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Half-Life 2: Games
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"Half-Life 2" wasn't the only game delayed by the source-code theft. Valve had licensed out the game's "Source" graphics engine to developer Troika, which was hard at work building "Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines," a PC role-playing game. That game, initially set to be released this year, had to be delayed to implement the same security fixes needed on HL2. It now has a target release date of Spring 2005, said Trokia co-founder Jason Anderson.
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Half-Life 2 is an FPS game where you once again play as Gordon Freeman, the MIT graduate from the first game. You awaken a number of years after the original game on a train to City 17, an Eastern European city which is reminiscent of the World War II ghettos. And the people kept in City 17 are the remains of humanity, left at the will of the Combine, a mysterious alien group who retains totalitarian control of Earth.
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Half-Life 2 opens as you (playing Dr. Gordon Freeman once again) find yourself on a train entering City 17. The G-Man, an enigmatic character from previous Half-Life games, tells you that you have work to do and implies you've been sleeping for a long time. As you quickly discover after arriving in City 17, a lot has happened since you fought your way out of Black Mesa and were put into the G-Man's employ. Dr. Breen, your former nemesis at Black Mesa, has become the leader of the human government, which has worked out a deal to serve the alien Combine forces. The Combine has locked down all of the world, and City 17 is one of the last bastions of any semblance of resistance.
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The summer release date of Half-Life 2 is certain to once again divide gamers. Some will be relieved to finally have a date... vague, that they can target. Others are likely to howl in outrage that the game has been delayed so far beyond its initial target date. (The game was originally scheduled to hit stores on Sept. 30, 2003.) Some ludicrous conspiracy theorists will likely begin regurgitating the ridiculous story that the source code leak was intentional, so Valve would have an 'excuse' to delay the game.
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A 1GB portion of Half-Life 2 became available for pre-load through Steam on August 26, 2004.[52] This meant that customers could begin to download encrypted game files to their computer before the game was released. When the game’s release date arrived, customers were able to pay for the game through Steam, unlock the files on their hard drives and play the game immediately, without having to wait for the whole game to download. The pre-load period lasted for several weeks, with several subsequent portions of the game being made available, to ensure all customers had a chance to download the content before the game was released.
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Valve's Half-Life 2 is one of the more graphically advanced games available today, making fairly heavy use of shaders in some areas. The new Lost Coast demo uses hi-res textures and makes heavy use of Valve's new high dynamic range lighting, so it really pushes graphics cards to the limit. Note that Valve's HDR implementation doesn't use floating-point texture blends, so it has no problem enabling antialiasing and HDR at the same time on all graphics cards.
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