UNHchabo

"There are more important things than console prices...i.e., a video game showing that rape is an acceptable practice in life if it gets you out of jail..."

You don't HAVE to take it up the ass to get out of prison... it's just one option. Therefore, it's not rape if it's consentual. ;)

For your download problems, I'm guessing it's because Valve released content a little at a time. If you "fully preloaded" the first time they released the preload content, you downloaded that, and then left it alone. Valve released more preload content as the release date approached, but you likely didn't restart Steam in that time, so when it was released, you only had a little bit of what you were supposed to.

The G-Man was only present in the opening scene, nowhere else.

You certainly don't need a top of the line PC (or even high-end) to play games. The only question is how high you want your settings, and your acceptable frame rate.

My current machine is 3 years old, it's a P4 2.8 (pre-HyperThreading). Original specs included a GeForce4-MX440, and 512MB RAM. I was able to play the entire Half-life 1 collection, Call of Duty, BF1942, that entire generation of games. I had most settings at medium.

Half-life 2 comes out, and I'm running 800x600 at min. settings, and getting about 25-30fps. I upgrade to an FX5200 (small upgrade), and bought another 512MB of RAM, bringing me up to 1GB. This was $100 in upgrades.

Over a year later, Day of Defeat: Source comes out, and I start playing that extensively. Min. settings, 800x600, I'm getting 30-40fps. I buy a 6600GT for $130, and now all games run pretty well, at mid-to-high settings. I play HL2 games at 1024x768 or 1280x1024, with most settings fairly high (but no AA or AF, usually), and get between 40-60fps multiplayer, and 60-80fps singleplayer.

My point is, my current machine, built today, would cost about $500 to build. $70 motherboard, $100 processor, $130 video card, plus some other components. Games run perfectly fine for me, as long as I'm willing to sacrifice either settings or framerate.

As far as the engine goes, Valve is releasing updates as they develop the game. When they released Lost Coast, that introduced HDR to the Source Engine, and now they're going back and adding it to maps that were released before they implemented it. The maps in CS are a good example. So now every product they release has HDR in it, from DOD:S, to new CS:S maps, and now with HL2:E1.

With HL2:E1, Valve has also released another upgrade to the source engine. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a changelog of upgrades (the Steam News only listed "upgrades to the Source Engine"), but one telling sign is that my default graphics settings are up. I have an AGP 6600GT with a P4 2.8, and normally my settings include "Reflect World" for water, no antialiasing, and Trilinear Filtering. For HL2:E1, the defaults are now at "Reflect All", 2X AA, and 4X AF.

I think the length was perfect. It made me wanting more game, but in the "what happens next?" storyline sense, not the "this was a ripoff" sense.

My first run through the game I took about 7-8 hours of game time to get to the end. The second time through I turned on the commentary, and got through in about 5 hours. If you consider that HL2 was/is a $50 game that Valve estimated would take about 15 hours (I probably took at least 20), and this was a $20 game for which the estimate was 4-6 hours, it's still a good deal. On average you're getting about 35% of the game that HL2 is (not counting a commentary run, only the game itself), for about 40% of the cost.

But that's all mathematical anyway. It was a damned good game, much beter than anything else you'll find for $20.

Favorite parts (no spoilers):
-Alyx Vance's model in High Quality (only previously seen in the G-Man during the intro and ending)
-Alyx's lines: "Oh snap!", and her little situational humor
-Commentary
-Soundtrack to rival Valve's other two games
-"Zombine"

On a side note, I STILL hate poison headcrabs with a passion.