I think it has way better attention to detail. I have a hard time finding a lowly textured item in that game. It's just the faces are nowhere near as good, the models are a bit worse, and animations are somewhat wooden.

for everyone complaining about textures, there was a pretty good reason. they were trying to make sure it ran on fairly low end machines as best as it good. yeah, they took shortcuts, but not everyone has an awesome computer. I'm infact thankfull that they did this, as I'm able to run it fairly smoothly, without trashing too many details.

anyways. I really recommend checking out lost coast when it comes out if you do have an awesome computer, its going to be filled with fun stuff like uberhighres textures everywhere.
read up on it.

That's called an EXCUSE, and a BAD ONE considering MP2's textures were all quite high quality. And it ran BETTER THAN MP1 (for the most part).

Max Payne 2 didn't have amazing physics.

No, but Textures are purely videocard, and Physics are purely processor.

And HL2 hardly has amazing physics. It's the same engine as Painkiller had, and hell, Painkiller still had amazingly great textures.

I get like 8 fps in painkiller
I get 60 solid in hl2

Yeah.. but they don't.

The problem is, people seem to think the main idea of playing a game is to go as close to a textured surface as possible and complain how crappy it looks. For me, HL2 is very immersive, because I don't sit there and stare at walls all day complaining about how they suck, I play the game because of the gameplay and the semi-interative environment, really draws me into the world that Valve created.

Why do people think I'm looking for these things? I'm not. They just really detract from the experience when I notice them. It started with Father Gregori's gun, then I just started realizing more and more of them were like that along the way.

Mentis--I get about the same performance in both. Stupid Valve hating on the 6800s.

I didn't mean you DJ, although you are pretty picky. You also have to agree that Doom3, your game of choice also has a few crappy textures as well.

Also, in order to get the high quality HDR effect in HL2 when its released, you need a SM3.0 card with FP16 in hardware. No ATI card to date has that.

You must have your system FUBARED, cause I know people who run HL2 @ 1028x1024 or higher with 4x aa and 16xAF and get stellar performance with their 6800.

Oh I get that, Sol. But I also get that in Painkiller...only 8xaa :p.

But uh, Doom 3 has a lot of crappy textures...but the lighting is what makes it superb. Along with the bumpmapping. HL2 went for salvation through hq texturization, which it turns out didn't work too well in some parts.

I think a lot of you are missing the point in video games. Yes, some things in Half Life 2 were good looking and some were realistic and some were not. But did you have FUN playing it? Wow! Isn't that a concept. Video games being fun. I play Half Life 2 for the fun of being able to smash a massive explosive barrel at headcrab zombies and watch them burn and then run like hell when they start to come after me while they are burning. Its fun to play Half Life because the puzzles arent all the same as regular games. Its not the same old look for the key and bring it to the right lock crap. Yes cool textures and neat physics liven the experience but was it FUN TO PLAY!!!?!? This is why there are so many people who love JK. It had sucky graphics, and sucky physics but it was so much fun and I bet most of us can agree here that are JK discs have scratches enough to make them nearly unknown to our disc drives. I liked half life 2 because it was fun and it had a little challenge.

It was merely mediocore.

I have only played the Half-Life 2 demo on my computer. I have a rather low-end system, but I still saw Half-Life 2 in all its glory. I could run it at 1024 by 768 with 2X AA and 4X AF. I saw all the textures and I got at least 30-40 fps with it (No Lag). I don't know what you are complaining about. The textures are awesome, and the gameplay kicked @$$. You probably have a better system than I, and thus can run it faster. I have friends who have 2Gb Ram, 6800 Ultra, and FX-55 processors, that can run Half-Life 2 at full settings. I saw it on their computer, and on my computer, and I couldn't really notice a difference, other than high(er)-res textures and better lighting.

For those of you wondering, my system specs are:
*Intel Celeron 1.7 Ghz
*768Mb RAM (Okay, not so crappy)
*64Mb NVidia GeForce 440MX

How can you say "in all its glory" when your card can't render any of HL2s fancy features?

Wtf, I have a 1.8ghz AMD K7-2, 512mb ram, 128mb GeForce FX 5200, and I have to turn everything to low/off to get above 640x480 (I run at 800x600 specifically).

My biggest pet peeve about HL2 SP is the load time. I hate playing through it because it takes at least 5 minutes to load in between areas.

My loadings real nice and quick, takes about a minute for major loads (loading a game for the first time) and about 35 seconds in-game loading. Whats your PC specs Kirby?

P4 2.6Ghz
768MB PC3200
9800 Pro 128 @ 435/355
160GB WD 7,200RPM w/8MB Cache

This is with max detail @ 1024x768 4xAA and 8xAF.

I'm sorry but I don't li-li-li-li-li-li-li-li-li-li-ke playing HL2 beca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-cause it stutters-rs-rs-rs-rs-rs-rs-rs-rs on GeForce Cards-ds-ds-ds-ds-ds-ds because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***--because Valve sucks ***.

<_<
>_>

Stuttering shouldn't have anything to do with what video card you use. I've Seen complaints from users with ATI cards about stuttering and users with nV cards running the game fine. It seems you need some luck and maybe that magic tweak to get it to run with stuttering. Heck, my PC doesn't stutter and HL2 is pretty demanding on it.

It's mostly nv cards, a few ATi cards. My uncle tried both his 9700 pro and his 6800, along with a GeForce 3, and I tried a 6800GT.

Guess which brand of cards stuttered? Not to mention my friend's 9700 pro didn't stutter whereas his 6600GT did.

So you actually thought that the shotgun texture was good? You think that the blue uniforms some of the workers you meet are good? No repetition of textures to the point they look terrible?

I even play on 1280x768, 8xAF and 4xAA. If you play the game for the sake of playing the game, you probalby won't notice these. The game, for the most part, looks stunning. But on closer insepction, you will notice some really awful textures in HL2. They are smartly placed in places that aren't really focus points for the character. A great example is the shotgun. Everyone is gonna be looking at his face, not his shotgun.

Oh, and in reply to the whole ATI / Nvidia stutering thing. The thing that REALLY helped me was going from 512MB to 1GB. That got rid of all stuttering. I have a GF6800, btw.

Not mine. my original JK/MOTS discs are in near-mint condition, considering that they are 6 years old. I have gone through about 3 backup copies, though.

Yoshi, where's your documentation on that being the case?

I have a GeForce FX 5900 and have no problems at all.

Valve even posted a thing saying they could not pinpoint the cause of the stuttering problem because there was no common factor in any of the users reporting it. If it was mainly a NVIDIA or ATI problem, I imagine Valve would have stated something to the effect instead of "most likely user error" *meaning spyware, viruses, fragmented hard drive, old drivers, etc*

My documentation is I rarely hear of people with ATi cards having said problem, since it was made to run beautifully on ATi cards and does in fact run better on ATi cards. I'm not saying it's all NV, just mostly. Almost every 6800 owner I know has had problems, or has problems.