Valve said it was a mistake to make the game episodic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZaY1jV96jI.

Counter Strike: Source was my intro to online gaming.

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2....I have over 400 hours put into those games combined.

Half Life 2 was a blast and the episodes were really fun.

Portal and Portal 2 were mind blowing.

Played a little TF2 but couldn't get into it.

I forget if they made it, but I played The Ship for a while. It was a really fun twist on FPS games.

It's too bad Valve isn't doing anything interesting at all right now. At least, nothing that interests me. I don't really care about DOTA 2 or Counter-Strike.

I agree on both of those counts, particularly when such puzzles were re-used. The first driving section, with the boat skimmer thing, wasn't too bad in my opinion - although the mines svcked. But then that should have been it - getting a buggy later on felt redundant. I also don't think the driving section in Episode 2 added much to the experience.

I got to HL2 very late (last Novemeber) and I figured the gimmicky feeling of these was age - it's sort of good to know it wasn't just time taking the luster off of the physics engine.

Given Valve's already notorious reputation with release dates, at that time built on vaporware TF2 and HL2's weird delay, they should have known better. On the other hand I think the Episodes gave them a good opportunity to try new things and really focus on story developement.

Nothing they've announced at least.

I'm into the Portal series (it's genius and I'm not hyping it up) and the Half Life series, a jolly good shooter that but sadly my computer can't play them without freezing every so often Source engine problems idk.

Have gotten into TF2, but only play it sparingly and feel the hats thing has gone a little out of hand.

Never played Left 4 Dead but I hear a lot of you guys play it far more than any other popular online shooter.

If I wanted to start playing Half Life where should I start? The Original, or Half Life 2?

Personally Half Life 2, the phisycs are the reason of why making things blowing up in that game is fun,

In fact, is the premise of every Gmod video ever in existense

I got the Orange box which includes HL2 with both episodes, tf2 and Portal 1, it's a great deal and I recommend it. You don't need to play Half Life 1 before Half Life 2 but I would highly recommend Half Life 1 for the same reasons Freddo said earlier

I tried to play some VS Left 4 Dead the other day but I didn't really have a good experience. I joined the game as an infected and right when I spawned my dog had to go outside so I left my computer for 30 seconds to let him out and when I got back I was already being vote-kicked. The vote didn't pass so I found a safe place to enter the game and I managed to snag one of the survivors as a Smoker. I got killed and my team told me I svcked so I quit.

Valve hasn't created anytthing since Half Life 2 episode 2. For the record. They just hire on talented teams and set the whip on them. CS. TF2, L4D, Portal, and even DOTA2 were all mods that went big time and just have a full time team. The actual original Valve Team hasn't done much of anything lately the fat bastards. They're more busy running their economy and letting the newbies do all of the game creating. So yea I'm a little pissed at them for branding Valve on everything. I want to see them do something internally original, not just hire another team. I have no problem with this, it's obviously working and they are a good publisher/developer. I just want to see THEM create something for a change. Perhaps the sad truth is that Half Life 3 isn't coming because people want new hats and steam features and economy updates and all of this other stuff keeping them away. For god sakes they've hired on a full time economist! That's it, they're so close to falling over the precipice from game team to suits it isn't funny. I honestly doubt we'll ever see a HL3/EP3. It's done guys, they have more important things to do like make keys and hats and all sorts of clever ways to get money out of your pockets.

I know all of this because they're not even ashamed of themselves anymore, they basically said in an intervew they don't do a damn thing these days. The players are doing everything. Theres my current thoughts on them.

Half Life 2 was so damn boring and disappointing. It started off really good and then just progressively got more and more tedious before finally ending on a terrible note. I can't believe that was the sequel to Half Life.

As a company Valve is exploding, the original team as a developer? Stagnation beyond all hell.

Yeah, the L4D community has a lot of that sort of thing nowadays, unfortunately. Miss a pounce? That's vote kick. Accidentally don't climb a ladder properly? That's a vote kick. Need to use a first aid kit? You better believe that's a vote kick.

They treat it like it's competitive, rather than the pub game chaos that it should be.

My life is complete. Honestly, that's the greatest thing I ever saw.


On topic, I recently got the Orange Box and, my god, I can't play TF2 for crap. Really, I don't know why, I'm usually not this bad

TF2 has a higher learning curve than most other shooters.

Yeah, I learned that the hard way

Anyway, I invest enough time in it, I'm confident that I'l get the hang of it

Left 4 Dead is insanely fun with the right friends, and if you're all in the same room. Some of the best times I've had with friends back home was playing Left 4 Dead. And before L4D Counter-Strike (I liked Condition Zero, most of my friends preferred the older "1.6") was a mainstay along with DotA whenever we got together.

Portal has to be one of the best games I've ever played, which is saying something since I usually hate platformers. Other than the innovative concept, it's also very well-implemented. It's challenging but not frustratingly so (I think I only got really stuck once), it's not too long, and the passive-aggressive GLADoS is truly a memorable villain. I have Portal 2 but I'm almost reluctant to play it because any sequel to Portal is probably going to be a disappointment.

I want to play Team Fortress 2 after the hilarious and mildly disturbing Meet the Pyro video and finding out that it's actually free-to-play, but for some reason it's stuck on Download starting on Steam. Clicking on 'delete local content' just makes Steam seize up.