Half Life 2: The Ordeal

Woohoo! I’ve beaten it! Half Life 2’s installer, that is. Almost as much fun as the game itself, although not quite.

First, the DVD doesn’t work in my PC. But “Ah!”, I think, “That clever Steam thingy should just let me activate the game and then download it!”. So I enter my key into Steam – and it asks for the DVD. Hm. Try again.

I check the DVD in my laptop – it works there, but my laptop sure as hell won’t run Half Life 2 – at least not in any way that you’d want to play it. However, my laptop does have an external USB hard drive. Sooo… copy all the install files to that, then plug the hard drive into my PC and install from there. Woot! It’s installed! Double click on Half-Life 2, enter activation key and… “Please insert DVD”. Bah, foiled again.

How about… Steam keeps track of games online, doesn’t it? So if a game is activated in my account, I should be able to play it anywhere, right? Hmmm… So if I install Steam on my laptop and activate it there, I ought to be able to play it on my PC, right?

Cup of tea first. Ah, that’s better.

Woohoo! Half Life 2 activated! Now, turn off laptop and connect to Steam again on my PC.

Oh. Why does it keep telling me to pay for Half Life 2? Quit, reload. Still telling me to pay for it. Reboot PC. Still telling me to pay for it. Something not right here.

Wait, what? I have to tell Steam to log me out and then log back in again for it to notice I’ve activated a new game? That’s retarded, that is.

But… w00t! It works. Three hours later, I finally have Half Life 2 working. Brilliant. If only all installs could be so simple.

Oh, and in other news, Starship Troopers doesn’t work, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not.

3 Responses to “Half Life 2: The Ordeal”

  1. Sven says:

    It took me FOREVER to get HL2 to install from a DVD, including copying the install files from the DVD and trying to run it off my hard drive.

    In the end I had to do something that involved disabling 50% of the RAM in my PC, rebooting in safe mode, and then finally installing it.

  2. SharkyUK says:

    I couldn’t possibly comment on SST but I sat down earlier tonight to play HL2: Episode 1. I’ve just completed it. I know it’s short, episodic, and only about £12 via Steam… but I didn’t expect it to be *this* short. 🙁 Perhahps I was expecting too much.

  3. Cargo Cult says:

    Installation troubles? Still your fault for insisting on buying it offline. 😉

    Anyway. You played MINERVA yet?