Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Half-Life 2 Coming to Mac OS X Today

Whats the big deal with Chess? Its 1500 years old? I don't get it.

Seriously, since when did the age of a game become a factor in how much fun it is to play? Half-Life and HL2 are great examples of story telling which is a breath of fresh air in the FPS genre. I am very excited about this great series coming to the Mac.
 
lunarworks said:
Hopefully Valve throws a special deal for it today. I wanna play it, but it's so old that I can't say I'm willing to pay more than $7 for it.
Click to expand...

I would expect a price break for the suite, since the full orange box is not available yet. Unless they are just going to hold off and do a full orange box a couple of weeks later. But $7 is just a ridiculous expectation. I would expect, and would be glad to pay, $19 for the HL2 suite.
 
Also graphics/physics wise its ages very well, and has also been updated lots since
 
topgunn said:
Whats the big deal with Chess? Its 1500 years old? I don't get it.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't pay more than $4-5 dollars for Chess, given you could pick up a set for that at any pawn shop. Frankly, the gameplay is terrible: limited interaction, non-existant audio, terrible graphics, mundane environment, unimaginative bosses and no plot. I'm not sure why anyone would want to play this.

;)
 
WeegieMac said:
Well, my copy of Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 1 are registered on my Steam account from my PC days, so come on Valve ... flick the switch and let me download my Mac version.

Got to love SteamPlay.
Click to expand...

Same here, I had my old steam account reactivated (thank you google for never deleting emails from when I bought it in 2004) and I had the HL bundle with Counterstrike and Day of Defeat as well, all happily restored waiting for the switch to flick... (maybe CS and DoD will be ported as well ) we can always hope right...

I hadn't used it since I ditched my old pee cee that I used to play it on.
 
Gasu E. said:
I wouldn't pay more than $4-5 dollars for Chess, given you could pick up a set for that at any pawn shop. Frankly, the gameplay is terrible: limited interaction, non-existant audio, terrible graphics, mundane environment, unimaginative bosses and no plot. I'm not sure why anyone would want to play this.

;)
Click to expand...

It is in killer 3D though...
 
ArcaneDevice said:
Gaming on the Mac has never been as good as it was in the late 90's and early 2000's when Westlake, Aspyr, Bungie, iD and Macsoft were involved.

Adding some of Valve's small catalog of games isn't going to change it. PC gaming is scaling back as it is so whatever dribbles down to the Mac will be an even smaller number of titles.

Too late Apple, too late Valve.
Click to expand...

I could not disagree more. Valve's entrance into the Macintosh market can only help us as users. If Valve does well, others in the gaming industry might take notice and look to expand in the Macintosh market as well. This can only be a good thing.

I believe others are now watching to see how Valve does and will make decisions for the future based on Valve and Steams success or failure.

Where you see hand-me-down games, I see testing-the-water games that are solid performers, easy to port (heck I played HL2 on cider over a year ago; and a cider of L4D a few months ago) and resource neutral for Valve. Meaning that if its a huge failure they don't loose a large investment, but if its a success it fuels newer more resource intense ports.

I will support Valve as it can only help us -the users- win more companies to our favorite platform.
-P
 
How is it possible that some are complaining about this? Valve delivers one of the most successful engines in history to the Mac and promises to open their entire library, and people are complaining???

Seriously, this is awesome. I know I'll be fragging away in CS:S when it arrives.
 
Little Endian said:
meh... 2-3 years too late, at least for me. I was hoping for HL2 on the mac for along time now and more than got my fix on a the PC and PS2. Im sure Valve will make money and many mac users will be happy to play a nearly 5 year old game on the mac. but come on WTF took so long!!!! But hey its all about going forward right? hopefully the mac won't be ignored as a gaming platform as it has been for the past decade.
Click to expand...

vescaegg said:
Is a six year old game (despite how incredible it is/was) coming to a new platform really that interesting?!
Click to expand...

This goes to both of you, I had no idea in order to enjoy a game you had to play only the most recent title? People buy music today that was recorded years ago and no longer played on the radio.
It doesn't matter if the game is 1-2 or 10 years old as long as someone enjoys it.
 
ArcaneDevice said:
Gaming on the Mac has never been as good as it was in the late 90's and early 2000's when Westlake, Aspyr, Bungie, iD and Macsoft were involved.

Adding some of Valve's small catalog of games isn't going to change it. PC gaming is scaling back as it is so whatever dribbles down to the Mac will be an even smaller number of titles.

Too late Apple, too late Valve.
Click to expand...

Bitter much?
 
Winni said:
Yes, because it signals a cultural change in the Mac ecosystem.

Valve, a company founded by former Microsoft managers and the creator of the most influential first person shooter game franchise ever created, are bringing their games - and by that gaming itself - to the Mac. Valve did not give us some half-hearted effort, they brought a native port of their entire platform, from their Source game engine to the Steam distribution channel and market place, and that enables the rest of the game industry to follow.

For the very first time in its existence the Mac is treated like an equal by game developers. Mac versions are no longer an afterthought, they've just become a standard option.

For gamers, this is like a beacon in the night.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

A comment I read earlier on another forum summed things up.

On the same day, Half Life 2 comes to Mac OS X, and Microsoft have essentially sacked two of THE most influential men in their gaming division, men who were a driving force behind the Xbox 360; Robbie Bach and J Allard.

Coincidence?
 
scottypeps said:
Seriously? You're not willing to pay $7 dollars for one of the best games ever created...because its TOO OLD? Stop giving Apple users a bad name, shut up and pay the asking price if you want to play it.
Click to expand...
Talk about giving Apple users a bad name, look at your own post. I loved Half Life 2 back in 2004 but, honestly, this game shouldn't sell for more than $5 considering how many years it's been out now.
 
ArcaneDevice said:
Adding some of Valve's small catalog of games isn't going to change it. PC gaming is scaling back as it is so whatever dribbles down to the Mac will be an even smaller number of titles.
Click to expand...

No, it isn't. Where on earth did you pull that from?

It's a shame they haven't updated HL2 to support the newer version of Source and used the models/textures/HDR from Episode 2. Modders have done this for free, I just don't get why Valve (one of the most awesome devs ever) don't make their baby that little bit better. Also achievements.

Edit: Just realised that's a bit negative! HL2 is outstanding, the best single player FPS evarrr and all that. But there's no denying it's a 2004 game that with a bit of polish it would be nicer on our modern computers.
 
HLdan said:
This goes to both of you, I had no idea in order to enjoy a game you had to play only the most recent title? People buy music today that was recorded years ago and no longer played on the radio.
It doesn't matter if the game is 1-2 or 10 years old as long as someone enjoys it.
Click to expand...

Never a truer word spoken.

My favourite console of all time remains the Sega Saturn, simply because back in the day I was a Sega arcade nut, and when Sega brought near perfect conversions of Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally, and Virtua Cop to the home, I was hooked.

To this day, nothing comes close to Sega Rally on the Saturn ... the gameplay combined with the arcade music, is second to none in my opinion.

Others will look now and say, "Crap old game", but at the end of the day games are about enjoyment and every game means something different to someone else.
 
Hmm, well Half Life 2 is ages old, I don't see how this is surprise.. Its been on the PC platform for ages.. Even then you won't be able to run it unless you have a higher end mac, I mean I tried on my 21.5" mac and it lags on native resolution..

iMacs, Mac Pro's & Mac Mini's are horrible for any gaming, even the higher end 27" iMacs are not capable of running games at the native resolution 2560 x 1440.. possibly older games would be fine, but the newer ones would not.. good luck trying to play crysis at even medium settings :p
 
Look at the big picture...

Valve is porting these older games to get practice with their Source engine on the Mac platform. The significance lies in the fact that from now on, Valve plans a simultaneous release of new Source games - just like Blizzard. This has potential to encourage  to write better performing drivers for graphics, choose better graphics chipsets, and open OS X to more serious gamers than the touch platform offers.

 has time and again proven that there is money to be made with online distribution, Steam proved that the gaming community could support the same format, and it's growing at an impressive rate.

Gamers prove to benefit with the option to play their favorite games on multiple platforms. Developers seem to be realizing that distribution to more than one platform boosts both sales and popularity of their titles. Now we need the people building the platforms to drive towards open standards, so that performance and experience drive sales, not which games are exclusively offered.

As a gamer on several platforms, this is a big move in a direction that I've been waiting for since the release of OS X. I for one, am ecstatic.
 
Yamcha said:
Hmm, well Half Life 2 is ages old, I don't see how this is surprise.. Its been on the PC platform for ages.. Even then you won't be able to run it unless you have a higher end mac, I mean I tried on my 21.5" mac and it lags on native resolution..

iMacs, Mac Pro's & Mac Mini's are horrible for any gaming, even the higher end 27" iMacs are not capable of running games at the native resolution 2560 x 1440.. possibly older games would be fine, but the newer ones would not.. good luck trying to play crysis at even medium settings :p
Click to expand...

What is the GPU in that 21.5" iMac? My 2006 17" iMac runs Half Life 2 at 1650x1080 at max settings and never drops a frame. I think you're doing something very wrong! Hell my 9400M runs L4D2 at native res on medium settings just perfectly too, and L4D2 isn't even a year old!

And they're not horrible for gaming. What you're getting confused with is newer games. Brand new high-end games will not run at native res on any Mac. Brand new low-end games or games without cutting edge 3D engines will run perfectly. FWIW the number of games that run on weaker systems vastly outweigh the number of games that need a brand new high-end PC.
;)
 
no

daxomni said:
Talk about giving Apple users a bad name, look at your own post. I loved Half Life 2 back in 2004 but, honestly, this game shouldn't sell for more than $5 considering how many years it's been out now.
Click to expand...


Think about it. I'm not talking about people who already played it in 2004 and want to purchase it again (because then it would be free as you already own it on steam), I'm talking about people who think that they can just blurt out a price like $7 for something they know nothing about other than its and "old game." Half-life for Mac should be priced whatever Valve thinks it should be (perhaps $5), but to already feel entitled to something that hasn't been released? Don't be a moron.
 
Yamcha said:
Hmm, well Half Life 2 is ages old, I don't see how this is surprise.. Its been on the PC platform for ages.. Even then you won't be able to run it unless you have a higher end mac, I mean I tried on my 21.5" mac and it lags on native resolution..

iMacs, Mac Pro's & Mac Mini's are horrible for any gaming, even the higher end 27" iMacs are not capable of running games at the native resolution 2560 x 1440.. possibly older games would be fine, but the newer ones would not.. good luck trying to play crysis at even medium settings :p
Click to expand...

Sorry, but my iMac is the previous aluminium 20" model with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, and a 128mb ATi Radeon HD2400, and I ran Half Life 2 at native screen resolution (1680 x 1050) and all I had to turn off to get the frame rate running at a solid pace was anti aliasing, reduce reflections to their most basic, and filtering to Trilinear.

After that it looked stunning and ran perfectly.

This was on Windows 7 via Boot Camp, but I'd also ran it to the same quality on Windows Vista. In fact, the last time I played Episode 1 was on my older 17" Core Duo iMac and again it ran fine at native resolution.

If your 21" latest model iMac runs Half Life 2 with lag at native resolution then you must have turned every single option in the video settings to their highest. Anti-Aliasing pushes the system more than anything, and remember that Valve's games show asterix's beside the settings recommended for your system specs.
 
Yamcha said:
Hmm, well Half Life 2 is ages old, I don't see how this is surprise.. Its been on the PC platform for ages.. Even then you won't be able to run it unless you have a higher end mac, I mean I tried on my 21.5" mac and it lags on native resolution..

iMacs, Mac Pro's & Mac Mini's are horrible for any gaming, even the higher end 27" iMacs are not capable of running games at the native resolution 2560 x 1440.. possibly older games would be fine, but the newer ones would not.. good luck trying to play crysis at even medium settings :p
Click to expand...

Half life (2) story/narrative > Crysis story/narrative.

Really let's not let it all be about TEH GRAFIX!1! I'd much rather be engaged with something than just look at the pretty pictures. Whether it's old or not is regardless.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back