Half-Life 2 Arrives… Sort Of
![[An image of Gordonesqe black-rimmed glasses]](/images/Freeman.gif "Alright Newell, hand over the world-saving physicist and nobody gets hurt...")
Word has it that Half-Life 2 has been delayed yet again, this time until the fall. This disappointing, though not exactly unexpected, news has been cushioned somewhat by the release of a fan-created side-scrolling adventure called Half-Life 2D: Codename Gordon.
As far as I know, HL2D is only available to users of Valve’s Steam network client. Steam isn’t a bad little system, and it allows you to play some other Valve games for free. On the other hand, you have to be connected to the Internet the whole time you’re playing, even if you’ve already installed the game on your own hard disk drive. This is probably a piracy prevention measure, but it must suck for dialup users. Steam also breaks some older Half-Life mods and changes the way that saved games are stored — I can no longer find my saves to back them up!
Regardless of its drawbacks, Steam will be required to play Half-Life 2. Hopefully Valve will keep working on their delivery system now that work on the game is near an end. There are definitely still some bugs to work out.
