Half Life 2 Released 10 Years Ago Today

McSasquatch II

Where does the Valve time go...

Well, I suppose I should say "officially" released 10 years ago today, as we know what happened before that! I bought my first proper "gaming" PC in October '04 with this in mind. Probably a fair few Steam accounts turning ten today too? Anyway, there's an article over on Eurogamer to mark the occasion, and I imagine other gaming sites will be doing the same.

Varik

Oak76 wrote: »

Where does the Valve time go...

Well, I suppose I should say "officially" released 10 years ago today, as we know what happened before that! I bought my first proper "gaming" PC in October '04 with this in mind. Probably a fair few Steam accounts turning ten today too? Anyway, there's an article over on Eurogamer to mark the occasion, and I imagine other gaming sites will be doing the same.

I was pretty sure I got the game the Christmas after it came out but maybe that was the orange box, in any case I'm one of the 10 years of service crowd.

degrassinoel

same here, to this very day it seems

Dave_The_Sheep

That was quite the rage inducing day. Having a physical copy of the game, loaded the files into steam, only for steam to take 9 hours to decrypt the files.

It's come a long way since then.

nesf

7 years of service. The HL2 launch made me very wary of Steam for a good while.

Sierra Oscar

I remember having to update it on release day through Steam with dial-up. Not fun at the time!

McSasquatch II

Come to think of it, I had troubles with it at launch as well and left it for a few weeks because I was in the middle of a mammoth Rome TW campaign. :pac:

Certainly has come on a long way as a service since then.

Shiminay

I bought it on launch day, couldn't play it for almost 2 years cause I had no broadband. A reminder to all the steam fanbois that it too was a pile of non-working shyte when it launched.

I plan on getting stuck into it this week, my weekend's been too busy so far to do it.

lmimmfn

Its been so long i cant remember when i got it, but i was using dial up and Steam was awful, took forever to finally get to play.

With the whole VR thing im playing it regularly, its fantastic with the hydras.

Retr0gamer

I bought it and preloaded it with steam and was one of the lucky ones were steam worked perfectly. Spent the day playing the **** out of it and ringing my friend who also got it working to talk about how good it was.

mayordenis

Shiminay wrote: »

A reminder to all the steam fanbois that it too was a pile of non-working shyte when it launched.

while I have no major issue with Origin, and only minor gripes with Uplay. That is a stupid comment.

It was 10 years ago in a comparable internet dark age, where nobody had internet, they were also really the first out of the traps with this type of platform. Since then there have been dozens of efforts along with the likes of battle.net, PSN, Xbox Live, in the mean time Games for Windows has been and gone.

So if you're trying to get 1 up in some stupid argument you're having you are certainly going about it in the wrong way.

Very overrated. I didn't care for the attempt at the story line. The beauty of the original was its simplicity.

Skerries

my account turns 10 at 6:04pm today

like others I was cursing Valve as it took me 3 hours to download the updates in order to get it to work and thought this system can't be the future as no one would put up with it

Angron

First time I played the game was on a PC in a netcafe in Longford. It struck me as pretty fantastic then, and even know when I go back to play I still love it. I'm one of the less-old guard of steam, my account will only be 6 on the 30th.

Vicxas

9 years of Service for me, i bought my first gaming PC for HL2, ah the memories

dreamers75

10 years at 1.17 pm....i took the day off work

Banjo

Won't be turning 10 till christmas. I remember my then-girlfriend bought it for me and went home for christmas (and I'm not saying that's why I married her, but it sure didn't hurt!) so I was left alone, trailing the massive phone cable up from the hall to my PC upstairs and leaving it downloading for an age. And then... fast zombies, gravity gun, 2 hours throwing a can at fascist riot police in a train station instead of playing the game proper... great times.

And despite how awful it (the service, not the game) was, I still went Steam Mad. What was that awful click-n-drag kung fu game that got released on Steam shortly after? Why the hell did I buy that?

jumbobreakfast

rag-doll kung fu I think.

and don't forget Codename: Gordon

I was late to steam due to being poor but played Half-Life 2 on the original xbox. That version came out about a year later and got a lot of praise from reviewers at the time. It is still considered to be one of the best games on the original xbox.

Shiminay

mayordenis wrote: »

So if you're trying to get 1 up in some stupid argument you're having you are certainly going about it in the wrong way.

And who exactly am I arguing with? I'm just saying, Steam get's an automatic pass from so many people despite it's numerous glaring faults and that all the complaints people currently have about things like UPlay and Origin are exactly the same complaints we had about Steam back in the day. Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it!

Dacelonid

Whoohooo got my notification in steam today

Sierra Oscar

Just looking at my Steam account. It looks like the 10 year anniversary for me is this Friday! Now that I think of it I can remember having to wait a few days after the games release before I got the chance to play it. Agony.

mayordenis

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Just looking at my Steam account. It looks like the 10 year anniversary for me is this Friday! Now that I think of it I can remember having to wait a few days after the games release before I got the chance to play it. Agony.

Where can you see that how old your account is?

nevermind seem to have the 10 years of service badge since march.

Mike Litoris

Deleted User wrote: »

Very overrated. I didn't care for the attempt at the story line. The beauty of the original was its simplicity.

Couldn't agree more. Hype and anticipation played a small part for me but the game just didn't excite like the 1st one. I was disgusted at the time that all I felt was a big meh after compelting it.

Its bananas that its 10 years ago and also still no HL3.

Kiith

Best game ever, or at least easily in the top 5 of all time.

In 2004, I bought the disk and I had to use a 56k connection to unlock it at home because the college campus network had the ports blocked for Steam at the time of release...then when I brought it back up to the college flat it still didn't work offline..

Smiles35

It was the original HL that did the biz on my first pc. Particulary the 'uplink' demo for it off a pc-gamer disc. Like a noob I thought there must be hundreds of great game demos for pc like it.

So much hype for HL2, it was real hype in some ways though. They did push it with the tech and it took ages. I remember the valve computers got hacked and a alpha version got released. It was a version used for a visual demo and some guys were nearly crying that half the things we saw were scripted just for the trailer.

jaffusmax

I measure my age in games I've played. I'll have 10 years with steam on wed. Got hl2 all those years ago and forgot I had it until I got back into gaming.