Just a quick recommendation to the gamers in Taiwan. Half Life 2 is hands down the best game ever made and you don’t even need a powerful rig to play it. I use a Radeon 9800 128MB and a P42.8C, and I get frame rates of up to 100FPS. Thats on full detail (but 4x Anistropic Filtering, no FSAA) and it never went below 30FPS. There’s not much of a story but the gameplay is the most varied and creative I have ever seen. Has anyone else played it? What are your thoughts?
its a fun game, I think Far Cry is just as good though. Like in Far Cry when you look at the plants and vegetables the wind causes them to move quite a bit. I like the variation in HL2 though…both great games, but frankly I found HL2 somewhat buggy and the need for constant updates is frustrating.
Can I switch the “international Chinese” version sold in stores here to display English? Or do I have to download the whole thing from Valve for that? I have an Nvidia 5700 256mb on a P4/3.2ghz, but my digital monitor’s native resolution is like 1024x1240, and I’d like to play it at that resolution, something I can’t pull off with Doom 3 and maintain a decent framerate. Is 512 enough RAM for this game? Did you have the dithering thing on? If so, how much?
There’s lots of talking but no text in the game except menus. That might not be a problem for you. Your specs look fine, don’t forget it’s been delayed a long time, so the needed specs are relatively low.
I finished it weeks ago by the way, :smug:
Fav part is when you get a drive a crane and can pick up fecking cargo containers and swing them at the bad guys, or drop them on them. Or when you pick up circular saw blades and propel them at high speed at hords of zombies
the ending almost ruined da entire game for me, and the lack of vehicles is dissapointing. Maybe its a different kind of game altogether, but how come no kewl vehicles like in BF1942? Why can’t we fly anything?
Whats with the story line? I never got to figure out anything that happened, Far Cry had almost every good aspect that hL2 did except the physics engine and facial animation… controlling the bugs was fun tho 
With your specs you should be fine, although on levels like Nova Prospect and the final stages in City 17 you might have to settle for medium settings, or high with some of the trimmings turned off. As for the language stuff, the man above is very correct, as the language spoken is English, with Chinese subs.
As for the story, I was disappointed, but I got a fantastic gameplay experience to compensate. I must however advise others to check out
hlfallout.net/articles.php/article_9/
for theories which ring true as to the story and which were pieced together from bulletin board found in the game (in a science lab). This provides an interesting read to say the least, although in the game the board is easily missed and still leaves you to fill in huge gaps. Admittedly a simple scrolling text story (like at the start of the Star Wars flicks) would have sufficed to keep us up to date and even more immersed. I simply don’t think some critics have any basis for calling it a masterful piece of story telling (like Edge magazine).
make sure to read the forums on steampowered.com its interesting to see what probblems people been having. I can only get mine up to 90fps on my ati radeon 9800 Pro 
maybe I should play with the settings some more
hl2 is indeed cool but a bit overrated. many fps from 2004 (far cry, tribes, painkiller…) were as good. hl2 still doesnt have any real multiplayer, so unless you like cs with new gfx or deathmatch on 2/3 maps then there’s nothing there to play… hl2 community is big however, and soon mods and maps will be everywhere to be found…