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Half-Life 2 came out the night before RCS camp. I wanted to get it from Steam, but the price turned me off. So anyway, went out to get it today (along with a new graphics card). I bought a Radeon 9800 XT 256mb, which is actually cheap enough to be considered “budget” now. Guess the one year delay of HL2’s release had the benefit of helping fans pay less (plus the fact that HL2 runs on pretty much any old crap, just not as beautifully, means that graphics card maker didn’t benefit as much from its release as Doom 3). If it had been released last September, 9800 would still have been the “hot” card and cost more than twice as much as it does now. Thank you Valve, thank you Vivendi, thank you Mr. Anonymous Hacker.

Now, the irony of this little story: after getting my shiny new Radeon, I was 15 dollars short of getting HL2. Oh well, I guess one more day of waiting isn’t that bad. At least not bad enough for me to get it through Steam. (65 USD on Steam versus 70 SGD at a regular retail outlet… Very huge difference. Steam doesn’t come boxed too.)

For now, I am enjoying some old HL mods through Steam to pass time. It’s quite nifty. Just enter a valid key to register a Valve game and you can download that game from any computer by logging in to your Steam account. (that is… provided your download speed is fast enough) I can see great potential for this when the household broadband speed of the rest of Asia catches up with Japan.

BTW, anyone interested in an old MSI Geforce FX 5200? :P