Half Life 2 is over
Well… First of all - the game didn’t disappoint. Actually, the deeper it was in the game, the more intense was the action. Honestly - I didn’t have time to get through the game, so starting somewhere in the middle I turned on the God mode and went guns ablazing. Certainly some gameplay was lost but what I got in return was uninterruptable story line. I’m not going to talk about the graphics, since my set up was far from either optimal or minimal, so I set all the options on medium and was happy about it.
The beginning Valve did a great deal of damage to their fan base. At least I hope they’ll understand what kind of stupid mistake it was to require Steam account and loading Steam files in order to play the game. Oh, and Steam must be active on your PC in order to play. I don’t want another piece of spyware on my PC, really. No need to sell it for me. Microsoft has been happy with online activation so far, lot of other companies are as well. The way I see it, the install of the licensed game now as much a problem as finding, downloading and installing a pirated version. We, the legitimate customers, don’t deserve such attitude. It seems to me that it is NOT POSSIBLE to protect the game from being ripped by pirates. So instead of complicating the matters of installing and playing for legit users - give us a discount. Drop the security scheme, pass the savings to us. I’m sure that if a collector’s edition would have had a $69.99 price tag, instead of $79.99 - MORE PEOPLE WOULD ACTUALLY BUY IT. And if a bare game that is sold for $54.99 would cost $39.99 - LESS PEOPLE WOULD TURN TO PIRATES IN ORDER TO OBTAIN THE GAME. Unfortunately, it’s not even up to developers, but to publishers… and those ARE people who are ready, able and willing to rip you off any possible way they can imagine.
The plot The gameplay. Don’t know why developers think they must include certain types of levels. That’s the reason why I extremely hate to play Lucas Art’s games - because they ALWAYS have mazes of tunnels. Because they always have jumping puzzles. And I HATE THEM wholeheartedly. Valve did a great job of keeping a good proportion of aforementioned things, the only level that got me bored was the Sands-something. That’s when I turned to God mode - it took a lot of time to pass that level without one AND it involved jumping puzzle. The rest was a bliss. Oh, and the buggy ride is a bit long, although totally justified by plot.
The ending NO SPOILERS! The ending was a bit unexpected, but only a bit. Out of all the possibilities Valve brought the one that is least interesting and most profitable. Why? Because it almost says Get ready for Half Life 3.
The verdict MUST HAVE. I actually went to the CompUSA on Thursday and bought collector’s edition, with the T-shirt and some crappy book. So far, it wasn’t disappointing.
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