Half Life 2

this and halo 2 came this morning unfortunately they're going straight to santas grotto until christmas day

well... just finished this now... all in all one of the finest gaming experiences i've had to date.

i wont say too much about the end (for fear of giving anything away) other than 'riiiiiiiiiiight..... :spangled: '

im still kinda tryin to get my head around the implications... needless to say it shouts 'ANYONE FOR HALF LIFE 3????' very loudly.

ah well.

:worship: :clap:

oh... and for reference purposes... it takes about 4/5 hits with an rpg to take a strider down.

All problems sorted now

Just driving along the coast now. Frickin things coming out of the ground pissing me off

Still...amazing game. I'm enjoying this new gun (the machine-gun-kinda-one-with-blue/purple-bullet-things)...as well as the gravity gun which is a good laugh!

HL3 has already been confirmed.. Valve confirmed that they were doin it b4 hl2 was released..

Gonna be a few years yet though..

We'll probably see Duke Nukem Forever and Unreal 3 (Which looks absolutely fucking gorgeous) before HL3..

yeah... i knew it was in production... but the ending of hl:2 certainly demands more from 3... by the end you will have a lot of questions / theories to be answered/confirmed, and im more than happy to play through hl3 to get them but i do hope they dont take another 6 years to do so.

the last i had heard, valve said they would use source for the next installment of HL, so they could probs have it done in under a year... but im aint holding my breath for that.

im planning to play through hl2 again anyway... there are a number of hints / clues in there which first time through i may not have got... i want to know everything ... cos hl 2 has a very subtle plot, leaving much to the imagination (i feel a lot of this is down to the 'mute' character) , and lots more 'concrete' stuff has to be searched out...

i may wait until valve fix the stuttering problem (something to do with texture / sound preloads) but it deserves to be played again. im thinkin i might play through the original again on hl : source too...

HL: Source is meant to be crap.. well not crap but not up to what ppl expected.. no new graphics.. just new physics and pixel shaders..

However..

There is a mod in production where they are totally remaking the first game using the hl2 sdk and updating it with new textures.. the sketches of xen look awesome.. I'll try and find a link..

Yeah.. I heard bout this..

There are rumours flying round sayin that g man is actually a older version of Gordon Freeman.. but that doesn't make any sense though, cos otherwise would he have tried to help you out in black mesa??!???

I think I might be thinknin too much into things again

I can't wait for the whole story to actually make sense.. hopefully they on't botch it up like the guys who made the matrix trilogy..

I can't wait to play the 2nd one.. I was well impressed with the beta that was leaked.. and from what I've seen of the finished game its gonna be awesome..

Just waitin to get enough cash for my xt pe.. then I'll play it..

yeah... ive been readin every theory i can find... there's a good analysis of the opening / closing gman speeches on the halflife2.net board... no good readin them if you aint finished it yet of course cos it' tells you exactly what happens but its a good read... they have certainly left it open to speculation, that much is for sure.

as regards the 'gman' the original idea seemed to be 'government man' as the ending speech in the first game seems to suggest he is 'hiring' you to work for the government... but the second kinda confuses things a touch.

there's also a lot of speculation about the freeman = 'the one free man' thing... because for all intents and purposes he isnt free, he has merely became a 'tool' for someone... i'll stop before i ruin anything.