Half-Life 2

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I know, I know, this is a fantasy-adventure site. But I loved Half-Life 1. It had a well thought-out story, with great action, and at times, it was very funny and sarcastic. And who wouldn't want to fight his/her way through Black Mesa? With its ultra-cool envornments, or hazards? Opposing Force and Blue Shift were only shadows of the original, IMHO. But I played them anyway, for all the little they were worth.

Now, I can't wait for 2. I was crushed by the delay until November, but it is getting closer. And I think it will be worth it. But the hardware requirements look really steep. Check out this link:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/hl2_performance_preview_part1/

The thing is, these are all really state-of-the-art graphic cards for the most part. It looks as if ATI is really set for any of the newer games that will take advantage of DirectX 9 feature sets (Doom III included). What's in your machine? And, are you ready for H-L 2? Or, could you care less?

 

Should work... My comp was bought just last autumn. TFT will bring troubles, as I must run the game at resolutions like 1280x1024.

Hopefully HL2 won't be a disappointment, as it could have as large cadre of mods as the first part.

[ September 14, 2003, 13:56: Message edited by: Virne ]

 

I played the original and Blue Shift, and I agree that Blue Shift was wayyy too short. I have a 1.8 Athlon xp with a ATI 8500 128MB vidcard. I should be able to run it.

 

Ehh, I shouldn't have any problems running it on a Pentium 4 2.53 GHz with 512MB RAM(soon to be 1024MB), and a Radeon 9700 graphics card. I may even be able to turn on the AA and AF and still get decent frame rates!

I think the real appeal of Half-Life is the various mods like Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike. Hopefully they HL2 engine will be just as versatile and they will follow up with sequels to all the popular mods.

To be honest though, I'm much more hyped up about Deus Ex 2. That game should also have spectacular graphics, and hopefully gameplay and storyline to match. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Doom 3 .

 

When you're actually the guy (guys, girls) coding the game, I would expect that you'd be able to tell if everything you've coded in is appearing as it should.

That said, the game is beautiful without the Radeon9800pro. Yeah, that Duron probably won't cut it, for the engine alone; not to mention the graphics.

You'll have to turn down stuff with a Ti4200, at 1024x768, but the game will still look and play excellent. Very playable. The areas that have water, and places where the texture is cycling like electrical currents and leaves moving, really tie down the card; which is why the Dx9 cards hold up better. As you drop down the world detail, the displays become a lot more static, giving you back all your performance.

But at least one time, even though you're pulling 9fps, you should crank everything up to max (including your resolution), and just look around a little bit.

 

That will be a 'picture-gallery' experience. Still, if the engine is as good as in the first part, there *should* not be too much trouble. Example: Quake 3 -excelent engine.

 

There is more on HL2 system requirments at Firing Squad. I'm amazed that they are talking 1GB of RAM for a game, and a 2.8GHz P4 with Intel's newest chipsets to play this game at full potential. I just upgraded to a 2.6GHz P4 with 512MB of DDR 400 thinking that it would give me lots of headroom for future games - yeah, like two months in the futrue!

On the plus side (sort of) I just had to RMA my graphics card (nVidia Ti4200) so I am hoping that I will just receive credit to purchase a more current card. Right now I'm running my old GeForce 3. If they send me a new GeForce 4, oh well....

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/hl2_performance_preview_part2/default.asp