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WARNING about this game!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I received this game for Christmas yesterday and was very excited about spending a few hours last night playing it. I am a devoted PC game fan, never having had an X-Box, Playstation or anything else. At 8pm I popped the first (of five) installation cds into my computer... and I was able to start playing the game at exactly 10:55pm. Yes, that is correct, I spent almost 3 hours installing and "registering" my game with Steam online-- an incredibly FRUSTRATING process that seems designed to punish legitimate buyers of this game by making them jump through RIDICULUOUSLY ANNOYING hoops in order to "be allowed" to play the game my father bought me for $55.

I understand that Sierra and Valve are attempting to combat software piracy, and I do not have a problem with them experimenting with ways in which to do this, BUT, this process they've created it completely out of line and I think nothing short of a public apology posted on their website and forums with the promise never to do something so HORRIBLE to their loyal consumers would ever bring me to purchase a game from either of these companies in the future.

I won't go into detail about the process in which registering with Steam entails, since I skimmed through a few earlier reviews and noticed that many others have explained it, but I had to deal with alot of "waiting to connect" and system freezing, rebooting, etc.

Also, I just wanted to point out how cheap the packaging was. I opened the cardboard box and 5 cds in paper sleeves fell out, along with a tiny "quick reference card" which gives you very little information. Gone is that little booklet all other pc games come with that give you important things like the games story/history, characters, weapon descriptions, and credits. Usually I like to read through that stuff while the game is installing... not this time. Instead I got to sit in my chair and stare at the screen and wonder why the game was such and incredible pain to install. And all other PC games I have come in a nice plastic case, so I am able to keep the game discs organized, but now I have 5 cds in blank sleeves strewn across my desk

I think we need to send a message to these people that they screwed up, and so I hope that if anyone is contemplating buying this game and is reading this review, PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME!! Sierra and Valve need to get the message that we are not going to stand for this, and the only way that they will hear us is if we BOYCOTT THIS GAME! I hope that if they feel the hit to their bottom line they may realize their mistake and never do it again.

Also, keep in mind that alot of the five star, glowing reviews you will read here are FROM PEOPLE AT SIERRA AND VALVE! It is common practice for game compaines to "encourage" their employees to post positive reviews on forums such as Amazon. So keep that in mind, please.

As for the gameplay... well, I did finally play it for a couple of hours late last night, but the anger and frustration that I had experienced had left a bitter taste in my mouth, so I can't say I was ever completely "into" the game. Graphic-wise, I wasn't very impressed. Alot of the texturing was pretty flat and boring, the levels are very linear, so there is no taking you time and exploring your surroundings. The puzzles, so far, are very easy to figure out and get past, and the bad guys are very generic and repetitive.

The funny thing is is that I wasn't going to post a review here, even after my horrible experience with the game last night. I don't think I have ever posted a review on Amazon... I was just going to make it a personal point to never buy Sierra and Valve games in the future. But, today, after a good nights sleep, I felt refreshed and decided to play the game some more... hoping that the bitter taste was gone. So, I click on my Half Life 2 icon and then spent 10 minutes while the game attempted to connect to Steam... until finally I realized that my system had frozen which forced me to reboot. So, I realize now that every time I attempt to play this game it's going to be like this! Now I had to get the message out!

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!

BOYCOTT SIERRA AND VALVE!!

Great game, poor programming--please read before judging me!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: January 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love "Half-Life 2" - it continues the cinematic brilliance of the first game while adding a great continuation story-wise. It is not a rehash of the original - it improves upon it in every way. In a year of disappointing sequels this reigns king. "Halo 2" was a fun game and very good but it was way too short, the storyline wasn't as good as I had hoped, and the actual campaign was incredibly disappointing considering the potential. "Half-Life 2" blows "Halo 2" away. And this is coming from someone who is a fierce supporter and fan of the "Halo" franchise. But even I can admit its sequel's flaws - "Half-Life 2," in comparison, is a masterpiece.

But it is not a perfect game. Where "Halo 2" succeeded, "Half-Life 2" fails: its programming.

I have only a few complaints: I have a Dell Dimension 8200 "gaming computer" (according to Dell.com) with 2 ghz, a GeForce T500 graphics card (it's a bit out of date but not much), 256 MB, flat panel monitor, massive surround sound speakers - the works. And the game just won't play very well.

I know it's recommended to have 512 MB and 2.4 GHZ but even with the lowest settings, the game frequently crashes, freezes up, has EXTREMELY long load times, and the Steam-ware is absolute garbage!

I talked to someone with a 3.4 GHZ 1GB PC, and he said the game freezes up on him as well - and the loading zones take about thirty seconds to load. Which is quite long for a 3.4 GHZ processor! Just imagine what it's like on the standard 2 GHZ...my PC is fairly new - I'd hate to be buying this game with a PC a year older!

But okay...having the right computer to play this isn't really Valve's fault, right? I guess not. (Although considering the fact that most people in America and Europe still don't have up-to-date computers should have crossed their minds.)

That's not really my problem. It's the other stuff:

1. Takes over a half hour just to install the game. 5 CDs! No problem because I've had long installs before, but it's nevertheless a bad start. I don't mind this but the problem is that this is just the installation - we have lots left to go before we can actually play the game! (See below for info.)

2. Registering Steam - first you must connect online, then you must sign up for an account, and spend about fifteen minutes doing all of this. After registering with Steam, you must type in the game's serial code. It then spends well over an hour (on 56k connection) "decrypting" the game code, and then you have to restart.

This is when I was thinking, "Alright, time to finally play!" after sitting at my PC for 1.5 hours doing all of this Christmas morning.

But wait! There was more! After all of this, in order to play the game you must be online. You must then re-register the game with Steam when you first load it, and Steam updates the game/its software without asking you if you actually want to. Then, finally, the actual game loads and it takes FOREVER (on 2GHZ at least)! It just kept freezing up. I turned down all the settings the lowest they go and the game still locks up as I'm playing.

Every five minutes I reach a new loading zone and it stops for five minutes to load the next scenario. So you basically get five-minutes' worth of play time, then five minutes' worth of loading time. And then choppy, buggy gameplay.

As I said above, a friend experienced similar occurences on a 3.4 GHZ 1 GB PC so it's _not_ just on slow processors. Five minutes for me is thirty seconds for him - but that's still a long time to sit and wait on an incredibly powerful computer!

Also, Steam really p!sses me off because every time I restart my computer it pops up a message saying INTERNET CONNECTION NOT FOUND - RUN IN OFFLINE MODE? and then when I press YES it says offline mode is not available. It says this a few times until it finally accepts it.

There is no way to disable this (at least not to my knowledge). Whenever I click the desktop HALF-LIFE 2 icon to play the game, up pops a Steam box that says "Internet connection not found - play in offline mode?"

Just now I tried playing the game in offline mode and guess what? It wouldn't work. So despite the fact that it's supposed to play offline, I had to go online to play a game I paid $55 dollars for. This sort of thing really makes me, as a consumer, mad.

I'm not trying to bash the game. It's a great game but good god, the programming and whole Steam stuff is awful! It really makes the gameplay suffer as a result. I heard from someone that Valve rushed Half-Life 2 and it wasn't ready - there are supposedly many bugs in the code and it's locking up on many PCs.

And frankly I don't like the idea of going through all this Steam/registering stuff (2 hours' + worth!) just for Valve to verify I have a purchased copy. I can understand typing in a serial code - most games nowadays have these. But going through two hours' worth (!) of verification seems a bit much, and makes Valve seem just a bit greedy and disrespectful of its gamers. And even a bit pretentious - i.e. what makes them any better than any other gaming company?

Because let's face it - the people who want to get pirated copies are going to anyway, and Steam won't stop them.

THAT SAID, the game itself is brilliant. Without these bugs/Steam stuff it would be my new favorite game.

The game is very realistic, you can pick up just about any object. Where Halo 2 seemed to fail was in its build-up - Half-Life 2 has a strong build-up; you don't pick up a weapon for about 45 minutes and by the time you do you're really engrossed in the story and believing everything that's happening.

Once again (as in the original) everything takes place from Gordon Freeman's perspective and there are not cut scenes, which helps engross you even more in the story. Frankly the first game creeped me out a bit and it seemed a bit eerie - same here. It really leaves a disturbing after-effect - but in a good way. It leaves a strong impression.

The world you travel through is like a WWII ghetto - it looks like a huge attack has just happened, there are people being beaten and killed by enforcement officers who are evacuating towns.

It's all so realistic. It's all so fun. It's all so cinematic and totally 100% engrossing.

It's _the_ game of 2004, a benchmark revolution in gaming.

Hopefully by the time Half-Life 3 rolls around (and trust me - it will eventually!) they'll have dropped the whole idea of Steam and just deliver a straightforward game.

Because that's my only complaint. This is a revolution in gaming but the fact that this so-called "revolution" features the worst concept ever (ahem, Steam) is a step backward in my opinion. Kudos to Valve for making a brilliant game - but shame on them for having us suffer through their insane Steam partnership.

While I'm mentioning this, it's worth saying that every time you log on to Steam it pops up advertisements for other games as well. Is this what I want for $55?

So in conclusion:

Half-Life 2:

Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 9
Sound: 9
Fun: 9
Programming: 5
Steam: 1

Overall: 8/10 - a great game; shame about the programming.

one of the greatest games ever, but...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yes, it is true. All the rumours were true about how this would be the greatest FPS game there ever was!!! graphics are perfect, i haven't had one glitch or bug in my gameplay, plot is great, yes true, it seems to be like Half-Life, but it is the sequel to it(duh), overall you'd think it would be THE perfect game!!!

but guess what?

it sure isn't!!!

but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the gameplay! it's about BEFORE you play the game, you know, loading the game entirely? you have to sign on-line, not only to first install the game, but for each and EVERY time you want to play the game, and yes, i AM, in fact, talking about SINGLE-PLAYER MODE!!!!! yes, we all understand the whole piracy problems that are going on, but honestly, give us a break Valve!!! first off you had us wait an extra year and a half(at the minimum!) before the game ever became released, and yes, hackers did destroy the game while in the making, but come on!!! do we, even the most trustworthy gamers, need to prove EVERY time that we do, in fact, OWN the game??? here's your kudos...that's why i gave this game an overall score of two stars, and i only put in two stars because the game is perfect.

frustrated customer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: January 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have just wasted an entire day trying to get this game to run. I curse those who came up with the steam concept. I did finally get past the steam nightmare, but this game crashes my relatively new computer.

Thx for the warning reviewers--avoid at all costs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: December 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I loved Half Life and like a lot of game junkies was excited about HL2. Thank god I came here and read the reviews first. I knew something was rotten when a friend told me the issues with the key and installing. CD keys don't bother me but this is the most fascist thing I've ever heard of.
**Buying this game means you can never resell it, or give it to a friend after use**
Think about that for a second, this is something you just spent $50 on. I like to resell or loan/give games to friends, the costs are getting too high for me not to do so. When I read about this key nonsense that did it for me.

100% frustrating.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 26
Date: December 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Well, Valve has my money, but I don't have a game.

I bought Half-Life 2 at my local Best Buy and hurried home to see just how fun it was; I haven't had a good game to play in quite some time, and was pretty stoked by the "... THE BEST GAME EVER MADE" printed on the game's front cover.

Well, what WASN'T printed, on any part of the box or the non-existent users' manual (that's right -- the game came with no instructions, colorful manual with descriptions of weapons/monsters/gameplay, storyline, or anything -- just a DVD) was the fact that you need to register the game with something called 'Steam.' I suppose the idea was to keep people from pirating the game, but guess what?

Steam didn't work for me. I tried for hours to simply get the game to install, but I couldn't even load the files onto my hard drive because the Steam authentication server was down. After a long, fruitless struggle, I checked Google and found a myriad of similar complaints; maybe it's a great game, maybe not -- I'm not sure, because I CAN'T PLAY IT. I paid for it, yet can't install it... neither can I get help. I tried Valve's phone number, but got a busy signal each of the dozen times I tried it throughout the afternoon. I tried to get onto Steam's website -- the support page won't even load, and of course Steam doesn't have a single e-mail or phone contact on their site.

What a rip-off.

I advise anyone who is thinking about buying this game to either a) get Gears of War on xBox 360, or b) wait for BioShock, which is actually going to be an innovative game (unlike this, where you stalk the hallways with a shotgun, killing zombies, reminiscent of ALMOST EVERY FPS EVER MADE).

Doesn't Work Because of Bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: December 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I haven't played this game, because of bugs that Valve has admitted are in the code. It has been over a month with no communciation from the company, and because of their registration process, no chance of a refund.

Don't buy this game unless you have money to burn.

Horrible installation, no help, no manual

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: October 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Its 5 days since I started installing this game and it still wont run. E-mails to Steams "help" page go unanswered.

Complaints :

1) There's no manual included with the game, no number to call, no help to e-mail.

2) You have to sign onto Steam on-line even to install the single player game.

3) After much searching found a help page on Steams website, e-mailed it, no response.

4) Tried the tips on the help page, updated windows, installed new drivers for graphics, sound, motherboard, all to no avail.

The game might be great, but I'll never know - I intend to uninstall it and throw it in the bin. Save yourself a lot of trouble and don't buy it in the first place!

Better late than never - WORTH THE WAIT!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

OK... the out-of-box experience left a lot to be desired, much like people trying to play Joint Operations online the very first day it came out.

Here's a tip: Reboot after the install. Then register via Steam and unlock the game.

Getting started was the hardest part. Steam is a download program which is required to be installed in order to play the game. If Steam is down, you still have the option to play the game offline, but only after you've successfully registered the game online. It's a pain in the butt, and hopefully nobody else will use this system in the future.

Once you're in the game, you're in for a treat. EVERYTHING about the game is top-notch. I'm not even running it on a high-end machine (by today's standards) and it looks great. The sound is also very, very realistic.
If you don't have the latest, cutting-edge hardware, you may experience slightly longer load times, a few audio hiccups while the next level starts, and scaled-back graphics... but that's about the worst of it. If you have a brand-new machine, prepare yourself for a flawless, fluid, ultra-realistic gaming experience.
If you can remember the hype surrounding Doom III, and then felt disappointed by the lack of original gameplay, rest assured - this is not Doom III. The look, feel, story, and overall gameplay will make HL2 really set itself apart from D3. Don't get me wrong, D3 has it's place on my hard drive and won't be taken off any time soon. But HL2 will have me glued to my PC a little longer than D3 ever did, and I can use my flashlight and gun at the same time!

If you enjoyed the original, you'll enjoy the sequel.

Ode to Half-Life 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: December 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

'Twas my birthday 'pon the sixth of December,
A day which I will clearly remember
For on this day with a couple of books
I recieved a gift that deserved more than one look
Too my glee on a box the g-man I spotted
with a face all pale and severely blotted
I screamed with glee and like a flash
I sprinted to my computer to start loading my stash
Although my face had a smile that beamed,
it soon was replaced by a grimace when I uploaded steam.
Forever it seemed the game would take
to load at least until it was late.
However in the time that took no more than an hour
The game was ready which I happily devoured,
All the graphics and physics were more than a dream
the game is so good it is almost obsene!
With wonder I look at al of the game's faces,
their movements, emotions and photo-realistic places.
New weapons and ways to despatch all your foes
This game is better than both the Halos!
The gravity gun I used for a laugh
as I picked up a blade and sliced a zombie in half!
In this game there are no bloopers
there are even bugs from starship troopers!
Aliens, portals, instant transportation!
There's nothing that shall quell my admiration
My friends it's true, there's even squad based action,
and enough thrills to put you in traction!
With so many avenues to explore,
it is hard for Half-Life to ever become a bore!
When a shooter is put at 20 hours+
it's hard to consider even making a fuss
And if for single-play you have remorse,
just fire up some counter-strike source!
A mod if you never played is a sin,
for it's the only place where terrorists can win!
So my friends in this holiday time,
when someone writes a review totally in rhyme,
question not the sanity of the critic,
even if he did like chronicles of riddick.
Think only of the best game ever made,
and all the money you will have saved
by buying this game before all others
a game that will be loved even by your mothers.
Hey does anyone have some salve?
Sorry it's the only thing that would rhyme with Valve.
The developer to which all praise must be given
Half-Life 2 is the reason for liven
Far-Cry weeps and Doom 3 sighs,
when they are under Half-life's eyes.
As for now I wait eagerly,
of the currently-in-development Half-Life 3
And this is where I shall end this review,
of the best game ever, and it's NOT Halo 2.
And if you believe I have to much time on my hands
it only because I'm Gordon's biggest fan.

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