Half Life 2 is Released!!

Jonbo298 · 11-16-2004, 03:11 AM

Never have I seen a more prettier site then in the image included. Validation is taking awhile but just knowing the fact that any minute now I'm immersed in the world of HL2 is killing me >_<

Canyarion · 11-16-2004, 03:15 AM

Haha, have fun!

You and Jason have been looking forward to this.

Jonbo298 · 11-16-2004, 06:13 AM

First impressions playing from 2am-5am is awesome. The "cut scenes" are done very nice, the graphics are superb, sound is superb also (5.1, although I wanna hear it in 7.1 if I could), storyline is good so far even though sometimes I seem to "forget" a part of a story or what I'm supposed to do since its been awhile since I remember getting the next "part".

But overall, first impressions are excellent. Easily a 9.8 in my books. My only small complaint is that some of the textures indoors are kind of bland (ie: needs higher quality textures indoors). But other then that small complaint, it's gone very well so far.

Jason1 · 11-16-2004, 11:07 PM

Yea, Authentication did take awhile, got me a little worried. But it worked, and Ive played for about 2 hours so far.

I had high hopes. Very high hopes. And so far, those hopes have been met and just about exceeded. The source engine is amazing. Just amazing. I had some slight worries that it wouldnt run so well on my system...Boy was I wrong. Ive got everything on medium settings, looks fantastic, and it runs great. Character models are by far the best ive seen, nothing else even comes close really. Physics are perfect...and the game actually makes you use them, which is an absolute treat instead of the hassle it couldve been. But what good are all the amasing technical aspects if it isnt any fun to play right? Well, it is fun to play. Very. Granted the standard formula dosent seem to stray too far from the origional so far, its still almost perfect. You really cant beat crawling around through pipes, through the winding underbelly of city 17, blasting combine soilders and other things as you progress. Game sounds fantastic too, uses that awsome technoish music at just the right times. If I have one complaint so far its a very minor gripe of the game stuttering a bit when a new important background noise is about to happen, or a huge explosion is about to go off. This could be just because im using integrated sound though.

Anyways, if your computer can handle it: GET THIS GAME.

Best 55 dollars ive ever spent so far, and ive barely touched the surface.

Null · 11-16-2004, 11:11 PM

first game in a long long time that has me itching and itching to play more. loving it. So far... Game of the Year EASILY.

btw. Jason, try turning sound quality down any? i tried on medium and it still sounds just as good really.

Jonbo298 · 11-16-2004, 11:54 PM

This is the first game since City of Heroes that gets me to play for hours on end. Easily GOTY in my books

Canyarion · 11-17-2004, 12:43 AM

Blast, I want this game!

But for now, WoW has me hooked.... but their beta will only last for a couple of days.

Seth · 11-17-2004, 01:42 AM

What PC specs are you running Jason?

Null?

I have a Pentium 2.4 and a geforce ti4600.

It's getting pretty old for this

I wanna play it so bad

Jonbo298 · 11-17-2004, 02:58 AM

You can play it fine. You can have a video card that is for DX7 only and it'll run HL2.

Valve thought about its gamers more when it made HL2 then iD did with Doom3

so you'll be fine with any current video card DX7 and up (albeit a little more ****ty looking but still very playable)

Null · 11-17-2004, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seth

What PC specs are you running Jason?

Null?

I have a Pentium 2.4 and a geforce ti4600.

It's getting pretty old for this

I wanna play it so bad

mines a 2.66ghz p4, Radeon 9600XT, 1gb DDR RAM.

i might try overclocking it again to a 3.0ghz tho. last time i did that Unreal kept booting me out so i never played around with it. i should be able to get it stable at the speed if i adjust some other stuff tho.

Jason1 · 11-17-2004, 07:48 PM

Ive got a P4 2.66ghz with a RADEON 9500pro. 512MB's RAM.

Im glad ive got a DirectX9 card...game looks stunning.

I just might try lowering the sound quality a bit, see if it helps...its not really a huge problem...

Canyarion · 11-18-2004, 03:02 AM

I have a Athlon XP 2400+, 512 MB and a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, how will it run?

Null · 11-18-2004, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canyarion

I have a Athlon XP 2400+, 512 MB and a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, how will it run?

i dont really see you having any problems unless you go trying to crank up every setting. But then again you dont need to crank up every setting cuz the game still looks great on the lower settings.

Blackmane · 11-18-2004, 10:10 AM

Half Life 2 is so much better than Doom 3 in it's scalability. I heard from someone running at bare minimum requirements, and they were still able to play smoothly, and said the game still looked decent.

So, if you have the minimum specs, no viruses and a defraged harddrive, you should have no problem playing HL 2.

My specs:

P4 2.6ghz
Gforce 4 5200 overclocked or something.
512 Mb Ram

Middle of the line. I want to get a gig of memory to speed up the load times.

Anyways, HL 2 is rockin!!! So addicting! I have skipped 2 days of school on accident because of this game because I lose track of time.

Jonbo298 · 11-18-2004, 12:03 PM

Typically when Valve/HL2 auto-detects settings, it does a good job. But you could probably turn it up a bit more in some spots if its good. For the GF4ti/FX series its either gonna choose DX8.0/8.1 as the default and it should run smooth with the looks a smidge toned down (but still awesome looking).