Half-Life 2: Episode 1 available today at Noon ET
Posted by inpheaux on June 1st, 2006 at 3:07 am
About a year after it was announced, the first of (at least) three episodic Half-Life 2 single player expansion packs is just about ready for release. The Official Site has a nice big orange countdown to Noon today, when the game will be unlocked on Steam if you've already coughed up your $20. If you haven't, well, you'll be able to pay whenever you want through Steam and have it delivered straight to you through the glorious wonders of internet delivery.
If you're still scared of the whole "Internet Delivery" thing, you'll be able to buy the standalone Episode 1 soon. It has a ship date of today, so it'll be in stores tomorrow-ish.
In other Steam-related news, a decent number of things were rolled out in yesterday's client update. First notable one is that the seemingly-endless beta of "Friends" - Steam's built-in instant messaging and player-tracking system - is over, and Friends is now a proper feature of the Steam Client. Not much has changed since the most recent Friends beta started, but now it's out of beta, so you should be able to use it without fear of Weird Things happening. The other main new thing is that the Backup Utility has been significantly upgraded, to be faster, more reliable, etc. This is good, as I've been meaning to back up my assorted HL2 stuff for quite awhile now. A full list of yesterday's updates / changes can be seen over here.
That's about it on the Valve / Steam front lately. Expect a mini-review of Episode 1 from me in the comments thread shortly after it's released.
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