[kupoartist]

Seen it... sorry, I'm a dirty pirate type too

Just for the sake of mentioning it, the US PC Gamer gave Half-Life 2 98%, and the UK's oldest PC mag, PC Zone, gave it 97%. I believe both of those are "best ever scores". PCZ even said something like "Play it as soon as you can - games may never be this good again".

The "sloppy release" is a result of a number of things... firstly, the fact that every promise they've made so far of a release date since September 30th 2003 has been incorrect. They simply figured that if they shut up and got on with finishing the game, they'd be able to release it one day. Then there are the Valve / Vivendi court battles over Cyber Cafe rights and whatnot.

Originally Posted by chara

it isnt like this is the first valve game made

But it is actually only the second. All other games in their catalogue were mostly outsourced to other developers... Blue Shift and Opposing Force were Gearbox titles, DoD and CS were made by Mod teams and Condition Zero was handed around at least Gearbox and Raven software before it finally got released. Besides, having no fixed release date is better than having one, simply because you don't have to cut content or put out an unfinished and buggy game. Sure I want to play HL2 as soon as possible, but I'd rather play the most complete, well polished HL2 that is possible.

Edit: Forgot to add, have you played CSource now that you've preordered via Steam? Any good?