Half-Life 2

[Nystul]

Lots of interesting comparisons here against games I haven't played (other than Doom 3, which is useless to compare anything against due to it's extreme strengths and weaknesses). Have either of you played RTCW, for comparison?

Half-Life was always one of those "I'll buy it when it hits the bargain bin," games. Thanks to Counterstrike, it still sells around here for the price of a bloody new game however many years later. So I still don't know what I'm missing.

Farcry makes me wonder, though. I haven't really given it a fair chance yet, but somehow the control just doesn't feel right (and yes, any time I hop in a buggy it is flipping over before I even figure out where the gas pedal is). I think I might be a hopeless flat-earth Quake player. I roll my eyes at any FPS review that mentions the word "physics" in the first paragraph.

[Kandrathe]

Brutal.
...

By the way, I did try Unreal. The original, that is. The controls were, to borrow your turn of phrase, Craptastic, and they were not configurable. That was a sin for which they remain Unforgiven, as I have skipped that entire franchise since then. I can be just as brutal as you. I think that's why we get along so well.
...

I never liked the original Quake, however I played it with my college friends. When Unreal came out I was also unimpressed. Lately, an employee of mine suggested an after hours game of UT2004. While still keeping some of the schlock of the genre (ala Redeemer), it was nothing like the original. For sheer in your face adrenaline rush team FPS, I think UT2004 is a serious contender. You might want to give them another chance. The demo is accurate and free.

Oh, and BTW I'm with you on the enjoyment of HL2 -- I don't expect too much for my $20-$40, just the equivalent entertainment value of a similar purchase of DVD's, CD's, or movie tickets. So, for instance, I'm Cyrenish on FarCry. It took me 2 hours to beat it on hard difficulty, with little replay value and multiplayer is irrepairably broken with the last patch.

[Cyrene]

Well, I guess I'm done with Half Life 2.

Last night Steam borked and no one could play.

Today, you could connect, but it insisted on re-downloading the game. 4 hours later, the game stalls on load and I can't even alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del to task manager.
I don't guess there is a class-action lawsuit I can join?

[Cyrene]

I gave up, uninstalled Steam, and went on a search and destroy mission through my registry deleting anything that mentioned valve or steam. Then I re-downloaded Steam(ing pile of...), and let it reload Half-Life 2....AGAIN.

This resulted in yet another unplayable HL2 build, but I was able to toggle the "auto-update" funtion off, log, toggle on, log, and jumpstart the update to finally get a playable version back.

Of course, now all my savegames were gone, so I had to go to the console to jump to the map I was really on and get the appropriate weapons back. Finally, about 28 hours after the initial problem, I was back where I started. I was so excited I went to bed.

I think it would have been a lot easier to play if I had just pirated this game instead of buying it.