Remembering the old days :)

[Black Mesa corp]

Remember the hype, the anticipation, the unstoppable wave of new info surrounding even one new screen of the terrific game Half-Life 2. I felt like re-visiting those epic days of suspense and to be honest, fun.
Remember this famous poll, well famous to some and not to others.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/562/562511p1.html

Looks like Half-life 2 came top on that one :smoking:

Looking back at another infamous poll Half-life came top again:

http://www.misterpoll.com/results.mpl?id=1298785459

But anyway, enough of the polls. What really got the hype up was the final months to the now historic days of, the half-life 2 release date.
I remember, whenever a rumour came about it was flashed up on the forums straight away. In this case the gold ready annoucement.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=44810&highlight=half+life+release+date

And the reviews of the game that squeezed out of just about every gaming site and magazine coming up to the release. How amazing it was to see a review of the game and have 100s and 100s of replys within a couple of days.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=40173&highlight=gamer+reviews+half+life

Well, I could say lots more but I have to go and play some cricket now :bounce:

anyone else who can remember the famous old days.

Those days, life was so simply... bliss

 

[Shodan]

You know nothing of the old days!

How many people remember the "Next Month!" picture of the crowbar shadow?

Oohhh its big

The debates, the posts by Valve staff, the tests, the leak, E3 2003 and 2004...

All that stuff is the old days, it was epic.

 

[Loke]

crowbar picture

That picture made my hearth beat one gazillion times every second when I saw it for the first time.

 

[Eejit]

Aaah, the hopes for new binks and constant analysing of the ones we had... Good times.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

A big picture of Antlions and the sandy beaches and the text: "This is Half-life 2. This is the in-game engine. Hooray!"

^^that's how I first came in contact with Half-life 2. And after that, things just whizzed by. Except, you know... it was whizzing kinda slow...

 

[Beerdude26]

Aaah, the hopes for new binks and constant analysing of the ones we had... Good times.

Ah yes. Over-analysing everything.
Person: "The barrels in the tunnels video with the manhacks have the number XJ801854 on them."
Other people: "So?"
Person: "I don't know D:"
(This actually happened)

Good times.

 

[ríomhaire]

I don't like to learn too much about games or films before I got them. All I knew about HL2 is that it was the sequil to HL1 (which frankly, was all I needed to know), it was based is some place called City 17 and what I learned from a few clips on telly and on an Xbox magazine DVD (yes Xbox)

 

[Dekstar]

Man yeah the tests were totally awesome. And that time the devs on the test page got bored and started making up directions for people's names like "move=ninja" and "move=ChrisD".

Those were the best times.

 

[kupocake]

I knew HL2 was going to rock the moment I saw that hydra swing a combine around in the air and pull it back into it's lair.

Course, it was the one thing that didn't get into the game, but all the same

 

[Black Mesa corp]

agreed riomhaire, but funnily enough valve never seemed to leak much information about the games story etc until the reviews came along and all that. So it's a really good game to anticipate and feel safe when you come onto the forums knowing that know spoilers are going to appear. Well it feels that way for me.

 

[incorrigible]

Remember the whole "OMFG, there's a guy in the trash can in the trainstation bink" thing? How many of you went right to that can when you finally got the game to see?

 

[Jack_Karverboy]

I remember back when PC Gamer came out and HL2 was the cover story...I hadn't been following E3 and I was like "Hell yeah" when I saw that

 

[ComradeBadger]

Quality stuff

 

[DESSTROYER]

who remembers over analyzing the ending of the e3 2003 videos with all the random images and text?

*edit* hfs 500 posts!

 

[CodeFire]

The delays, man I hated the delays..

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

The delays, man I hated the delays..

There was 1 delay, Sept 30th was the only delay. I dunno why people say "delays" seeing as that would be multiple, but seeing as VALVe only gave one bad date tis not possible for more than one. GG

 

[_-_-SELAS-_-_]

THEY SHOULD HAVE WARNED US BEFORE THE DAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE THAT IT WASNT GONNA BE READY. aaaaaah!


They knew a while without telling anyone... The only thing that felt me let down, all else doesnt matter.

Dist, when people are saying "delays" I think they mean the way VALVe kept pushing the release about 3 months untill a year had gone by. I know they didnt give a date untill they settled on november but it felt like delays with an s the way they kept saying were shooting for summer etc.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

There was 1 delay, Sept 30th was the only delay. I dunno why people say "delays" seeing as that would be multiple, but seeing as VALVe only gave one bad date tis not possible for more than one. GG

True heh, but it was a 1 year delay heh.

I remember getting the pictures from the tests and people were putting the pictures through all sorted of filtered and decryption things to find hidden messages. (i remember someone using rot13 for example). Oh and using a negative image someone found an '8' in the large Gordon picture with the barnacle around his neck, and the illustrator emailed back saying 'ive been putting 8's in my pictures for years secretly, you are the first to notice'. (wasn't me btw). Each bink release was awesome, and this forum had a new post every 5 seconds or so, awesome!

 

[Vegeta897]

My friends in school still make fun of how much I annoyed them about HL2 years before and immediately after it's release.

*Friend knocks over book* "Look Devin, PHYSICS!"

Waiting for HL2 was so much fun

 

[hungryduck]

ah, the good old days, we talk about this like old grandpas

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

When you said old days I was thinking like, SNES.
HL2 is like 2005 for me. :/

 

[DigiQ8]

My friends in school still make fun of how much I annoyed them about HL2 years before and immediately after it's release.

*Friend knocks over book* "Look Devin, PHYSICS!"

Waiting for HL2 was so much fun

Yup, Bothered my friends about HL2 too
cant stop talking about it ^^

I Remember how the first E3 video blowed the hell out of my Hype-o-Meter

 

[_-_-SELAS-_-_]

yes E3 vid did make a lot of hype-o-meter producents cry when the warranty was still valid.

 

[oMeSSiaHo]

I think it was the Plinco test from the E3 vid that sealed it for me. I always assumed Halflife2 would be cool but watching the body bounce around told me it was going to be "different". After that it was pretty much the same as what other people listed. I still wonder what happened to the php text game though.