Two words: No Multiplayer

<font color=pink>More words: stores are opening at midnight for Halo 2, not HL2 ;) </font>

Hmm, thats about 1,2,3,4.....bah, I cant be bothered counting, you were right LB [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Well... put it this way, My Geforce3 had the same basic hardware as the XBox has, although my card was a bit faster than the XBox version (Ti500). The GF3 is now a full 3 generations old, since then I've upgraded first to a GeforceFX 5700, then to a 6800 GT (I skipped over the GF4's). The old GF3 is basically incapable of running most of the games I'm playing at decent resolution/quality. In fact my 5700 (which is less than a year old) has serious difficulties with some of the newest DX9 games (Far cry, Doom 3, and I expect Half Life 2).

I don't know why the XBox isn't getting pushed hard, but it's not because the games are't capable of it, any of the DX9 games would bring the Xbox to it's knees... I expect you'd be lucky to get 2 frames per second of Far Cry with all the goodies enabled (although Far Cry WILL play on the GF3, quite well, if you turn all the settings down)

Not much point in opening at midnight for HL2... those of us who want it that bad already have it and are just waiting for midnight to get the unlock key. ;) Sadly... Halo 2 only has the antiquated "go to the store and buy the box" distribution method. [img]tongue.gif[/img] It's been years since I've seen as much potential in a title as I'm seeing in HL2. I am excited about the game, as shocking as that is to admit to myself. I certainly wasn't particulary excited about Doom 3, but the trailers for HL2 HAVE been encouraging...

It's not so much the action scenes (although those were very cool) but more the glimpses of gameplay, entering the city, walking around the apartment building while the cops (or whatever they are) were raiding the next door apartment, if those are indicitave of a well developed plot then this game will be one of the great ones.

And as far as muliplayer goes, the Source engine is fully multiplayer capable (see Counterstrike:Source), so I've already read that there are multiplayer tweaks in the works. It's not so much that HL2 ISN'T multiplayer, but rather that they wanted to concentrate on the single player experience and get that perfect (fine by me).

[ 11-02-2004, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

Its because you still want Multiplayer, localy and online, and even with a broadband connection, if you have extreme graphics, it makes it MUCh harder to have smooth gameplay. There is also a limit to the size of the game, it cant be bigger than the DVD, not only that, but because The Xbox doesnt read files from a hard drive like a computer, the DVD-Rom must cope with huge loads of data anyway.

[ 10-27-2004, 09:12 AM: Message edited by: Hivetyrant ]

Only thing I need half life 2 for is to play counter strike source.

Why should Valve even try and create a Half-life multiplayer if they know that Counterstrike is availiable anyway?

Stores opening at Midnight for Halo 2? Steam is gonna be runnin overtime when Half-life 2 is availiable! :D

Graphic worries? That's the genius of it all, the incredibly innovative thing that Valve did with the game's engine is make it Direct-x reliant, so it will automatically configure itself to be playable on any standard respectable Computer and not just the Top-range machines! :D One of the reasons Edge gave it a 10 apparently, revolutionary thinking :D

Halo 2 is going to be good, damn good, but Half-life 2's the daddy! :D

[img]graemlins/nono.gif[/img]

They wanted to work on the single player storyline, and they didn't make a multiplayer mode? They did make a Source version of Counterstrike, but they couldn't make a Source version of the original Half-Life multiplayer?
I don't count tweaks or mods as something the game has to offer. Either the game developers offer multiplayer, or they don't. And as Valve doesn't offer any multiplayer for Half-Life 2 this is (IMHO) something sorely missed.

IMO Tweaks and Mods are most of the value of a shooter these days. Once the single player campaign is finished and you get into multiplayer, it's almost always the quality of the mods that decide if the mp game is going to be a success or not.

here's an online analysis I found that I basically agree with: