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Half-Life 2 Review
Product: Half-Life 2
Author: Weiye Zhou
Date Published: 12/03/04
MSRP: $55
Provided By: Vivendi Universal Games
Author: Weiye Zhou
Date Published: 12/03/04
MSRP: $55
Provided By: Vivendi Universal Games
Introduction
It was 1999 and I was browsing through games at the Electronics Boutique in Lloyd Center. I can't
remember what the big games were back then, but I do remember coming across a copy of Half-life
for $20 bucks. I had heard good things about it, but never considered buying it until now. What
the heck, It's only $20 bucks. That has to be one of the best purchases I've ever made. I spent
hours and hours playing single player and the They Hunger mod. Of course, I didn't have broadband
back then, so I didn't get the pleasure of playing online. Then this mod called "Counter-Strike"
started to become popular… It was still in beta 7.1 stage when I started playing and I still play
it today along with over 100,00 people (Steam statistics)! I've also put endless hours into Day of
Defeat and sometimes Team Fortress Classic. This was Half-life and it has provided me with over
four years of non-stop entertainment. My expectations of Half-life 2 are no less.
Yes, its finally here...
Installation
I waited and waited, but my copy of Half-life 2 finally came in the mail! The CD version of the game
comes with five CD's, a quick reference card and a little note about the Counter-Strike: Source
installation bug. Fortunately, I didn't have to install the game from five CD's as I already had
everything on my HD in encrypted form. I simply opened up my Steam account that's registered with
the same CD-Key I bought over four years ago. I clicked on "Register a product I already own…" and
entered in my HL2 CD-Key. After doing so and clicking on next, it said I needed to insert the first
CD for verification purposes. I stared at it because I had expected a quick installation so I could
start playing immediately, that and I didn't have a CD-ROM installed at the time because of my crazy
tweaking. Ok, so I clicked on cancel, shut down my computer and installed a CD-ROM before booting up
again. Now I tried it again with the CD in the drive and it went through. The decryption took about
ten minutes or so. After that completed, I took the CD out and double clicked on HL2 to start playing
it; it wanted the first CD again. Great, I put it in again and it finally started up. The installation
was a hassle, but I can understand their need to protect the game.
First Impressions
Finally, I get to play to game! After the game loaded, it presented me with the main menu and an
active background of the first level. I started at it for a few minutes before starting up a new
single player game. Presented to me was a rather large image of the G-Man talking. To tell you
the truth, he scares me... After his speech and a quick recollection of the past, I appeared in a tram
heading towards City 17. This is very similar to the beginning of the original Half-life, but with
a huge graphical facelift. The first thing I noticed was how much better everything looked. Especially
the G-Man, its like day and night. I finally got out of the tram before staring at random people
and trying to talk to them. The game starts to get interesting after you meet up with Alyx...
He scares me...
There's a big difference between the old tram and the new one (click for bigger picture).
The main menu (click for bigger picture).
