Valve adds Half-Life 2: Deathmatch on Steam

Although I didn't see word of Apple releasing iTunes in Canada today, I did notice that Valve very recently released Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, which is about 20x cooler than iTunes (or Canada).

Originally I was very upset that Valve removed Deathmatch from Half-Life and replaced it with the boringest mod ever (Counter-Strike: Source), but this makes up for it (and then some).

Although servers are currently really scarce and the only available ones are pretty darned laggy at this point, that should all work itself out in a matter of days (or hours) once the keeners out there set up some dedicated servers to alleviate the congestion.

If you have Half-Life 2 and enjoy some good ol' fashioned killing, and can tear yourself away from Halo 2's multiplayer, definitely go check out HL2:DM.

Rock, rock on!

Posted by peter on November 30, 2004 at 11:34 PM
Comments

At this moment their are no servers in Europe. So we still have to wait, but I can't wait to give it try :)

Posted by: Patrick Pietens at December 1, 2004 01:19 AM

cannot... tear... away... halo... 2... :)

www.ericd.net/blog_images/bnetRSS.html

Posted by: ericd at December 1, 2004 06:02 AM

After finishing the single player campaign on both games, I think I can safely say that Half-Life 2 beats Halo 2 in pretty much every way imaginable.

I can't compare multiplayer since I don't have Xbox Live (yet), but I can say that HL2:DM is a ton of fun. Once you find a good server with little lag, you'll have a great time running around with gravity guns throwing toilets or radiators at people. I think after about 10 minutes of playing I killed about 42 players and got killed over 90 times and it was the best time I've had playing games online since Half-Life 1's Deathmatch.

I think the biggest downside to Half-Life 2 (single player especially) is the lack of vehicle interaction. Halo 2 really nails this as you can hijack most any vehicle, but HL2 is limited to 2-3 levels where you're limited to a single vehicle.

I think Halo's biggest downfall (apart from the "ending") was that the single-player experience just didn't seem to be "fun" after a while. I think it just sort of lacked some magical ingredient that the first game had. Can't quite put my finger on it. The sequel just seems like a couple newer vehicles, a few new weapons and the ability to dual weild some weapons (which is cool, but hardly ground breaking).

Posted by: peter at December 1, 2004 09:41 AM