Satisfying.
I tried to extend the game play as long as possible, basically three or so full days, perhaps four, spaced out… but I have now finished playing Half Life 2.
I have to say that I absolutely hated driving the buggy and the whole antlion thing was very annoying… overall though I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game.
I did encounter the horrible stuttering problem toward the end. In the final chapter it was totally unplayable, then I defragmented the drive and it that mostly solved it.
My cheapass Geforce 6200 was able to play the game on its highest settings (with the exception of no anti-aliasing) using the full native resolution of my LCD, 1280×1024. I don’t have framerate data, but I can say that apart from the stuttering, which has nothing to do with the graphics processor, the game was completely playable… unlike when I tried to play Doom 3 on my Geforce 420MX — which was a slideshow.
It’s interesting, I suppose, that even though I was getting such lovely visuals with an admittedly low end graphics card, how I wrote down on my specificiation sheet that I wanted a Geforce 7800 GT for my new little Shuttle box. Those cards come in around $400… almost as much as the AMD 64 X2 I have my eye on. I say almost, as when you’re getting into the higher figures the difference of a hundred dollars seems insignificant, lol.
I think I found myself wrapped up in overkill mode, why not get the best.. even though there is a GTX version of the 7800, it won’t fit in the Shuttle, heh. Then again, I just don’t know… it’s about spending once and then not having to worry about it for a couple of years, thankfully and horribly, it’ll be a long time before I can muster the cash to actually buy any of that, heh.