verification on tha intarweb?

despite some recent posts about Halo, it is not the game i've been looking forward to for the last year or so. Today, Half Life 2 was released and i'm currently wedging my big toe between two doors of a cabnet here in my cube at work so i can go home with a broken foot. early release is eminent. if not, i'll have the chick next to me give me a quick, swift kick to the balls. that'll create that pained, teary-eyed effect that i need when i tell my boss that my grandma just died (for the 6th time this year). if you've never heard of half life, then crawl out from under that fucking rock you've been living under for the last 6 years and discover the all-time best FPS ever built. above halo, above quake, above battlefield and above mario (and his bro, loogey). since it's original release, i've played halflife from front to back about 9 times (not counting the two large add-on packs released for it). a game that took me about 3 months the first time, i can now get thru in two solid days. and i never get tired of it. and knowing that HL2 was to be released a year ago until some punk assed bitch ganked the code from valve, i've been foaming at the mouth since. well, the time has come. i picked up the collectors edition (ignore the previous rants about special eds) for a hefty $79, but it includes the full game, a t-shirt, a book with hunnets of pics and artwork from the game as well as the source port for the original and the all-time biggest mod, evar, counter-strike. the source port is basically taking the old game and porting it into the new engine use for the new game. makes everything purdy. if you've never heard of counter-strike, then you don't know dick about online MP gaming. i'll definitely be burning the midnight oil esta noche. what's interesting about the game is even though it's a single player game, installation requires a verification with the game's company, valve, online for the game to work. this keeps us hackars from using a warez copy. otherwise, the game won't run.



long live gordon!
|-|4|_f |_1f3 |20x0|25 j00|2 |30x0|25!!!11!!!

update
it's now 5:45 pm and i've been trying to log on to create my account with valve to verify the game i've installed. as it turns out, the game was released today, WORLDMUTHERFUCKINWIDE and the servers are so bogged down, that no one can connect. i've hit message boards and everyone is getting the same logon error that i'm receiving, so valve, you really screwed the pooch on this one. stupid fucking idea to require us to log in to register the game before we want to play it (even if we're only playing offline) and then releasing quite possibly, the biggest game in years and not having proper support. did every single MMORPG release not teach you a lesson? dumb motherfuckers. i'll be damned if i'm gonna get fucked outta my $86.