Amazon.com: Saxman642's review of Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition

Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition B000AOE14M Electronic Arts Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition Video Games Excellent Game... but you'll get Steamed waiting to play! I have owned this game for just about a month now and I must admit. HL and HL2 are the best games I have EVER played!

HL - Source: while the game was certainly very good. I do feel cheated by the fact that the Source engine was not fully tuilized. I understand it doesn't look much diferent from the original HL except for better water effects. but you do have your scary moments. Overall, very good for an 8 year old game.

HL2: This is where the fun REALLY began... character appearances and behaviours are so lifelike. It's also the ONLY game I've played where AI ally characters say "excuse me" and "sorry" when I bump into them.

HL2 - Deathmatch: definitely a fast paced game where the gravity gun makes everything movable around you a weapon... just know that you are very prone to one-hit kills - with a toilet bowl!

HL2 mods: OMG..... The mods people are creating out there for Half-Life 2 are simply amazing!! get your hands on a download of the "Mistake of Pythagoras" mod. You'll be hooked forthwith looking for mods.

Now I come to my criticisms:

- game playing time is just a tad too short for me... beat both games in just about 2 weeks in between living life.
- WHY ON EARTH Does a game ship with FIVE CDs.... Don't these people know about DVD media??
- STEAM: (one star DEFINITEY deducted for this!) If ever there was an intrusive engine, Steam is it.... at least Sony's DRM was actually removable. I literally waited THREE hours between popping the CDS in my PC to install and actually playing the said game! You just installed the game, yet you still have to wait for HLS source files to download and install. (God help those on anything less than 256Kbytes/ps!) You are forced to register as soon as you've installed and also activate (What is this? Windows XP on steroids??).

What also really annoys me is that you MUST be online to play, even in single player mode. (At least having the CD in th drive is no longer required at this point.) So what happens if my DSL connection dies? And there is always an "update" that you are forced to wait on to finish before playing?? Geez! Can't these updates be done in the background? How no-brainer is that??

I just hope I can find a way to back up all these "updates" that Steam put on my PC... I swear I'll spin a tornado if I ever have to reload Windows on my PC and go through THAT torture again.

Conceeding that Getting STEAMED will be a permanent part of your HL2 experience, The games are good enough for me to go out and acquire the stand-alone expansions Episodes 1 and 2. If you are gonna buy this game, get DSL at 256K or higher! you have been warned! Saxman642 November 10, 2006

Fun: 5
Overall: 5
Overall: 5

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