November 18th a day SAVED from living in infamy

Why didn't you buy it from Steam? Then you could have had it on the release date.

Steam's cool and all, but I'd never use it for a game I could buy at retail. HL2 comes in a collector's edition, and there's just something about having that package that you can't get from downloading the thing. True you can back it up onto discs, but... it's just not the same.

All in all, Steam is a very cool idea, but I'll never use it as long as Valve is putting out Collector's Editions of their products.

In retrospect I probably should have gone through steam. But I pre-ordered from gamestop as an experiment becuase Amazon.com does not ship a lot of stuff to Japan (video games for example), so gamestop provided me with another option that I wanted to look into. Also I pre-ordered from gamestop before the pirks of steam were announced (gold version, silver, etc) Besides, gold version does not come with a very tasteful Half Life T-shirt (simply the lamda^2 logo) and it is cool.

POST SCREENSHOTS!!!! Preferably of the bowel-shattering physics engine at work.

Here is a story, there was a barrel, you know the type the type that explode that villians seem to just alway have around in video games. I shot it and backed a safe distance form the explosion. The barrel exploded hurling a piece of flaming wood impalling me. I died, and then laughed like a maniac and did it several more times.

Another time I ran out on a board, supported at one end by a box, I was heavier than the box so I was on a lever, the board flipped up I fell and the box landed on me hurting me badly. You have to think differently when playing half life 2 it changes the way you look at the world you are "in."