Half-Life 2: Initial Impression
on 11.22.04, 03:13pm in life • comments (2)
Over the weekend I finally got around to picking up Half-Life 2. Here’s my initial impression:
- 5 CD’s! Why isn’t this on a single DVD?
- Did anyone QA the install process? I kept on receiving an error during the installation on Disk 4 - turns out that it didn’t like the fact that I was telling it NOT to install CounterStrike (I only wanted Half-Life). Once I chose both, the install succeeded. Looks like it’s documented here
- I’m still undecided on the whole "Steam" process. While it’s cool to have content downloaded, it seemed to take forever to get the game up and running (then again, I had to install 4 times).
- Why do I need to insert a CD to play when I just spent an hour installing, verifying and decoding from Steam? That’s really annoying.
Finally, I was able to get the game up and running and guess what? It’s unplayable.
I hit the sound stuttering issue that’s plaguing everyone. More information can be found this thread on the Steam support forum, and the Half-Life 2 Stutter Web Site is keeping track of the latest updates. A patch is due out tomorow, so maybe I’ll get a chance to play it then.
Boy, I’m sure glad I plopped down $54 for this.
John (November 22, 2004 @ 3:27 pm)
Well, you could have gotten the Collector’s edition for $80 which has the game on DVD or even the Steam download versions which don’t require a disc in the drive to play. For me, I am still a little undecided on which version I’ll get. Most likely it’ll be the Steam Silver pack for $60. I’ve been busy doing other stuff, so I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I hope that when I do, all the problems people are running into will be fixed.
Charlie Kindel (November 23, 2004 @ 10:40 am)
Wow Steve, I had a completely different experience…on two machines. I chose to download HL2 from Valve via Steam instead of buying a retail package. I started it, went away for about 5 hours and when I came back HL2 (and CS) were ready to play. The only issue I had installing was on Windows XP x64 Edition (on an Athlon 64) their installer balked at writing to the “C:\Program Files (x86)” directory. I guess they didn’t like the parens. Installing it to C:\Vavle” worked fine.
Gameplay has been terrific on my systems. One is an Athlon 64 3400+ with an ATI FireGL (9800 based) board and the other is a Athlon 64 3700+ with an gForce 6800 Ultra.
I’m enjoying the game almost as much as Halo 2, although the quality of the experience provided by Halo 2 is simply better, even if the graphics aren’t. Halo 2 is just more polished and smooth. But, man is HL2 pretty.