software installation in the history of gaming. I question whether anything short of a fully functional Star Trek Holodeck could possibly be worth the aggravation of this experience.

It took me two and a half hours to install the game. Seven, maybe eight minutes to transfer the files to my hard drive; then four or five minutes to extract the files for installation. So far, so good. Then the fun part started - well over two more hours, all of it online: uploading (what?), downloading (what?), and waiting my turn in the Valve queue for the server to give me permission to proceed to the next interminable step. After twenty minutes of unidentified data moving back and forth between my PC and Valve's server, I began to ask myself, "At what point will they permit me to play the game I paid good money for?" I asked that question again at thirty minutes, again at forty, again at an hour...you get the idea. Many, many megabytes of data passed back and forth, and Valve has done God Knows What to my system. Spyware? Could be. Trojans? They won't say. Reformatting my PC to be a transfer node for illegal pictures? I'm ready to believe it.

To add insult to injury, a shell program (appropriately named "Steam," because that's what it produces on the back of my neck) connects to Valve's server when you turn your computer on. That's right: Valve assumes you're a criminal, and treats you accordingly. They want you under their watchful eye, even when you're playing the single-player version, even when you're not playing at all. They've created, within their own little virtual universe, a surveillance state mirroring the one in the game (John Ashcroft and his replacement, that Gonzales thug, would be proud). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a flycam show up over my desk.

OK, you've got the game installed and running - now you can play the game and ignore Steam, right? Wrong! Every couple of weeks, you're forced to go online for a large download, the visible portion of which merely updates Steam and its ad server - which is placed, for your convenience, right on your desktop (how thoughtful!). What the rest of the download accomplishes is, of course, unknown. As far as I'm concerned, the Steam shell is nothing but spyware and adware.

Last year (or was it the year before?), Valve got robbed. I was sorry (then), and sorrier still when that robbery further postponed the already long-delayed release of Half-Life 2. In their zeal to protect themselves, however, Valve has created a despicable monster. Hard to believe, but Microsoft now has serious competition in the customer-enragement market. I hope the pirates rob Valve blind and put them out of business. No, I hope Valve gets sacked by the Visigoths, burned to the ground, their source code distributed free on street corners, and the owners sold as slaves to China, processing spent plutonium with their teeth. It's better than they deserve.

Bottom line: a truly terrific game, but I will never, ever, *EVER* buy another Valve product. I'll keep my money, and they can keep their Holodeck.

I'm going to try to play my game now. Maybe I'll get lucky, and Steam will let me.

Not sure yet

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I hope to enjoy the game..I got it yesterday from eb games and YES I noticed the online connectin required. HOWEVER, MOST WILL ASSUME THIS IS FOR REGISTRATION ONLY Its not an online game(primarily) . Until you actually open the box you dont realize that you are required to have one to even play. I DONT agree with that AT ALL. They will still get their money, this is the sort of thing thats driving pc gamers to console, and making these companies spend more on consoles than pc games (much to the chagrin of pc gamers). While the game itself may be worth it, (looking forward to it) this BS with "steam" is definitely NOT

Extremely Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Half Life 2 is possibly the best game ever made. This game is truly a work of art. The graphics are gorgeous, the story is compelling, the environment and physics are superb, but the whole game is RUINED by the steam log-on process.

After you install the game you have to log on to a Steam server to unlock it. This takes 30 mins - 1 hour. I don't mind this if it keeps people from illegally copying the game. Here's the bad part, every single time you want to play the game you have to logon to the Steam servers. TO PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER GAME YOU HAVE TO LOG ON TO A FREAKING SERVER. This is ridiculous. With millions and millions of people trying to play the game every night it can take forever to log on.....if you ever get on.

Don't buy this game. Save yourself the money and time because you won't be able to get on the Steam Servers.

Great game, but I will never buy a valve game again

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: November 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game is fantastic, if you can manage to play
for some reason valve software has decided to use steam, an internet game network, to validate the game, even the single player one.

you can read all about how good the game is (it really is) in the other reviews.
but be aware that
1) installation takes forever
2) counter strike source reports "game unavailabe" most of the time
3) You need to be online to play, wont be taking this game on any trips.
4) The steam engine is as I write this in frustration "verifing my flies" again, for the last 20 minutes!! before allowing me to play. I've only had the game for three days!

Brutal Install!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 24
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought an ATI graphics card last February because it stated it had a coupon for the soon to be released "Half-Life 2". No, I didn't enjoy the wait. Neither ATI or Valve half publicly appologized for this (to my knowleadge), either.

Then, after I download this game, it comes up with the screen to update the game. It said that it would take 800 minutes. I confidently waited for this number to drop once the download settled in. It hasn't. This is a joke. I'm on a 10 meg a sec internet connection.

Valve, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Buyer Beware: You Cannot Play Game Without Internet

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not a comment on the substance of the game, but just a note of caution to buyers: even though this is an "offline" game, you need to be connected to the internet to play the game, in any mode.

Why?

Because the creators/publishers are paranoid about piracy --- so the game discs you are buying do not contain all the files needed to play the game. In order to get these needed files, you need to download them from the creator's website on the internet. On launch day, this was taking 4-8 hours to do. In addition, after the files are downloaded, you need to register the game at the website before it will allow you to play it when you are not connected to the internet -- and that registration line can be long and slow! And this is for the OFFLINE portion of the game, not the multiplayer portion.

The retail box apparently says "internet connection required". They mean this folks -- NOT just for multiplayer! You need to set aside several internet-connected hours in order to download the remaining files and register the game before you can play one second of it offline.

Booo! Hiss! The creators and publishers here are putting their own paranoid security above the ability of gamers to play their offline games in peace, without having to deal with the lag associated with online games. Poor show indeed, Valve and Vivendi, poor show!

ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 37
Date: November 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game REQUIRES authentication to a Source server to play ON A LOCAL MACHINE. This means that you are slave to Valve and their technical status every time you try to play the game, alone, on your machine. That's bad, because their network SUCKS, and renders this game virtually unplayable. DO NOT BUY IT. Now I see why software pirates do their thing, this is the reason why! And it wiped out my graphics settings, on an XP machine, to the point I had to do a system restore.

STAY AWAY!

As a protest I refuse to play this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 37
Date: November 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

You must register online before you can even play offline.

This is ludicrous.

This is also a very disturbing trend for a game - if you buy this one, you can expect to see more games use a similar scheme.

What happens once you uninstall the game and it is no longer even supported years doen the road? You are out of luck. They could just as easily decide to stop supporting it once the next version is out and force you to upgrade.

Stop the madness now before it gets out of hand or we will all come to regret it and pc gaming will be choked out of existence.

Good game,some problems COLLECTOR'S EDITION SPECIFIC REVIEW!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 41 / 65
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

OK, so, while I am one of three people on the earth who thought Half-Life was the most overrated FPS ever (well, that or Halo...which makes me the only person on earth who thinks this way).. I bought HL:2, the Collector's Edition even, since vehicles and physics are easy ways to sucker me in.
Plus, some amount of my hatred for HL stemmed from its dated graphics. And yes, I even think they were dated in 98.

ANYWAY!

I opened the box and it was quite possibly one of the most disappointing things I'd ever seen. This enormous, double wide, tall and thick box with nothing more than a T-Shirt (no complaints there), a piece of paper with some basic instructions (whee), the DVD (at least it wasn't 6 CDs, I suppose), and the shrunk-down PART of the two books released.
Wait, so I paid $85 so you can try and convince me to buy MORE?! Screw that! At least give us the thing at fullsize! the wasted space in the box would have allowed a double sized guide for crying out loud!

But, no matter, I set that annoyance aside and popped the DVD in. OK, I heard I had to register through Steam and all, and expected some server choking since it WAS release day and all. I ended up taking a half hour or so AFTER the files were on my harddrive to finish "installation" (consisting of incredibly slow "unlocking" of files). This was an annoyance. Period.

But, I shrugged this off too. And since it told me I couldn't register HL2 at this time, I decided screw this, I'll go play HL:S.

Oh my dear lord. That was the biggest rip off I can imagine. It's exactly the same with minor cosmetic changes to water, lighting and physics. Why in the world couldn't they have snuck in a couple of the new models? Higher-rez textures? SOMETHING?!
I quit playing almost immediately and went to HL:2. I finally finished all the incessant unlocking nonsense and started 'er up.

Fantastic game; the graphics are grabbing and manage to run smoothly on a mid-end system (Athlon 2100, 512 RAM, ti4600).

One concern (one which LOTS of people are having) is that there IS a lot of stuttering of the sound, even in the intro, which is terribly annoying.

Otherwise though, fantastic game, though it seems a bit short.

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