Well, I installed the patch. I'm falling through the map at the get go and have no sound. I think I'm gonna try returning this and getting Quake 4.

I've been more impressed with environments/graphics on my Gamecube, with games like Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4.

Half Life has 3 environment building objects:
Simple 3D primitives, prefabs, and terrain. The Level is blocked out with primitives and terrain, and the prefabs are added on top.

Metroid Prime blends builds all three together with point editing. There are trees growing through walls of ancient ruins, with realistic damage to the walls. The tree and the wall are interacting. It just seems more organic.... even buildings can seem more believable.

The fire and textures in Resident Evil 4 are better than in HL2. They were of lower resolution, but they looked better. and the environments are more interesting, IMO.

Half life may have some newer technology, but it just doesn't look as good.

Before you start arguing with me consider that I am Microsoft System Engineer, and Cisco engineer.
Judging from your past posts, I very much doubt you have the base intelligence to get a high school diploma, much less any certification whatsoever. Unless you bought it from one of those lovely diploma printing services I get spammed about all the time. I knew they had customers somewhere. Idiot.

Its always running - always - even when you arent playing the game. It takes up system resources, and anyone who uses applications that require absolute stability and as much system headroom as you can get, starforce gets in the way. Arguably, it may even reduce performance on games themselves.

I use audio programs like Ableton Live, Steinberg Nuendo and Wavelab, and inside those programs Im usually running an assload of VST plugins. These programs/plugins work in tandem with my firewire audio interface, which is running an ASIO driver to provide my system with virtually zero latency audio processing. ASIO performance is VERY system intensive, and every single bit of system resources can and must be put to use for stability, as all background applications interfere with that. When you are playing back multiple tracks of audio, usually composed of wav files that are 100+MB in size, as well as recording NEW audio to disk at the same time - the ASIO driver is working like hell to dump data from RAM to HD CACHE to HD and then back again to CACHE, and RAM every nanosecond.

I cant afford to allow BULLSHIT like starforce to compromise my system resources. There are a couple other copy protection programs like it.. i cant think of the names right now tho.

While you may not notice degraded performance from your games or AIM sessions or other low-level apps - I definately notice every bit of diverted resources when I am using my audio apps. Also, people using graphics programs like photoshop or 3D studio, etc. etc. would probably notice it too. However, many people claim to notice their system bogged down by it even in very simple tasks... not everyone though.

The simple fact is that it IS consuming system resources. Whether you notice it or not.

Technically, you're paying for bandwith in that regard.

And ANYONE who pays 20 a month for fileplanet just to download demos that are free elsewhere is an absolute moron or filthy stinking rich.