LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Why the Valve staff all need to die, painfully.

Having been impressed with Half Life when I finally got round to playing it (several decades after everyone else had discovered it, apparently) when I heard about Half Life 2 I put my order in like a good little mindless fanboy.

Got to be a good thing, right? Half Life was so fantastic, the developers can't go wrong with a sequel. And we knew from the end of Half Life that there was a story arc planned...

Well now.

Where shall I begin?

Let's start with Steam, shall we?

I've bought a game which requires me to have a working Internet connection before I can even use it. The game files have to be "decrypted" or some such nonsense before I can even use the product I shelled out hard cash for. 'Scuse me, but I don't play online games. There is no need for my gaming computer to have a 'Net connection. Also, the license key seems to be tied to me, personally. I can't give the game away or sell it once I'm done with it, because the new owner won't be able to use it. "Never mind all that inconvenient Doctrine of First Sale rubbish, and being permitted to do with your purchases as you see fit, we at Valve are going to fuck you over. Next!"

Once the game is installed I can play without a 'Net connection, as long as I'm willing to wait an hour (it feels like it) for the Steam client to time out and play "offline". Gee. How convenient, Valve. Thanks.

If I replace my computer and need to reinstall Half Life 2 I need - you guessed it - a connection to the Internet to "decrypt" the content I paid for. Anyone want to guarantee unconditionally that Valve will be around for the duration of my life? What about the Steam servers? Will they always be available no matter what? Wankers.

And then we get to the game. Could it be any more generic? This has got to be the worst game I've played in a very long time. Ten seconds after starting the game (while walking along the platform after disembarking from the train) I'd already worked out the plot, not to mention who the final boss fight would be with. I hadn't seen any trailers or spoiler information beforehand. Everything I needed to know about the game I learned in that 10 seconds. Nice storytelling, Valve. Did you lot just throw dice to pick generic plot elements from a chart?

Half Life and Half Life 2 are both linear games. Most games are linear, but the better ones don't feel it. Half Life 2 feels like I'm playing on rails. No attempt whatsoever was made by those useless cretins at Valve to disguise the fact. The gradual unfolding of the story in Half Life was one of its hallmarks. Given that the entire story in Half Life 2 is known to the player as soon as he starts the game, what made Half Life special is conspicuously absent from its successor.

Half Life was fun to play, too. I had a feeling of excitement while dodging aliens and The Man. There was none of that in Half Life 2. Each mission/episode/chapter was stultifyingly dull beyond belief. Perhaps so much effort went into the hoverboat levels that nothing was left for the rest of the game. It's obvious that the developers viewed that sequence as the showpiece of the game. The game was a real slog to play. I only finished it because I felt obliged to, and because I foolishly held out hope that Valve might have included some surprises in it. Stupid me.

I bought the silver tin, which came with the game on DVD, a t-shirt, and a "free book" which was nothing more than a cynical attempt to get people to buy the complete book from which the "free book" had been excerpted. Maybe I'm just too used to my native language, but when I see "free book" I expect a book, not a thinly-veiled attempt at advertising yet another product to me. I bought the tin because it was the same price as the standard product, I like t-shirts, and I didn't know I was about to be swindled out of my cash.

So Half Life 2 comes with its predecessor remade with newer graphics. Well, whoop de fucking doo. I didn't fall in love with Half Life because of its graphics. I loved it because it was a damned good game. Updating the graphics holds no appeal for me, especially if I need to deal with that Steam nonsense to play it. No thank you Valve. I'll stick with my original copy of Half Life.

Valve has produced an inferior product and the entire development team should be ashamed of themselves. What were they fucking thinking? But then, maybe they knew they were about to release a complete crock of shit onto the world, which is why it got corrupted with that Steam crap. Every disappointed player would be stuck with it and wouldn't be able to offload it onto someone else thanks to the license keys being validated online.

Did Valve do this to halt copyright infringement? If so, then they failed. I can download (and did, to test it) a fully-working single-player (as I said before, I don't play online) version of Half Life 2 from my favourite warez site and be playing the game without having to deal with any of that Steam shit.

I will never buy another Steam product. Ever. I don't care about Half Life 3. I don't care about expansion packs for Half Life 2. If Valve ditches Steam then they will get one more chance. And that chance will be determined based on the quality of the game. Release a good game (like I know you've been able to do in the past) and don't cripple it with that fucking awful Steam, and I'll buy your products again.

Keep releasing dreadful products, infected with mechanisms which prevent me exercising my perfectly legal privilege to sell them on / give them away, and you'll never see another penny from me.

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 6:54 am Post subject:

I guess I am lucky. I did not feel obligated to finish the game (I'm at the end of Ravenswood or something). Probably the first time I didn't finish a Paid game. They are a Steaming Pile of Shit

But you never know. Maybe I'll have a retro attack in a few years and crank it back up...

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:12 am Post subject:

You bring up valid points, same ones many people have brought up before you. But the sad state of affairs is that Vavle probably doesn't give a fack if a few fanboys rant about it. There will be millions of mindless drones to buy their products and they'll still be in bizness.

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:59 am Post subject:

Steam is a pile of shit, yes. HL2 was boring. And now I'm bored of CSS so I've moved on to the wonderful game that is BF2.

Butt Sniffer Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1615

Oh NOW you post this after I just bought it. Rolling Eyes

I am still playing HL1 and enjoying it. Haven't gotten to 2 yet.
Also CS is pretty fun but I'm still a n00b Sad

But I do agree about steam, thats a croc since I paid for it.

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 1:11 pm Post subject:

AnalogKid wrote:
Oh NOW you post this after I just bought it.

Take it back. Get a refund.

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 1:31 pm Post subject:

I never finished the original Half-Life due to Western Digital's data protection mechanisms.

Why do companies not understand that new "copy protection" is just another challenge that will undoubtedly be bypassed.

If somone does not intend to pay for a game, then they never will. In the mean time they happen to be pissing off actual customers (The people that create demand at retailers by empting bank accounts rather than buying food, clothes, etc.)

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 2:19 pm Post subject:

Doug wrote:
I never finished the original Half-Life due to Western Digital's data protection mechanisms.

Why do companies not understand that new "copy protection" is just another challenge that will undoubtedly be bypassed.

If somone does not intend to pay for a game, then they never will. In the mean time they happen to be pissing off actual customers (The people that create demand at retailers by empting bank accounts rather than buying food, clothes, etc.)

You are right on sir.

Leg Humper Joined: 01 Jun 2004 Posts: 4702 Location: Utah

I agree with a lot of what you said. Steam is a pisoff -- as is "decrypting" this game I just paid $50 for.

However, I thought that HL2 was an okay game. The graphics were nothing spectacular, even at 1280x1024 with 4x Anti-Aliasing. But like you, the graphics of the game aren't what make it fun. It is possible to have a really great game that can't run at a resolution higher than 640x480.

But meh, I finished it. However, now I'm starting to get frustrated at CSS... Most of the people who play it are morons. They don't understand the concept of a TEAM BASED GAME. You see, that means that you're supposed to work as a team -- stay in one big ass-kicking group and all that crap.

I have seen bunches of people that cheat -- some h4x are less obvious than others: some people have a "turret hack", where they just spin around at an incredible rate and automatically shoot every time they see the head of an enemy. Some have a speed hack, and only use it to increase their speed a little bit, so as not to get caught. But regaurdless, cheating is pointless. If you can't play without cheating, don't. All you're doing is ruining the game for others that actually want to play fairly.

And the teamkilling bullshit -- don't do that. It's really easy to tell the difference between an accident and just being a moron.

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:19 pm Post subject:

MattSharp wrote:
Doug wrote:
I never finished the original Half-Life due to Western Digital's data protection mechanisms.

Why do companies not understand that new "copy protection" is just another challenge that will undoubtedly be bypassed.

If somone does not intend to pay for a game, then they never will. In the mean time they happen to be pissing off actual customers (The people that create demand at retailers by empting bank accounts rather than buying food, clothes, etc.)

You are right on sir.

I disagree. It prevents casual copying, which is a huge money loss for developers. If you're at a friends house and he's got the game and gets you into it, all he has to do is hand you the CDs and you've got your own copy. If you couldn't do this as easily due to whatever copy protection, there's higher probability that you'll buy the game legit. Sure, many will still try to circumvent the protection or d/l the warez version, but if they play the numbers game enough, the developer ends up making more money which helps support their staff and gets makes them a bigger profit...nothing wrong with that.

Toxin wrote:
I've bought a game which requires me to have a working Internet connection before I can even use it.

Out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo before you bought it? It lets you play the Ravenholm level and gives you a great overview of what the game's like, including having to connect via Steam.

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:36 pm Post subject:

Doomhammer wrote:
However, now I'm starting to get frustrated at CSS... Most of the people who play it are morons.

Oh sweet Irony, how I love thee.

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:47 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately, Valve's strategy will work, in spite of itself..

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:03 pm Post subject:

gregw wrote:
MattSharp wrote:
Doug wrote:
I never finished the original Half-Life due to Western Digital's data protection mechanisms.

Why do companies not understand that new "copy protection" is just another challenge that will undoubtedly be bypassed.

If somone does not intend to pay for a game, then they never will. In the mean time they happen to be pissing off actual customers (The people that create demand at retailers by empting bank accounts rather than buying food, clothes, etc.)

You are right on sir.
I disagree. It prevents casual copying, which is a huge money loss for developers. If you're at a friends house and he's got the game and gets you into it, all he has to do is hand you the CDs and you've got your own copy. If you couldn't do this as easily due to whatever copy protection, there's higher probability that you'll buy the game legit. Sure, many will still try to circumvent the protection or d/l the warez version, but if they play the numbers game enough, the developer ends up making more money which helps support their staff and gets makes them a bigger profit...nothing wrong with that.

Toxin wrote:
I've bought a game which requires me to have a working Internet connection before I can even use it.
Out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo before you bought it? It lets you play the Ravenholm level and gives you a great overview of what the game's like, including having to connect via Steam.

Very true.

Casual copy protection methods which stop casual copiers are O.K. CD keys are O.K. too. Requiring Internet connections and decrypting paidfor game data is too much, and more what I was referring to.

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:20 pm Post subject:

gregw wrote:
Out of curiosity, why didn't you download the demo before you bought it?

Because I was a fool.

I believed that Valve wouldn't let me down after the great game that is the original Half Life.

I didn't expect to have my legal right to resell the product curtailed by that legally dubious online CD key registration/activation.

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 8:30 am Post subject:

Doomhammer wrote:
But meh, I finished it. However, now I'm starting to get frustrated at CSS... Most of the people who play it are morons. They don't understand the concept of a TEAM BASED GAME. You see, that means that you're supposed to work as a team -- stay in one big ass-kicking group and all that crap.

I have seen bunches of people that cheat -- some h4x are less obvious than others: some people have a "turret hack", where they just spin around at an incredible rate and automatically shoot every time they see the head of an enemy. Some have a speed hack, and only use it to increase their speed a little bit, so as not to get caught. But regaurdless, cheating is pointless. If you can't play without cheating, don't. All you're doing is ruining the game for others that actually want to play fairly.

And the teamkilling bullshit -- don't do that. It's really easy to tell the difference between an accident and just being a moron.

All the reasons I stopped playing FPS online.

AnalogKid wrote:

Doug wrote:

Lycander wrote:

MattSharp wrote:

Doug wrote:

Toxin wrote:

Doomhammer wrote:

gregw wrote:

MattSharp wrote:

Doug wrote:

Toxin wrote:

gregw wrote:

Doomhammer wrote: