Half-Life 2 Deathmatch was released on Wednesday.
There are only 2 maps but it is still very fun, if anyone ever wants to play just IM me.
i’m currently downloading it
I’ve played it, it’s pretty boring, I don’t plan on playing it again until Valve makes some improvements for it.
That is all.
I really enjoyed it. It was nice change of pace after playing the Halo games for a while. They definitely need more maps and CTF would be very cool. I Just enjoy how you can turn a battle around with proper use of the Gravity Gun.
I love the grav gun, such a great twist to the standard deathmatch formula… Attack, block, deflect, counter attack all with one simple to use weapon… It’s seriously cool… And it is just an extra freebie too, gotta love Valve 
It does have certain issues like the lack of more maps/modes but I suppose this will be remedied in the future, we weren’t even supposed to be getting this at all anyway 
I never thought that the physics engine could be used so extensively in multiplayer but HL2DM proved me wreong apparently even in its early version. It does lag but, hell, I’m on dial up and I can still have tons of fun in low playercount servers without (m)any problems.
I’m more looking forward to what the community will come up with as modifications for Half Life 2, there’s a ton of potential in the engine for sure. And even a lot of potential in just expanding what is already there, not to talk about actually making original things which basically makes it limitless in what people are able to create… Good times are coming for the modding community for sure!
this stupid steam thing is annoying! I don’t want steam on my computer, but from what I have gathered… you need it to play the game??
It comes with the game, and yes you have to install it to play Half-Life 2.
In my opinion, the whole internet activation thing wasn’t a smart move. Sure it stopped software pirates - for a day - but it’s more of an annoyance for people who bought the game than anything, especially on dial up. People don’t like having to wait 3 and a half hours to install a mere video game. If they’d at least have made downloading updates optional, it would have reduced some of the setup time.
The game updates are optional. On the Steam “Play games” menu just right click on the game you want --> properties --> change “always keep this game up to date” into “do not automatically update this game”. It propably doesn’t work for the first installation since the first time Steam starts up it of course loads with the default settings and starts updating everything… The updates of Steam itself are not optional but then again those aren’t the big ones.
I think that overall the automatic updating is a good thing seeing as it ensures that everyone always runs the same version as all the other owners of the game.
I really hated it when I used to play Ghost Recon for the PC some years ago and I saw that while there were just about enough available servers in total, in the end, the choices you had were severely reduced by the fact every server seemed to run a different version of the game making you unable to join it.
Also, according to the research Valve did via Steam by asking the users what their system specs etc are, the dial up users were less than 5% last time I checked it. As much as it saddens me since I’m on dial up myself, I don’t think we can expect Valve to give that much support for low connection speeds. Atleast their netcode is as robust as ever and I can play things like CS: Source smoothly.
Allthough, as mentioned in an earlier post, HL2DM is quite laggy due to the high usage of the physics engine. Still, I can often have some good fun in low playercount servers and I imagine that things will only improve as the linux dedicated server packages should be released soon and there will be optimization patches for the netcode as time goes by.
All in all, it does suck to have to jump through all those hoops in order to play the game but other than the first time installation I don’t think there’s any problem with it whatsoever. And Half Life 2 is definitely worth the trouble
Always talking about the cases where Steam works properly. Since it’s a fact that for a certain - regardless of what certain people claim - minority it does not, the above don’t apply for them.
i wouldn’t mind if it was only used to activate the game, but to play it as well?
I think Valve’s just a wee bit paranoid.