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As I type this, Steam has started to preload Half-Life 2 onto my computer. It just hit 1.0%. It’s good that they measure the progress down to the nearest 0.1%, or else people could well go insane at the slow progress, no doubt due to the enormous size of the download. I don’t even know how big it is, but I’m just assuming it’s somewhere between 1 and 2 gigs. I uninstalled UT2004 to get more space on my HDD for this. It isn’t something I wanted to do, but that game runs so unplayably bad for me when I have a decent number of bots or a good sized onslaught map, it’s just not worth the 5 gig of space it takes up. Besides, I kept the demo. It runs better anyway.
I’m hoping that having Steam installed on a different partition from my Windows installation will mean I won’t need to fiddle with too much when I do my badly-needed format. I haven’t actually decided when I’m going to do that, but I think I’ll need it for the performance boost. I haven’t formatted in almost 2 years. So, what are the plans of everyone here with regards to getting Half-Life 2? Anyone else preloading from Steam? Ooh, it’s up to 2.4% now.
Update: 7 hours on and I was wrong - It turned out to be a hefty 3 gig. They added in a third preload phase (the models) just recently.
12th September | Reply
Surprisingly, HL2 isn’t on my list of games to get since I don’t really have anything to play it on (although I could dust off my old P4 and try to get that working). If I was going to buy anything in that line, I’d be more tempted by Halo 2 and an XBox. To be honest, I wasn’t mad keen on the original (although it did have its moments) and thought it was blown out of all proportion. I mean, whoever said it had a good plot needed their head examining since it was straight out of a poor B-Movie. Still, fighting the marines was fun and the deathmatch mode saw more online time from me than any other shooter.
No, it’s Halo 2 for me if anything.
12th September | Reply
A locked copy of Half-Life 2 is now on your computer.
I’ve had that for a couple weeks actually. I wonder if it has added extra preloads when i haven’t been paying attention.
13th September | Reply
I never really found Half-life that great. I certainly never saw the huge thing about it, so I am so far not particularly worried about HL2
13th September | Reply
@Cyrris, its interesting you uninstall UT2004 because it doesnt run very well, only to install a game thats even more system heavy. What makes you think HL2 will be any different?
13th September | Reply
I can reinstall UT2004 at any time, so it’s not a problem. One of the main reasons I targetted that was also because it’s the single biggest game I have, so it made the single biggest difference on uninstall. I also uninstalled BF1942, and Far Cry. Far Cry runs alright, but I don’t like singleplayer FPS games much at all.
Which is amusing, because Half-Life 2 is also a singleplayer FPS. But, unlike UT2004 and Far Cry, this Half-Life 2 game will be one of the few that is actually mine, not my brother’s or borrowed from a friend. Plus, even though I think it’ll run worse than UT2004, and it’ll be just as boring as I find Far Cry, I still want it. It’s not every day you get a legitimate new-release game for free. I never liked the first Half-Life, but I was into CS (not online though). Now I have broadband, CS:Source looks like a real possibility, and my ISP runs servers that actually aren’t full of wankers.
I intend on doing a PC upgrade within 6 months anyway, so with that, games using the source engine should run fine. But even then, playing HL2 in singleplayer will, in my opinion, still be less CPU-intensive than a good-sized UT2004 onslaught map with 11 or so bots or other players. There’s just less happening at any one time.
I only ever had HL for the mods. Now I’ll have HL2 for the same reason, but I’ll still give the singleplayer a go for a while, because you know, it’s meant to be so highly anticipated and all.
13th September | Reply
I dunno, I admit onslaught is the heaviest gamemode for UT, but the engine isnt as heavy as the HL2 engine (which is also a lot prettier). And bots certainly add to the cpu load for UT, but UT is only enjoyed with other players. bots suck big time.
And highly anticipated doesnt mean its gonna be good. Black and White was highly anticipated and hyped, much like half life 2, and BnW turned out to be dissapointing…
13th September | Reply
I’m not expecting to like HL2 - I already know I don’t like SP FPS games. But I know CS will be OK as I’ve been a part of the Beta, and I’d say it’ll run about the same aswell, and it runs ok. Granted, de_dust is a small map, but as I said, an upgrade is on the way.