ok, guess what, you dont EVER have to update half life 2 to play it..
Out of the box, the game has alot of bugs that can make loading times extremely long and with tons of choppy-choppy sound stuttering, etc. I had 2-4 minute load times between levels when I played the game back in December. Now, all patched up, the loading is "reasonable" and I rarely ever get the stuttering/slow-down.
9800pro? honestly?
Gf runs a Geforce4 MX420
Plays GREAT in 800x600 low detail, and honestly, looks REALLY good for what the card is..
HL2 scales really well.. you dont have to have high end to get the most out of the game..
You trying to pick a fight? He asked if it was WORTH THE WAIT. And honestly, is it worth the wait quite as much if you're running an ass of a machine? THe point is the game is gorgeous with decent hardware. Cut the attitude... It's not like I said "HL2 sux! Go buy an Xbox!"
And why do you hate steam? because it WORKS? because patches are SEEMLESS? beacuse you dont have to do ANYTHING to find info about patch notes or changes?
People like freedom. Anything that restricts them when they've paid for something is bound to get people angry. OK, I take it back. I don't "hate" Steam, but it can be annoying. One example is the other day I go to play HL2 and I couldn't because Steam decided to update the game. Even though I have broadband, it took 10 minutes to be done. How hard is it to add the option "notify me of any updates" instead of the current all or nothing options.
The other problem is when people lose their net connections, they sometimes can't even play in offline mode. Imagine if you felt like driving somewhere and your car had to "check in" with Ford before letting you start it.
Anyways chill out. It's a great game.
Out of the box, i had ZERO issues playing from beginning to end..
Stuttering was from Autosave, Turn it off.. Load times are hardly shorter, and slowdown ive noticed no different, even comming from a 9800pro to a 6800gt
Picking a fight? no, hardly.. simple experiance with the game and different hardware.. runs great on everything in my home, gf4mx420, 9200se, 6800gt, 9600xt.. looks great on all of them.. YES it looks OMG PWN better on the 6800 compaired to the gf4, but still looks fab even on it.. and it dont ruin the game at all.. hell if anything you can play it through a second time on the new hardware and play a totally new game.. so yes its NOT worth waiting play it twice, you wont regret it..
Steam didnt STOP you, simply turn off auto update.. there you beat the system..
Reason it didnt "notify you" is because if you notice it checks itself on to START ON WINDOWS STARTUP.. why? because not everyone just jumps onto steam ONLY when they want to play, hell i have it running right now and havent played in 6 hours.. by the time i would have came back, it would have been updated..
hell patches are TINY anyways if you keep current.. maybe a whole 2 min on broadband, even the big CS:S update recently was only 30 megs.. OMG HUGE!!111!!pWND!!11