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Is Half Life 2 for the X-Box worth picking up?
Igort
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been meaning to play through Half Life 2 since it came out, being a fan of the original Half Life. And recently playing through Portal has made me want it even more. I was looking over the specs for this PC I'm on right now and realized that there is no way in Hell that this PC will even dream of running it.
So I did some research and tried to find the cheapest way I could pick up the game, what with not having the money right now to buy a 360 or PS3 for The Orange Box, or to upgrade this lump of shit PC, I discovered that there was an X-Box port many years ago.
Does anyone know if it's any good/worth picking up?
So I did some research and tried to find the cheapest way I could pick up the game, what with not having the money right now to buy a 360 or PS3 for The Orange Box, or to upgrade this lump of shit PC, I discovered that there was an X-Box port many years ago.
Does anyone know if it's any good/worth picking up?
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the whole game is there, but the graphics are about the low-end PC range (i.e. not that good). Part of the appeal of HL2 was the awesome scenery and setting, but I'm sure that you get used to it. The gameplay is intact, and that's what's important.
Incidentally, what's your PC spec? HL2 could run on a very wide range of systems. You might be surprised. If unsure, you can always try the demo.
I played Portal on a friend's PC. I'll see if I can find the demo somewhere though.
IIRC you need to download the Steam client and download the demo off Steam (I think you'll need to register with Steam before you can do this). I don't think there was ever a standalone demo.
And whilst other people will disagree with me on this, I thought the demo was from the most dull part of the game (sorry, Ravenholme just wasn't all that scary). Use it as a guide to see how well it runs anyway.
I'm going to sound like a fucking noob saying this (I don't play PC Games that often) but I'm not sure how to check my specs.
That being said, this PC runs Half Life 1 pretty smoothly. That's the only real PC game I've played.
That should pop up a box which lists your system specs.
The main 3 we're looking for are RAM, Processor (on main tab) and Graphics Card (under Display).
Wow, even worse than the PC version? I mean, I love Half-Life 2 and all, but I hate that even on my decent computer I'm stuck with a minute long wait every time I get to a new area.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
To be fair, this is the Xbox 1 we're talking about here, and a port of a PC game with much larger areas and more textures than the Xbox used to handle. They had to shrink the texture sizes down a fair amount as a result.
504MB RAM
Pentium 4 CPU 2.80GHz
82845G Graphics Controller.
I'm not a computer whiz (and I'm not sure about that last one) but that doesn't sound to good to me.
Well the RAM and the CPU might have been fine, but unfortunately you don't have a graphics card (that PC is running off an integrated graphics chip on the motherboard).
So yeah, your best bet is probably the Xbox version if you can find it.
Have fun, it's an awesome game.
If it passes the minimum spec, it will be better on your PC than on Xbox.
If there is no way you can run it on your PC, the Xbox port is perfectly servicable, I also enjoyed playing half-life 2 on a big telly, curled up in bed. It is certainly inferior to the PC version in a bunch of ways, but it is still incredibly enjoyable, and it's a must play for everyone.
Haha, shit... really?
Well, sorry for wasting your time.
No problem, most people don't know this stuff in general. And companies selling PC's tend to leave out the graphics card even today since they figure most home users aren't gamers.
Believe it or not, if you haven't got an Xbox, it might even be cheaper to pick up a graphics card that will run HL2 pretty awesomely (like a GeForce 4800 Ti). But then it's probably not worth the hassle anyway.
So Xbox all the way.
Well I have an XBox sitting around, so It's definitely the easier route at the moment. But I am looking into picking a 360 at some point in the future. My birthday's in January so I could always ask the family to get one for me along with a copy of The Orange Box, but at the moment a quick scan of eBay found a few copies of Half Life 2 on the Xbox for ridiculously cheap.
So for the moment, why not? hehe.
The load times aren't bad at all if your Xbox has a decent DVD drive. If you have an older box with a worn out drive than the load time grows. My Xbox loads HL2 areas almost a third faster than my old roomate's decrepit Thompson Xbox did.
If you can't afford a 360 ($280-$450) or a HL2-capable graphics card ($50 and up), and you already have an Xbox, then you should definitely pickup HL2 for it. It isn't pretty, but the entirety of the game is there (minus multiplayer), the controls are great, the physics are intact, and parts of the world do look pretty good for an Xbox game. You won't be missing out on anything (again, except for mp) by picking up the Xbox version.
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I'm from the UK, so hopefully it should still be easy to find, some older games can be quite hard to find over here. Again eBay.co.uk seemed to have a few going for about 2 pounds so I should be alright.
True. HL2 was all about graphics. The whole NPC interaction and physics puzzles and huge street battles and involving storyline all took backseat to the graphics.
:roll:
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There is not a yawning emoticon big enough.
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Oh, cool, I'm from the UK to, but generally the majority of people here are from the US.
Best prices I can find are -
New, £8.99 delivered
Used, £8 delivered
But you might be best getting it as part of gamestations 4 for £20 offer, since there are a bunch of great games in that. No stock online, but it'll be the same price in store.
Oh, that sucks. The Gamestation nearest me recently got closed down, which is a damn shame. I'll check out those other links though.
Cheers.
Of course, this might not be an issue on the xbox.