I feel bad saying that. I really do. But it’s garbage. Literally. I would literally get as much enjoyment, if not more, from the contents of the trash can sitting next to me, than I would from Half Life 2: Game of the Year Edition.

The dead leaves in my trash can didn’t take an hour and a half to install. They don’t take up 4.5 gigs of HD space. They don’t play Half Life 2, but frankly, neither does Half Life 2. After installation, I was told that I couldn’t play the game until Steam registered me. Well, it’s been *more than a day* and it still hasn’t registered me. Not only that, I can’t log on to Steam *at all*. Period.

I looked on the boards, I submitted a technical support request, and here I am, completely worthless game sitting next to me.

Since when do I pay for a product I can’t use? Since when does a game company have the *right* to sell me a completely, utterly, totally worthless pile of garbage? This should be *criminal*. Genuinely. There are undoubtedly hundreds, if not thousands of people with this problem, and the only reason it hasn’t blown completely out of control is that it takes *forever* to get your account activated on Valve’s tech support forums.

Brilliant move, assholes. Seriously. I’m sure I’ll love the game, once it works, but as a company, I completely fucking hate you. Nice work. Half Life was one of my favorite games of all time. It heralded a completely new means of approaching narrative structures in interactive media. It was absolutely brilliant. But I’ll be *damned* if I’ll be suckered like this again.

PC gaming, as a whole – this goes for you, too. You suck. Ridiculous system requirements, absurd failures of compatibility, and crap like this… screw that. Give me console simplicity any day of the week. This is complete nonsense, a total waste of money, and a total waste of time.

I want Valve to pay *me* for the time I’ve wasted trying to figure out this problem. I want them to pay *me* for the Saturday (the first one I’ve had off in more than a month, part of which I wasted on this nonsense) that I’ve spent dealing with this crap. I paid them, now they fucking *owe* me. No way to run a business… jerks.