Since so many regulars here have stated that they have never played HL2, I figured I would hop on in and check it out.

First off: the anti-piracy device on the HL games nowadays is a little extreme. Every time you load up one of the games (I've got HL: Source and HL2 activated so far), it goes on-line to see if, indeed, you have a legitimate copy. Every time. Why doesn't Valve just trust you after the first time? Wish I knew.

The good thing about it is it auto-patches the game for you, and allows you to go into off-line mode after the first load-up. Still, that type of hole in my security is a bit more than I feel comfortable with... oh well.

And the game?

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

I've played my share of FPS games before (Doom 3, Quake 4, Unreal, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Tron 2.0... wish I still had that one), but HL2... :shock: The graphics, the sound, the storyline (so far: I'm only 4 or 5 chapters in)... it's so realistic, it's scary.

And the gameplay... Doom 3 was the first videogame to actually scare me. I've watched dozens of horror movies, so I consider myself somewhat used to shocks; D3 made me jump so many times, and threw so many curveballs at me, I didn't sleep well for a month (not that anyone really noticed).

HL 2 is having the same effect. In spades. Watching mutated humans come at you from a deserted-looking, blood-splattered building, moving so realistically you'd swear it was filmed on location... :shock:

I like it, though. Somewhere, I think it's written that RTS and RPG players can't like first-person shooters... but since I'm not normal (big revelation there, huh? :lol: ) I can say with certainty that this game just rocks. If anything, the hype around it doesn't really do it justice.

If you just want a break from commanding an army, you could do a lot worse... but not really much better.