hey, i've never actuallly played hl2 lost coast, should i?

i got it with the ob, and i was just wondering

is it a stand alone thing? or do i have to play up to a certain point in normal hl2 after installing it?

It's stand alone. Wasn't bad, but you really shouldn't be expecting an amazing experience from it either.

you can play it whenever you like. it's just a short 10 minute-ish demo of the engine update for Episode One... mainly just to show off HDR, which was a new thing at the time.

it's ok, nothing amazing. just a standard kind of level you'd expect to see in the Combine-centric middle chapters of Half-Life 2... with HDR lighting. it's not a big download anyway, so yeah you might as well play it.

Its like 20 - 30 minutes long. The equivalent of a chapter or half a chapter in HL2.

Lost Coast in an excerpt from a chapter that was cut out of the game. It's nothing more than an old tech demo that Valve put out to show off the engine updates they made for HL2:E1. The major focus of the demo is the HDR technology which was pretty new stuff at the time. It's still pretty fun though, plays just like any other part of HL2 (though it's most similar to the on-foot Highway 17 portions of the game). Considering it's free you should go ahead and play it. You won't get any more than 30 minutes of play out of it, but why pass up on it if it's free?

Also I think it has a performance test so you can see how good your computer runs with HDR on.

Since it's free, why not?

i got it with the ob, and i was just wondering

is it a stand alone thing? or do i have to play up to a certain point in normal hl2 after installing it?

REforever101

You sure should. It's a fun 15 minutes

It's not worth your time and nothing special. Play the other Half-Life 2 titles instead.