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Half-Life 2 apathy and more driver problems!
by Jolex Del Pilar

Sunday, September 12 2004

Half-Life 2 has officially become a victim of its own hype.

Hi,

I'm a little annoyed with Valve these days. I'm not even going to get into how much I hate steam, and how I think it's a poor way to protect against piracy or whatever Valve thinks it solves.

I just wanted to vent about Half-Life 2 and Valve's holier than thou attitude concerning the game. First they tell us the lie about the source code theft, like anyone really believes that. Now they are pre-loading files of Half-life 2 to people who pre-ordered or bought an expensive new ATI card. Yet, no demo, no release date, just a lot of hype for us other gamers who aren't putting cash into their pockets for other things. Well I think Valve can have their over hyped game. There are so many great shooters out now like Doom III, Far Cry, and Halo 2 for the xbox. To tell the truth, I'm probably going to skip out on Half-Life 2 until it drops into sale prices because I just dont think valve deserves my dollar anymore.

--- Allen Prins

Well Allen, that was certainly was filled with angst.

Not surprisingly, you're not the first gamer to voice their concerns about Half-Life 2's non-existant launch date. It all depends on what you really want. As you pointed out, there are some great shooter games available on the PC right now. It's not as if Half-Life 2 is going to completely revolutionize the genre into something radically different. From the various E3 demos and videos, Half-Life 2 is going to be a great shooter, but at its heart, it is still only a shooter. Hype in a way has become Half-Life 2's worst enemy. People are probably expecting more than what is admittedly fair from Valve. My advice is this, if you've waited this long, a few more months isn't going to hurt. If you are trying to wait for HL2 until its release, I suggest buying another great shooter title to tide you until then. Remember, in the end, it's just a game.

--- Jolex Del Pilar