Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition Questions?

1) There are 5 install CDs inside. They install Steam and Half-Life 2. It honestly takes quite a long time to install all of it. Steam will make you create a username and password. You'll have to click on "register a product I already own" in it to type in your CD key and activate Half-Life 2, even though it's already installed (it honestly took me hours to figure that one out.) Then, it can download Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, and Half-Life: Source through the steam program. Because all of those programs use the same source engine, they don't take as long as Half-Life 2 to install.

So Steam remembers which programs you own and you can uninstall and reinstall them from their servers.

2) Yes. It's very annoying, but if you open Steam connected to the internet, then you can disconnect from the internet and still play your games. It's so they can make sure that every time one of their games runs, it's a registered copy. I just leave the little steam icon on so I don't have to worry about it.

3) The load times obviously will depend on your computer speed, but I probably had the average computer in 2000 playing the original Half-Life and I would say that they are about the same with an average computer in 2006.

I personally am a big fan of the Half-Life series and would recommend playing it.

If you want to play around with Garry's Mod (good choice btw) any game by Valve would do. So you could purchase Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Portal or Half Life 2. Personally I would get The Orange Box as it is a bargain.You can only buy Garrys Mod over Steam btw. Email me if you need more help on the problem ;)

I dont know but I played half life episode one it sucked. Good graphics characters especially but the game was so boring repetitive and was not exciting. Even though half life 2 came out before episode one it is probably similar.