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I'm really waiting for this one. Old game, but still very beautyful.
But holy shit, is that water reflection on screen 9 really ingame? Or PS?
Looks amazing, they really increased the grafx power! HOT!!!

It is of course in-game, nothing jaw-dropping after seen Bioshock :D

Yeah, but Bioshock is a new developped game. How old is Half Life???

Source engine might be getting old as some might say, but i still prefer it to lots of so called next gen stuff, with tons of normal mapping, bloom and specularity.

I always loved how source goes more for a baked static lighting, but which sets really great moods and environments. i also love the grainy look (which probably comes from the baked GI light), always thought it makes it more cinematic.

serious meh... episodic content my butt!! I bought I X800XL so that I could play episode 1, 2 and 3 soon after my 9800 pro broke but still it has been too long. Episode 1 was so short, I wonder if this will be worth it at all...

The Source Engine has been altered/updated several times during the development of Episode 1 and 2.
(e.g HL2 on the PC didn't have HDR in the beginning)

So I'm sure the game will look very good when released on the 360 (and a lot better than the original PC version).

best regards,
ScarJack

btw episode 1 was SIX hours long. I bet this will be the same. 6 hour long game, a sequel to Team fortress with 4 maps, a puzzle game with repetitive environments plus for consoles bundles of past hl2 games.

the deal doesn't seem that good :Pthe source engine is nothing to brag about. Doom 3 came out first it looked better and it still does. Doom 3 engine >>>>>>>>>>>> source engine

and soon we will get Enemy territory which runs on doom 3 engine and does large environments


large environments with NO MID LEVEL LOADING that is. god source has too much loading...

Indeed after that Bioshock demo this sort of pales in comparison. But I'm still going to enjoy the hell out this fantastic bundle.

There's more then just good graphics (and HL2's Source engine still doesn't look bad imho even if it's a couple of years old now).. People forget that Half-Life 2 with the Source engine made a very big step forward in the industry when it came to physics, and Episode 2 with a even more advanced Source engine will take that to the next level again..

http://images.gamersyde.com/gallery/public/6065/11...

Prepare to see a building like that get blown into thousands of little pieces with true physics in real time.. Not many "next-gen "games I know have that, not even Bioshock..

Here we go with the comparisons again. I played the Bioshock demo... you can get away with a lot when dealing with underlit, dramatic lighting in a game... (Doom3). I think it is the UE3 engine, and the art direction/style that make Bioshock shine. I don't see that it is any level above HL2. I think HL2 looks just as good from a technical standpoint... granted a lot of water effects in Bioshock look really good. And from what I've seen from Quake ET, it doesn't look all that superb IMO. I think UT3 looks better, as well as COD4. So there are a bunch of thoughts from me if we are going to start comparing the games... And TeamFortress2 looks very good too, and stacks up with most any game out there... from what I've seen... I'm getting the Orange Pack. How can you not with that much content if you like these type of games.

@Inflatable:

It wasn't the first FPS who made a big step towards the physic engine no, it existed before. There was really no mind breaking game at all really. Only thing why it got so much blown up is because it was the sucsesser of Half-Life 2 and got more or less all credit.

Only real thing HL2 had at start was High Rez Textures, thats about it.

Half life 2 is seriously overated.

Got extremely boring extremely quickly.

bioshock isnt ue3.0 really, its ue2.5, which they then just slapped the ue3.0 core in to make the engine more up to date

I'm looking forward to this. I'm hoping I can just get the new stuff off of Steam since I already have HL2 and Ep1.

will this game have any new graphical features to it? it looks great but i dont want to have to buy a new graphics card to play it if it runs just like half life 2 and episode 1.

Hmm weird mixture of 720p and random PC resolutions, and one disgusting upscale pixel-fiesta. Are Valve slipping this badly in their PR management, or are they just becoming too arrogant to care? :(

Absolutely horrible. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

I couldn't care less about graphics to be honest. I've played through Half Life 2 countless time and Episode 1 three times and I aim to continue playing through this story till the end, whether or not it has had any visual upgrades what so ever. If you want a technical marvel, play GoW or indeed, Bioshock, which are beautiful games without a doubt, but Episode 2 is quite simply to carry on the storyline from where episode 1 left off, they aren't going to make drastic changes to the graphics, which aren't bad anyway, but for some people it clearly isn't good enough. Thats not why episode 2 was made, simple as, either get it to progress further into HL2 or don't bother at all. Whining about its graphics compared to recent games on newer engines is pointless...

**Also gotta agree with inflatable, I too have yet to see buildings in realtime been blown into individual pieces in a game before except Crysis which is a pretty damn good exception**

Let's see...
Half-life 2 (a full game, plus multiplayer)
Episodes 1 and 2 (6 hours each, which is about a full game together)
Team Fortress (even if it DOES only have 4 maps, will still probably be one of the best multiplayer FPS's out there)
Portal (will probably take hours to figure out all the puzzles and just to play around)

All for the price of a regular game and all new content to console owners. Oh yeah, what a terrible deal, what in the WORLD were they thinking. *rolls eyes so hard they spin out of head*

does anyone know when it is released?? I don't see it on the ign release date list ...

More like 2-3 hours each, at least EP 1 can't comment on EP 2 as it's not out yet, and full lenght PC FPS = 6-8 hours, yet to encoter FPS who last longer.

Doom doesnt look one ounce better and the Doom engine is terrible, plastic madness.

HL2 models > Doom + Quake 4 models
HL2 Environment > Doom + Quake 4 Environment
HL2 physics > Doom + Quake 4 physics

Doom AI > HL2 AI.

While the engine is showing some age, from an artistic standpoint HL2 still has that very polished and atmospheric look that sets it apart from so many other shooters that use newer engines but still look generic in comparison.

Besides, with all that content in one game, there's no reason not to pick this one up.

I'm still wondering why they can't use higher res texture for this game. After all, PC has the capability for that.

It existed before, right.. Then name me a game that did it before HL2..

HL2 was a huge step foward with physics, the game had a lot of puzzles based on physics, and they even built it's main weapon (the gravity-gun) arround it.. Valve used, tweaked, and added almost everything what the Havok physics-engine had to offer at that time unlike any game before..