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Steam-Blasted

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The game's great, but jumping through all 579 hoops required to register a Steam account just isn't worth the time and effort. Lord help you if you lose your Steam password, as I did.
The process for lost password: they send you an e-mail with your registration number and ask you a "secret question", which is: "what was the last secret passphrase we asked you?"!!!!!! I lost the password, but I'm supposed to know not only the "passphrase", but when it was asked?
You can't even e-mail these clowns for support unless you create a "support account", yet ANOTHER password!
Doing my taxes was far easier than dealing with Steam. They managed to kill any enjoyment I might have had from the game.

Steam prevented me from ever playing it...tech support rude and useless

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game used from Amazon Marketplace. Everything that I would expect to come with a used game came with this copy: CDs in good condition, original case/documentation/CD-key insert. The installation was trouble-free and was a lot quicker than some reviews here would lead you to believe. Everything about this purchase was looking good...

...that is until I tried to play the game. I wasn't able to activate the game via Steam, so I contacted Steam Powered Support. It took them over 3 weeks to reply to my support request. When they did, they were rude. (When they asked me where I purchased my copy, so I told them Amazon Marketplace. The support rep replied, "I doubt you bought a used copy from Amazon. I believe they are in the business of selling new software." WHAT A CLUELESS MORON!) So after sending them an image scan of my CD-key card with my Steam username written on it in ink just above the CD-key, they proceeded to ask me to send it again...which I did.

After two more weeks, I finally got the answer that CD-keys cannot be reset on used game CD purchases. They recommended I purchase the game through the Steam application (which does not sell the HL2: Game of the Year Edition.) To purchase all of the games that make up HL2:GOTYE via Steam, I'd spend more that way than if I'd just purchase another shrink-wrap copy of the CDs, which won't happen after this experience with their tech support.

Hell will freeze over before I spend any more money on Valve Software games again. People hated Microsoft when they started their product activation stuff, but even Microsoft is pretty lenient about giving out replacement keys to customers who appear honest. Valve has completely lost their minds with Steam. I hope they wise up soon, otherwise I hope they go out of business soon, arrogantly confident in their belief that they can abuse honest customers as much as they want and still make mountains of money.

You can't play what won't run

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Do not spend your money on this game. You have to have an internet connection to install the game and it will take a long time to update and install. Then you may find as I have that the game crashes as it loads the first new game. I haven't seen a playable frame yet. This is supposed to be an episodic release and episode 1 will not even play. I will never buy another Valve product again.

Don't Buy This Used!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you buy this game used, it will not play! The game must log onto the game developer's network and verify that your key is unused. If your key has already been used, they will not give you another one! (They will, however, give you the run around. They will also pit you against their crappy web "help" system.)

This is probably illegal, but for now, it is just a waste of the $20 to buy the CD.

A very, very disappointed customer. OH WOE TO VALVE!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I purchase this game for 20 dollars, I install it, and to my disappointment, it freezes on the loading screen. I underwent all the basic procedures of updating my video drivers (I have an ATI Radeon Xpress 200), made sure that Direct X was updated to its full capacity, I uninstalled and exited all unneccessary programs that may have interfered with Steam-but yet, I still get no response. once in a while, the game will tempt me by allowing me to get into the Main Menu and even once, letting me play parts of the first level. But NOOO! These brief excursions pose only as false hopes. I've gone through hours now trying to fix the problem.

I am very disappointed. Well, I'm going to go back to playing Minesweeper now. So much for high end gaming.

5 stars are not enough...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Games come out every day. Most, you play them once, you're finished. Usually you don't even finish them. You lose interest before it's even over.

Sometimes however, once every decade or so, a game comes out thats so compelling that you not only finish it once, but replay it a dozen times over, savouring every last moment, and scene, and action. HL2 is one of these.

It's simply stunning. From the beginning where you start off as a very ordinary joe getting off a dull and dingy train at a dull and dingy station it intrigues - who are the brutal east-european type guards who seem to watch your every movement? Why the dejected and down expressions on your fellow travellers? Why the incessant jabbering of the viewscreen whose voice seems to pervade every corner of the place that you can't get away from it? And why is it blathering such insinuating, yet obvious, propaganda? Clearly, something is very wrong in City 17. From then on it's a roller coaster of a frightening ride where you evade the police force (for thats what the guards are) into an increasingly deperate fight for personal survival and ultimately, it turns out, for the entire human race itself. Who are the mysterious overlords known as the Combine? Why do they seem to run Earth and why is there an air of unending gloom and depression that seems to hang over everything and everyone? Why does the human race itself seem doomed to extinction?

Half Life 2 will answer these questions, and present more and ever more complex ones that will bewilder and delight at the same time. There is much to admire here thats not obvious at first glance: the radio crackle of the Combine soldiers: listen to it, it's quite brilliant in it's authenticity and it will give clues to whats really happening not present elsewhere. The budding relationship between the hero and the daughter of one the rebels known as Alyx... ah, lovely Alyx. She comes over as a "real" believable character with her own personality and hidden depths, and emotion too. Has any videogame character been more compelling? Certainly few have been more believable, or believe-inable.

The great glory of HL2 is the set piece battles, the best being the battles with the Striders towards the end of the game. City 17 is reduced to smoking ruins by the end of it, and if you've seen documentaries about the fall of Leningrad or one the great WW2 battles, then you'll get the idea about this. And you'll really feel like you've been there at the fall of Leningrad, sorry, City 17. The Ravenholm section is like a mini-game in itself, and few are more creepy or downright disturbing. Imagine a shudder-inducing horror movie and you'll get the picture. Don't, like I did, play it alone in an empty house, in the wee small hours of a cold, dark winters' night. You'll have trouble sleeping for days.

There are so many jewels in this box it's hard to pick out individual parts but the storming of the Combine HQ, the Coast Road, and the tough Xen wildlife thats taking over the Earth (the fantastic AntLions that at first are a major menace and later become, temporarily at least, your major ally) really give a feeling of despair and at same time, hope for the future. The Combine must be defeated, and you, as Gordon Freeman, are the one to do it. If you like pure, non-stop mindless action a la UT2004 then this is probably not the game for you. If, on the other hand, you like thoughtful, reflective, intelligent and above all, grown-up gameplay that makes you think as much as much it makes you work your trigger finger, then you'll love this. I downloaded all the HalfLife games via Steam and had no problems with it.

Utterly, utterly wonderful. I loved it. My hat goes off to Valve. As good as a first rate action movie, and then some. And it's interactive. Valve, I salute you. 10/10.

VALVE = CROOKS

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 16
Date: May 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Valve has the perfect con going. They charge you forty bucks to buy a game that you can't play UNLESS you use steam to verify that you actually bought it but since STEAM may make your computer crash or freeze your system so you can't actually play the game and since you opened the box you can't return it to the the store and get your money back. INTELLECTUAL COPYRIGHT FASCISM has led to this state of affairs where crooks like VALVE can sell you products that don't work and YOU don't have the right to get your money back. Boycott VALVE and don't ever download games (from any company) so that we don't get to a future where STEAM is the only way to play games at all. That is the future these INTELLECTUAL COPYRIGHT HOLDER FASCISTS are drooling over. Don't give it to them.

Best game ever made. period.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Half-Life 2 is by far the best game for the PC, and maybe for every other system. It's about half as long as the original, but will still give you a good 17 hours of gameplay. Plus, it never gets dull.
The greatest edition by far is the Gravity Gun. Now you don't need to worry about only using 2 bullets, 1 grenade, etc. because the gravity gun needs no ammo. You can pull things from far away, break doors and use the splinters as flying knives, or throw a propane tank at zombies.
The graphics are also, in one word, amazing. If you can max them out, their breathtaking. If you can't, They still are. That's another advantage, almost any system can play it, no questions asked. I can run everything at medium, with the FPS getting below 10 very rarely, on my old
Toshiba laptop with 256mb of RAM, 64mb video card, 2.6GHz processor. And, any computer with at least DirectX 7.0 can run it.
Now, about steam: I don't really see what the big deal is. You can run it in offline mode, and it works fine for me. But for those that it doesn't, there is a little program called SteamBuster.
Another great thing is what you get in the package. Half-Life 2 alone is worth the 15. But you also get Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life: Source, which separate would be around 30 bucks.
All in all, there is no excuse for not buying this.

Awesome Game... Amazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the coolest game for the PC... Awesome Graphics and gameplay... and comes with Counter Strike Source which is basically my brothers life right now... he got no life otherwise.

Will only get you "Steamed"!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 14
Date: March 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought Half Life 2 after it had been recomended by countless other gamers. What I found was not a game but an exercise in frustration.

First thing you notice when you open the box is that there's no manual or documentation of any kind. NONE! But that is not the worst of it. In order to play Half Life 2 you must first intsall Valve's own online program called Steam. The only indication that I got that I had to install Steam and agree to their user agreement was on the specs sticker at the bottom of the box. Nowhere else on the box does it say that you have to install Steam on the package. And even that was a little ambiguous to say the least. Every time you want to play HL2 you have to sign into and connect to Valve's online network, even if you want to play the single player game. What's worse is that Steam drops a running process on to your MSCONFIG Startup list and there is no way to turn it off. Allegedly there's an offline mode but even after selecting it in the options menu it still I still couldn't turn off the Steam process. In essecnce even though you pay for the game you don't actually own it. If you try to uninstall Steam the game will not boot up. After finding this out I pretty much gave up on the game completely, since it was opened I couldn't return it and I had to eat the cost of the game.

So in a nutshell Half Life 2 was pretty much ruined by the installation of Valve's little monster called Steam. If you really want to play this game get it for a console that way you cut Steam completely out of the picture. But after this experience I don't think I can in good conscience recomend any Valve products in the future.

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