One of my gaming friends who has been playing Counter Strike Source for the last week posted his own thoughts on the engine. I post his post in full with his permission, mainly because I haven't seen any really constructive breakdown of the engine in this way. Interested in others comments:
I also heard another rumourI've been playing around with CS:S (CounterStrike on the Half-Life 2 engine) and while there are some fairly impressive (for their speed of rendering) visual effects, the game does 'suffer' with that horrible shiney, shrink-wrapped effect that DOOM III had. I'm guessing that's a simple, bog-standard pixel shader effect, and if so I really hope the industry grows out of it before it becomes de facto 'cos it's hardly ever used appropriately... and to a cynic like myself it's already dating modern games like generic picture in picture effects dated 80s pop videos or the lens flare effect dates digital photos to the end of the last century.
It also shares DOOM IIIs shocking avoidance of detail textures, so when you approach within 3 feet of a wall/door/crate etc. (as you do almost all the time) the illusion of great visuals is shattered and you get a face full of pixelated shit. I thought the games industry had settled on the simple solution of blending in a detailed texture relating to the supposed material of the surface in question, and then these two big name engines pull this kind of stunt. Again, maybe it's to do with the shader technology, or the bump-mapping. I'm not up on it enough to know the reasons, only that it look terrible and seems like a backwards step. The textures do look great from a distance though. Very realistic - and to be fair you're not going to be scrutinising the walls when there are a dozen frantic CS kiddies out to pwn you. Lets hope HL2 has the necessaries tho' as it's an entirely different kettle of fish.
The smoke 'nades have a good feeling of volume to them when smoking, although I'm not convinced they'll work well as a concealment. There are also some nice lighting effects, ignoring the 'wet-look' shrink-wrap stuff I mentioned earlier, that make you stop and appreciate a scene (possibly fatally mid match), but apart from that I'm not overly impressed.
Don't be fooled by what was shown in the CS:S video about the 'destructible' environment either. It's all cleverly staged to make it look better than it really is. For example, the reason the guy shoots the monitor in the top right is because it only breaks in the top right. Shoot it bottom left, and the top right still flies off. Obviously a production flaw in that line...
The physics also seem a bit sketchy. You can't approach a lot of the items because there's a large invisible buffer around them that bounces you back, or knocks them over before you've even got there. Not really important for the 'fluff' of desk clutter, but when you go to jump on what looks like a handy barrel (bread and butter move for a shooter) you'll either be pushed straight off of it by invisible forces, or it will fall over unconvincingly as you run up to it. Shoot a bottle and there's some lag while nothing happens, then it flies away in a very odd way, like the guy who is supposed to pull the transparent wire wasn't really paying attention for his cue and wasn't pulling in quite the right direction anyway. If this was a film, every time you shot something the director would be cursing and calling for another take.
Finally, while I'm speaking of shooting stuff, neither I nor the hostage I shot through the face were impressed with the results of that little test. He went 'Ooooh' in rather camp manner and just continued to stand there with a gigantic entry and exit wound texture on either side of his mocking mug. I had a flashback to my childhood where I'd lift my shoe off the Lego men I'd been stamping on - only to realise they were all still happily smiling at me. GRRRR!! DIE!!!!! STAMPSTAMPSTAMP... BLAMBLAMBLAM... the hostage then slumped to the floor Star Trek extra style, where he stubbornly refused to offer up any more claret, despite my generosity with the lead. His skull didn't even have to splinter - just leak some more of the (salad fingers voice:) loovely red waaater. No go tho', it was clean as a whistle. Pah. Perhaps this sanitised killing is related to the anti-war slogans supplied as the default spray-can tags... The (only?) good thing about the CS community tho' is that they can sully anything. Lets hope they add some gore/realism.
I must say if this is the case I find that very disappointing, particularly for the UK magazines (Zone in particular) who made a big stance after Black and White was released to say they wouldn't get involved in this type of stuff. Was very interesting that PC Zone unusually did not have a second opinion regarding the game and also only one of the reviewers posted it as one of the games he was playing. Usually when a biggie like this hits particularly an FPS a large number of the 8 are listed as playing it.The reason why game magazines and websites already are reviewing HalfLife2, is because Valve staged a "Review Session" for the press on a special version of the game. Basically they invited everyone out to sitdown and play it for a bit, then write reviews. Due to the leadtime of print media, most of the print rags took advantage of this so their November issues would have fresh reviews of the just released game.
The problem here to me is...
1) Nobody was certain this was the actual release version of the game.
2) Playtime wasn't long enough to really make a truely real review of it.
3) Unbiased might be difficult if you are at valve, being fed steaks and booze, and rubbing elbows with them...
So *ANY* review you see right now, on Half Life2, was reviewed under those conditions. PCGamer was the first to print a review from this little "Event", the others are waiting till release day, or extremely close to release day. I guess in a nutshell, if you are to trust any review, it should be a review 1-2 weeks after its released, from someone that actually played through the game... Not someone munching on caviar and rubbing up to the developers at a staged session.. To me, that speaks of lack of credibility.
Tals
Or I wouldn't have posted it. He has made some clear comments about the source engine he did admit that he was overly critical - but that is a nice change from people just goggling at something new and ignoring some of the actual reality about it. But it would be nice if you could actually make it clear why you make that comment 
If its true i'd be disappointed that the review didn't make a comment about it. Same goes for standing on items. Lag on item again maybe a translation but that is going to be immersion killing - again if it occurs in the game it will be disappointing that this was not highlighted in the review
I think that there was a lot of shady deals going on, but I doubt it could do that much to raise the reviewers opinion up more. The main reason why they had people come over instead of sending the game out was piracy, most piracy happens when either someone on the distribution staff or a reviewer pirates the game.
