You have to buy food or else you'll starve to death! So, Valve should add that too. 

that was Ultima III right? Those games take me back. Good God, some of those were difficult. Scenerios like having to use a high level teleport spell to move through a series of enclosed caverns, and then resting up after every jaunt. If developers made games that difficult these days all you would hear is bitch, bitch, moan, moan from the candyass critical community (rocking on my porch, shaking my cane). 

of Quake level reviews excepted from the above, for what I have in mind http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/WhatsWrongwithGameJournal.html

and the ladies of Game Player Magazine who can't be bothered to put out their Virginia Slims while using a keyboard. 

That title has nothing to do with anything but I thought it sounded cool.

In the last few months I've read several articles about why game journalism sucks. There are plenty of people out there already doing something about it. Nintendorks, Game Girl Advance, and Grand Text Auto are a few of the cooler indy game sites out there. 

This is not a resurecting thread, it's just my humble opinion about HL2 I lately played (compared to you guys) these last days...
I finally found the time to play HL2, and what a good surprise ! Like many of you said previously: this game is really better than Doom3. Doom3 is very very (very ...) linear, and all the game is based on the fear ambiance, and the darkness... HL2 is rather on the opposite side (like difference between the Force, and its dark side...). Even if the ambiance is not as good as in Doom3 (the game are rather different on this point), the gameplay is much more impressive (you have many possibilities of interactivity with your environment), the textures are quite similar, while HL2 have more outside textures, and it's not so dark !!! In fact, I found much more fun here !... I was very far to think it was so good... and I really prefer HL2 to Doom3 now... Well, I'm playing in SP mode, and after 6 or 7 levels, I'm not even satisfied: I want more and more... hoping it's endless ;)
Thanks to Valve and Siera for this fun moment... I'm now waiting for HL3 ! 

http://horsti.pinguinhoehle.de/~palpatine/lonestar/HL2%20Dominos.wmv
2.2mb 

Okay, so it's very, very obvious, but it's also very, very cool. Respect to him and respect to Valve for making such things possible. 

Now let's see the D3 version >:} 

D3 domino would be build with exploding barel ... 

I just found it:
http://www.playground.ru/files/5905/
Screenshots:
http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/9963/95dh.jpg
http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/157/140kd.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8726/151dv.jpg

What is this:

- The Cinematic Modification adds Hires-Textures to all human characters, some non-human characters, nearly all items, walls and vehicles (and the vending mashine of course). (Hint: If you prefer the original Low-Res Textures, delete or rename the "materials" folder inside the Mod.)

- It replaces the original HL2 music with a more classic score in the style of large Hollywood productions, that fits to the specific game-situations. More orchestral, more ambient, with unique themes for combines and Alyx. (Hint: If you prefer the original HL2-music score, delete or rename the "sound" folder and the "scripts" folder inside the Mod.)

- It adds a new weapons-balancing and strengthens all the weapons to a more realistic level. No more firing numerous rounds at the combines; kill them with 3 to 5 direct hits, just like in real-life combat, but beware: Your opponents weapons are comparable. After 3 to 5 direct hits (or 1 direct headshot) you *will* be killed. (Hint: If you prefer the original Weapons balancing, delete the file "skill.cfg" inside the Mod's cfg-folder)

- The additional Insane Hires Props are previous unreleased Hirestextures for nearly all props in the game, even little items like binders, computerparts, doorlocks and so on. The huge amount of details will give your HL2 virtually the look of a render-intro, but be warned: The amount of new textures will tax your hardware to the limit. Better don't use this pack with outdated DirectX8 cards. Don't even think about it, unless you are using a 256+ MB card.

I can't test it since I don't have HL2, but I would love too :> 

Which is not only free of any real substance, but doesn't stack up to the quality of the original art.

wd texture sharpening dudes, make something orginal and useful next time. 

At least it's a step in the right direction for the texture-replacement trend. Just going by the shots, it looks pretty consistent with the original content. 

looks like they added layer of dirt/damage over some. well, not much difference, but atleast they look NOT worse :) 

thanks 

np 

An interactive narrative built using first-person game technologies
http://www.thechineseroom.co.uk/esther.htm

This looks quite beautiful and atmospheric. I still wish there was a non-Steam HL2. 

...but how do artists learn to write these terrible Artist's Statements? It "interrogates the very notion of interactive narrative itself?" Really? Is there some required course in art school that teaches advanced thesaurus mining, torturous sentence convolution, and principles of applied pomposity? 

you just develop the instinct for it because it's the easiest way to veil that you're bullshitting your way through the latest assignment.

/me interrogates the very notion of some tequila 

Is in the 'trailer' ( watch it, it has to be heard to be believed ):

"doomed as a syphilitic cartographer" 

I just played through (I guess) most of Das Roboss and I must say that is so much more like I thought HL2 would be. Fantastic mod, highly recommended!

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/das-roboss-half-life-2/ 

that was pretty good!

I actually liked the sections before the end best - heavy but not overly challening combat in an environment that was kind of HL1ish. 

Whoopservatory is cool but a bit short and sparse. 

Still got a copy of HL2 on steam that I can give to anyone as a gift, so if you still dont own it for some reason and want to play it, just link me your steam account page :) 

yeah, I liked it but wish I could really have wandered around the place and taken it in at leisure - really only got to see the observatory in bits and pieces - felt pretty roped in...
one of those lower order issues that's not really an issue, in a way...

Still prefer mission improbable 1+2 

yeah although it was very well built, felt a bit too linear and roped in. Also, the cool ending was way too short (very neat idea though).

I have MI 1+2, as well as quite a few others downloaded. Will start playing through them, have the HL2 bug atm. MI3 shouldnt be far off apparetnly.