Half-Life 2 is a winner!

I only got to play the game briefly this morning due to classes, but I played through a bit of the opening storyline called "Insertion Point". It's VERY reminiscent of Half-Life, but I think it was intentional. Then, it takes a sharp left turn and throws you knee deep in the story without any clue what you're doing, moreso than even the original. I like the idea that everyone thinks that you know what you're doing, when you're completely clueless.

Graphically, the game is simply astounding. There is detail everywhere, City 17 really does feel alive. The sound is OK, but nothing special ... at least, so far.

I'm embarrassed to say that I never got to finish the original Half-Life, because it kept crashing on my machine. I'm downloading the Source version of the original now, and hopefully I can play it after classes today. That's right, I'm going to delay my own Half-Life 2 Goodness in order to play through the first so that I can get a clearer picture of everything that's happening. Besides, I feel like I owe Valve at least that much after such an amazing effort.

I do want to say this, though, in case anyone from Valve is reading this. Reqruiring a restart of Steam to find out if there is an update is SILLY. Only require Steam restarts if Steam has to be updated. Please?! I don't care what the reasoning or rationale behind it is ... it's wrong. I don't have any other self-updating application that requires me to exit and restart just to find out something has been changed. Don't make me micro-manage your program.