It was uh... alright I guess. Good emotions on faces and stuff, nice wavy effect with forcefieldish things, but to me it felt too linear. Although the gravity gun is kinda cool it'd be much better if instead of just dragging it towards you, you could swing things around (Including cars ) and even polevault yourself around. At the very least make it so you can rotate the objects you hold. I've gotten stuck many a time with the only weapon available is the gravity gun, and having to drag a dresser up a flight of stairs or something.

So anyways, graphics are a bit bland in my opinion (For you people out there saying D3 looks like crap up close, look at these textures. holy poop)

I know it's the demo, but headcrabs are pretty meh. I mean, they turn things into zombies that march around. Also, I wish the sawblade could cut more than just their middle, espescially when I aim for the legs

now I'm really tired, so most of this dosen't make sense... Also, I hate steam. I dled the demo, installed it, then took about the same time it took to download it (Half an hour) to install steam, then another 15 minutes to update the demo itself. *sigh*

The only reason I'd buy this game is if I'm bored, already have painkiller, or I really want to play CS:S

I thought the graphics were great even on minimum..

But you're certainly right about the linear thing.

I also thought that the demo level relied on the Gravity Gun a little too much, but I've heard that this isnt true for the entire game.

I just got through Ravenholme in the full version and it seems that with the abundance of saw blades, radiators and whatever else that Ravenholme was designed with the gravity gun in mind. Probably the reason why it was released as the demo level.

Yeah.

Ravenholm is the level right after the time you get the gravity gun, so it makes sense that you'd have to use it a lot then. A familiarization of sorts.

The rest of the game doesn't rely on it too heavily, but you do use it fairly often

There's another area towards the end where you have to use the gravity gun alot again, but otherwise you don't really use it that often. Sometimes you'll need it to solve puzzles.. and it's also more useful than the crowbar for trashing crates and stuff.

I use it about 90% of the time...

Because it's fun to hit people with things.

I just finished the full version yesterday, and the most fun thing to do with the gravity gun in Ravenholm was to fling cans of white paint at the zombies. I don't know if my game was bugged, or if it was some smart programing, but I think I blinded a few zombies like that. They'd just walk around, right past me, with their urgent infuriated muffled vocalisations, and stumble around a bit. I really was convinced that he was blind.

But really, everyone goes on about the graphics, while I think the best technical acheivement in the game is the sound. From the music that kicks in a the right moments, yet never becomes overbearing, to the voiceacting, to the sounds themselves. The manhacks have the perfect menacing buzzsaw whirring sound. I loved the way that gunfire resonated in tunnels, sounding like popping in the distance until shots fly whizzing all around you, making unique sounds for each surface they strike. They even made sound travel at the speed of sound, something I only recall from Operation: Flashpoint or Battlefield Vietnam. So if there's a distant explosion, you'll hear the muffled blast a good split second after you see it.

Soundwise it beats everything I've tried before. Every single sound fits, from the radio squelch and flatline sound of a slain civil protection combine trooper, to the heavy whopping blades of the Hunter-killer chopper, the strange emulated low-res whale/dolphin call of the striders, to the throaty roar of the buggy engine. It's the sound that really immerses me in games, and HL2 has Doom3 and every other PC game beat in that aspect.