Hands-on with the Lost Coast

[CSN NewsBot]

No, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get my own hands-on impression of the free additional chapter for Half-Life 2, entitled The Lost Coast, but GameSpot sure did!

The gameplay in Lost Coast may be old hat, but the graphics certainly are not. The map is based on a level that was cut from the original game, though Valve says this new revision gave them the opportunity to recreate a piece of Half-Life 2 without paying any attention to system requirements. Consequently, you'll purportedly need a 2 GHz CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 or Radeon X800 video card to smoothly run the level at max detail. From what we saw, we'd believe it. For one thing, the textures in Lost Coast are noticeably more detailed and numerous than in the retail game, and in addition to the immediate benefit of making this new level look especially neat, the release will also put these higher-quality assets into the game's SDK so modders can work with them.

The system requirements don't seem to be as steep as originally thought, and that's always good news for those wishing for some eye candy on lower-end systems. In addition to the HDR technology there's also the inclusion of higher resolution textures in the SDK? Good show old man, good show!

[n1k23]

Looks like I will be able to run it after all!



Can't wait....

[cheesewilly]

I know I won't!

[blueflamedazn]

I wonder how long it'll take to dwld once its released it better not be like huge or my dialup modem will die.

[[CyW]-=BigBear=-]

Looks good, can't wait.. I have the hardware, so 'bring it oooooon!!!'

[kerosine99]

Yeah, looking forward to this.

[pistachio]

Lets see:



- Powercolor ATI X300 SE 256MB (best small form factor card out there)

- 3.4 Ghz P4 Processor

- 3 (Thats right 3) Gigs of RAM



In the words of the Kool-Aid guy: "OH YEAH!"



It's going to be sweet.

[FightingChance]

pistachio wrote..

Lets see:



- Powercolor ATI X300 SE 256MB (best small form factor card out there)

- 3.4 Ghz P4 Processor

- 3 (Thats right 3) Gigs of RAM



In the words of the Kool-Aid guy: "OH YEAH!"



It's going to be sweet.

Are you using a mATX case or something? I'm curious as to why you need that much horespower in such a small box (I actually wish computers were smaller and quieter myself, even at the cost of performance)

[xlokix]

..and at the end you'll have to bring down a Combine gunship with Gordon Freeman's trusty rocket launcher.

Well thanks for ruining the end for me, Gamespot.

[RobinsonCutter]

pistachio wrote..

Lets see:



- Powercolor ATI X300 SE 256MB (best small form factor card out there)

- 3.4 Ghz P4 Processor

- 3 (Thats right 3) Gigs of RAM



In the words of the Kool-Aid guy: "OH YEAH!"



It's going to be sweet.

in the words of somebody who saw the X300 box and believed the part about "bleeding-edge technology": "OOH... wait... wtf!!! i'm only getting like 20 FPS!!! DAMN J00 VALVE!!!!1111eleven1~"

[pistachio]

RobinsonCutter wrote..

in the words of somebody who saw the X300 box and believed the part about "bleeding-edge technology": "OOH... wait... wtf!!! i'm only getting like 20 FPS!!! DAMN J00 VALVE!!!!1111eleven1~"

Uh no, if you read my earlier post you would know that I bought it because it was the best small form factor card I could get. I know there are alot better cards out there, but this is best one that will physically fit in my PC. And by the way, I get very good FPS on all my games. Way to go...oh wait, not really.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

xlokix wrote..

Well thanks for ruining the end for me, Gamespot.

Thanks for not using the [ spoiler ] tags so those of us who didn't read anything but the excerpt could ALSO have the ending ruined.

pistachio wrote..

Uh no, if you read my earlier post you would know that I bought it because it was the best small form factor card I could get. I know there are alot better cards out there, but this is best one that will physically fit in my PC. And by the way, I get very good FPS on all my games. Way to go...oh wait, not really.

I hate to agree with a guy like RobinsonCutter, but the X300 really is a pretty poor performance card. This is one of the reasons most people choose to get regular-sized PCs, ya know. The rest of your system specs will help make up for its deficiencies, but ultimately we're not talking about great FPS with max detail with that level of a card. Still, not a bad rig all things considered.

[RobinsonCutter]

meh, i have a dual core athlon, so yea, it's bad.

[xlokix]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

Thanks for not using the [ spoiler ] tags so those of us who didn't read anything but the excerpt could ALSO have the ending ruined.

First of all, you can't solely blame me for taking a spoiler from the website that Zips posted when Zips didn't put a spoiler tag either.



Second of all, I guarantee it's not the end of Lost Coast, the way they worded it just sounds like it.



Oh yeah and snape kills dumbledore

[pistachio]

Well yeah of course I'm not going to get the best FPS possible with it. But hey, as of now, my games run great on high settings. My FPS is good enough to where I don't see any slowdown so it works for me.



Anyway Lost coast is going to be alot of fun. I was wondering though when VALVe said they would include extra content with LC, if its not just the high-detail assests for the SDK and partial HDR for the rest of HL2, but other stuff as well. Time will tell.