I dont know who said that.. but the props definitely arent useless. In the beta I loved hiding the bomb with barrels and then watching some CT check for the bomb, not see it, and head for the next site.
Little Jimmy bought half-life 2 and said this sucks!
Then Little Jimmy went to the forums and said this shadowss sucks! omg pixelz r ruined!
Then Little Jimmy got *BANNED*
But one downside to disabling chat/speech is that your disabling communication, and this is a multiplayer game. A person might merely be saying "Go over there and cover me," and then he can go over and kill the next guy who runs through the doorway to win the game. Then theyll say "good job" and...
I think it runs off Windows's time using javascript. Anyway... this is pretty cool but I probably wont use it until its really close to release... like the night before or something
Lol I had about 1/3rd of my air left over so yeah it lost a lot of power.
EDIT: Oh and I broke terms of service some how.. maybe they dont like movies.