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Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast Released On Steam 32

Posted by Zonk from the shiiiiny dept.
Hatedlegion writes "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast has been released on Steam." Gamespot has details, and a hands-on look as well. From that article: "If you've played through Half-Life 2, the gameplay in Lost Coast isn't going to set the world on fire. You fight your way up a sheer cliff face, trading fire with those pesky Combine soldiers every step of the way. You'll occasionally have to deal with some of the more vicious sorts of headcrabs, and at the end you'll have to bring down a Combine gunship with Gordon Freeman's trusty rocket launcher. You'll have to solve a couple of light physics puzzles as well, which we won't detail for the sake of preserving at least a little of the surprise. You'll even get to talk to an old man at the beginning of the level, who provides you with the impetus to head up into the hills and engage the Combine in the first place."
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Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast Released On Steam More

Half-Life 2 - Lost Coast Released On Steam

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  • More of the same isn't necessarily a bad thing. Looking forward to playing this one.
    • It's just one short level. And actually, it's more like a demo designed to show off the graphics with a HL2 map attached to it.

      • Re:Same old? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:46AM (#13896126) Homepage
        It's just one short level. And actually, it's more like a demo designed to show off the graphics with a HL2 map attached to it.

        Yup. To get the best enjoyment out of the game side of things, play on Hard with the commentary turned off - the latter is important because otherwise you'll be stuck in an invulnerable god-mode.

        It is very short, but quite nicely constructed. I still think that Day of Defeat: Source was the better demonstration of HDR, but this new map is still worth the download. The recommended specifications seem pretty generous too - I played on a 128MB GeForce 6600 (non-GT) without any real problems.
        • I played it with a GeForce 4200 Ti and had absolutely no problems.

          The one thing that did bother me about the summary is that it gives away almost the whole level. If you didn't play the level last night then you already know what is going to happen.

          • Yes, but with a GeForce 4 Ti you won't be able to use the high range lighting, which is the main point of the tech demo. It's still quite a fun diversion without all the fancy effect though.

            My PC is a Athlon 1500+ with 512MB of RAM and a GeForce 4Ti (4200 I think)[1], and it did run, just about (it struggles with normal HL2, but Lost Coast didn't seem that much worse[2]), but I borrowed a mate's PC which actually met the requirements to see all the effects, it's bloomtastic! I do wonder if they have the lig
  • Unable to start Steam Engine: *SteamEngine(0x12e8c8) failed with error 200: Connection Reset, WinSock Error 10054 "Connection reset by peer"
    Ah well... maybe later today... back to sysadmin tasks [blogs.com].
  • ...fired it up last night, was woefully short. I was expecting something along the lines of the whole coast campaign, but turned out to be one 'chapter' (only had to load once, was about the size of a large-ish HL2:DM map)

    Looked fsckin beautiful though, especially on an X850XT on a 20" LCD with the lights off.

    Tech demo for the expansion, that's what it is.
    • Yeah. It was fun, but it took longer to download than to play through. I think Valve is giving this one away as a freebie but with the intention of selling other "levels" like this in the future (see yesterday's discussion of the XBox 360 microeconomics). But I'm not sure I'd have payed more than $2-3 for it. Just not enough "playability".
      • Actually, Valve has stated that this freebie stuff is a chance for them to play with new Source engine features, put it out to the public and see how well it works (tecnically and artistically). They are planning to release pay expansions via Steam - but they will be longer than Lost Coast (shorter than HL2 however).
    • Well, to be fair, that's all they ever said it was going to be.

      Just a way to show off what the HL2 engine could do :)

      Lost Coast got hyper up so much when the screenshots came out.. Still looking forward to it though.

  • NICE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by kaellinn18 ( 707759 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @09:52AM (#13896159) Homepage Journal
    You'll even get to talk to an old man at the beginning of the level

    Holy crap, I CAN'T WAIT to play this!!!

  • Short but fun (Score:4, Interesting)

    by regular_gonzalez ( 926606 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @10:08AM (#13896260)
    Notably short, but very pretty. Some fun easter eggs for you to find as well. At the end, the old man mentions some leeches ... look around and you'll find them. Quicksave first though :)

    • Re:Short but fun (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hakubi_Washu ( 594267 ) <robert...kosten@@@gmail...com> on Friday October 28, 2005 @10:17AM (#13896325)
      There's one shipwreck which can be targeted from the elevator and probably right at the beginning, if you climb over the rocks behind you (?), that features a comment node which talks about it being a puzzle they had to leave out because they thought people would prefer the rappeling soldiers (hint: I don't, but then I enjoy playing Myst :-P ). Also Gabe specifically asks for feedback and gives his email in one of the last nodes.

      The comment nodes are fun BTW, but I would have prefered the whole game to pause (they can get difficult to hear well if a certain machine is close). Additionally you go into god-mode when activating the comments, which is bad IMHO, since I started it with comments on, because I wasn't sure I wanted to run through a second time...

  • What I really can't believe (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nekoes ( 613370 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @11:05AM (#13896599) Journal
    Is that it took them so long to release this. Well, really I suppose most of the time was revamping all the code to do HDR, considering the level only has 5-10 minutes of content at most. The HDR is a cool effect... unfortunately after a bit of playing it seems to hurt my eyes. I wonder how far in advance the level was planned and done, and how long it took them to get the HDR worked out. DoD seemed to hang on the HDR, and the Lost Coast came out relatively quick after that was relased. What sucks is even that it took forever to release, the Lost Coast still is buggy as hell. Often times it'll forget to spawn the soldiers with AI, among other things.

    For what it's worth, I think the coolest feature is the commentary they put in which goes along with the level to describe their thoughts behind the design and code revamp. It gives some insight into their level design process and other things.

    I think full length games with an accompanying commentary track could be pretty cool if done well. However, I don't think the floating commentary entities are the way to do it.

    Not sure it was worth the 360 meg download, but it is interesting. Valve's HDR solution is really space intensive unfortunately. :( I wonder if in the future we'll find a more viable way of achieving the same effect without taking a thousand gigs to do it...
  • I was up all night playing Day of Defeat: Source and hadn't set Lost Coast to pre-load. Can't wait to get home to give it a try (after waiting an hour for the download). My gaming computer is now only in the mid/high-low range of power, but DoD runs great with HDR in effect. Valve said LC would give much more of a hit though, so I'm not sure how it will play on my box.

    Anyone know?
    P4 2.4 ghz 256 Meg Radeon 9600 Pro 1 gig memory
    • I ran it on my P4 2.0ghz 256 Meg Radeon 9700 Pro with 768 Gig Memory without much problems. My video settings were 1024x768 with all the advanced options at their recommended settings.
    • My system isn't directly comparable, but I ran 1280x960, all details max, 2xAA 4xAF with:
      XP 2800+
      1 gb ram
      X800XT (core underclocked a bit because it runs unaccountably hot)

      Didn't turn on fps, but I guess it ran about 30 FPS or so, with the very occasional dip under 20
  • The commentary, while informative, reminded me of sitting in class in highschool and being forced to listen to oral reports students were reading off of their paper.

    I forgot how fun the gravity gun was. Picking up the harpoon from the fenced door and shooting it at a combine so that he gets stuck to the wall is worth a laugh or two.

  • Sailing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by irwtdvoys ( 926650 ) on Friday October 28, 2005 @12:45PM (#13897524)
    It's also possible to explore the other side of the harbour by "sailing" across in one of the boats, fun but a bit disapointing as there are no secrets or stuff over there, it's just nice to see the map from all angles :) Give it a go...

    Sailing tutorial here:
    http://www.lanse.co.uk/main/viewtopic.php?p=40409& sid=ec778b989b90a4c3252e4e834f61a7e4#40409/ [lanse.co.uk]

    • Or... you just open up the console and type "sv_cheats 1" followed by "noclip" and don't waste time mucking about with the boat and gravity gun. :)

      • But there's no skill envolved in that, no sense of acheivement in the undertaking... besides that's cheating. :|
        • While I normally agree, theres comes a time when the game itself is so easy that theres no skill in that, so its just as pointless and you'd waste less time on it by noclipping through to see what is essentially a techdemo.

  • Very VERY impressive! The length did in no way bother me as what was in the lost coast was absolutly amazing! The tone mapping thing which simulates how the eyes react to light was espesially impressive. I hope they use these new features in the upcomming HL2 expansion...

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