You're the birthday boy or girl...

Yaay its mah birthday. Unfortunately I diverted a lot of attention from Snorlack's Treasure today cuz I got Half-Life 2. Wow, such an amazing game, and you won't believe all the extras that come with it (Steam).

But before I got to play it I got some nice phone calls from two of my good friends, then some more emails, and a visit from my dear friend Jane :D. So we *did* get to play Snorlack's Treasure for a bit there. Summary: Fairly-well balanced, could use a few more tweaks as I am about to do now, mages arent as fun to play as but who cares at this late stage, and lets release the damn thing already!

But first, HL2. Incredible. But we already knew that. Unfortunately the catch-22 of having seen all the videos and even seeing the real game in action draws away some of the "WOW" factor, but I am still heartily impressed, especially with the story. If I had to comment on the improvement of the game overall, I would say it is about the same level as from Starcraft to Warcraft III - a lot! Also I'd like to add that the game has a newfound sense of comedy which I found to be absolutely hilarious!
"Gee Mr. Freeman, great switch-throwing. I can see your M.I.T. education really came in handy there!" - Barney

Now, HL2 comes with the ultimate bundled double-edged mixed sworded blessing. Steam. Steam is a program which is part Battle.net, part MSN, part Fileplanet and part game menu. Its Valve's ultimate game manager, it handles your game registration and CD-Keys, and then it handles game patches and downloads, then it very quickly gets you into multiplayer games. Another cool thing is: it works for Half-life 1 as well now, as a replacement for the old WON.net and its heaps better.

Although it took HOURS to download all the patches and updates and necessary things, at least it was virtually question-free so easy-sailing. The bad part: Steam asked me to create an account. A very very important account with a password, you know, the usual. Then it took my HL2 CD-Key. And it told me that my CD-Key was now bound permanently into this account, and could never be unlocked. If I ever wanted to reinstall, I could, but I would have to do it through this account, with this password. This is very scary because if someone were to hack my account, guess my password or secret question, or (god forbid) somehow I was banned for cheating, well, I would never be able to play my game again. Single-player, multiplayer, all of it. This somehow doesnt seem legal to me. It also sounds a lot like Microsoft. (Although they DO let you reinstall)

But the upside to this same system is that as long as I have my account, I am totally covered for all my HL1 and 2 needs. Since I have also given it my HL1 CD-Key, for example, I can totally re-download HL1 from their server (in fact, to get the latest patch, you dont apply it to your HL1 CD install. You download a new version from them, 500MB!) This means I no longer need CDs. I think Valve may be planning to stop production of CDs in the future and just have downloads.

Anyway enough about Steam and HL2. Great game it is though. Also I discovered what a noob I really am at Counter-strike. Gimme Warcraft III any day!

Anyway I am off to package Snorlack's Treasure as promised. Thanks everyone for all your emails and phone calls, and a lovely day.

"You're the birthday
You're the birthday
You're the birthday
Boy or girl!"
- Wall E. Weasel's - Animatronic robots sing their birthday song