if they put hands on every object you could pick up, that object would have to be close enough to reach with your arm, which means it would totally obscure your view, and the entire object would not even be on the screen. Since the player needs to be able to walk around while holding stuff, and needs to be able to position the object correctly before letting go of it, it's better for the objects to float at an unrealistic distance for the player, rather than an arm's length away.

Gameplay. 

You need hands to hold someone you care for
You need hands to show that you're sincere
When you feel nobody wants to know you
You need hands to brush away your tear
When you hold a brand new baby
You need tender hands to guide them on their way
You need hands to thank the Lord for living
And for giving us this day

Singalongamax, 1865 

slime: but objects already obscure the view
its not just the lack of hands - its more the way the object is floating in the air about half a meter before your view

I cant recall any situation where you had to place the object with precision ( didnt play till the very end yet tho) And you could throw anyway.
Maybe its really more a problem of the view and the ease of manipulation, rather than the technical one. Many 3d view games have animations of player interacting with the world, including more than the grabbing and throwing of the objects. And the argument about polycount and texture mem is just laughable, sry preach. Btw you get to see the hands of HL protagonist, just as u put on the suit.

Lun: yeah sure, remove the hands holding guns and grenades too plz!

Valve should have made it a part of the plot - freeman had both hands cut off, but gained the ability to manipulate objects at a distance, just using his will (BS yes)

Anyway it�s not that much of a problem if you dont focus on it.

There are other shite moments, like the areas where you _could_ get, just piling few nearby crates, yet you cant - thanks to the clipping everywhere except the place where you are supposed to climb.
And the general lack of interactivity, that really ruined immersion so masterfully created by the environment designers and artists

Yeah, I love how it looks, dont like how it plays 

Many 3d view games have animations of player interacting with the world, including more than the grabbing and throwing of the objects.

I can think of many FPS titles, No One Live Forever (where's my lip stick case!), Blood, MOH, that had some interesting hand motion actions other than just holding a weapon. If it really destroyed the emersion to have the player represented outside of the body then Max Payne for one would have never worked. 

Seeing your hands is about as useful as seeing your feet. And what fps game can you see your feet in? Gore. And Gore sucked money ass. I rest my case. 

is even more expensive than monkey ass. 

Fallacy of equivocation. You should be ashamed of yourself! 

If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! 

i forgot...

What if you're holding a gun and you want to pick up a crate that needs two hands to pick up? And what if you're holding a two-handled gun and want to pick up anything?

Do you guys want to play a game or a simulation? 

in that crate, man 

a game with physics should support a basic grabbing action ( d3 had this crane... )

also, i loved to see hands (and tits with health bar) in that jurassic park game. just that the handling sucked. im pretty sure the hl team could do better than that. :) 

you see your feet and stuff 

You have to buy food or else you'll starve to death! So, Valve should add that too. 

that was Ultima III right? Those games take me back. Good God, some of those were difficult. Scenerios like having to use a high level teleport spell to move through a series of enclosed caverns, and then resting up after every jaunt. If developers made games that difficult these days all you would hear is bitch, bitch, moan, moan from the candyass critical community (rocking on my porch, shaking my cane). 

of Quake level reviews excepted from the above, for what I have in mind http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/GameDevelopment/WhatsWrongwithGameJournal.html

and the ladies of Game Player Magazine who can't be bothered to put out their Virginia Slims while using a keyboard. 

That title has nothing to do with anything but I thought it sounded cool.

In the last few months I've read several articles about why game journalism sucks. There are plenty of people out there already doing something about it. Nintendorks, Game Girl Advance, and Grand Text Auto are a few of the cooler indy game sites out there. 

This is not a resurecting thread, it's just my humble opinion about HL2 I lately played (compared to you guys) these last days...
I finally found the time to play HL2, and what a good surprise ! Like many of you said previously: this game is really better than Doom3. Doom3 is very very (very ...) linear, and all the game is based on the fear ambiance, and the darkness... HL2 is rather on the opposite side (like difference between the Force, and its dark side...). Even if the ambiance is not as good as in Doom3 (the game are rather different on this point), the gameplay is much more impressive (you have many possibilities of interactivity with your environment), the textures are quite similar, while HL2 have more outside textures, and it's not so dark !!! In fact, I found much more fun here !... I was very far to think it was so good... and I really prefer HL2 to Doom3 now... Well, I'm playing in SP mode, and after 6 or 7 levels, I'm not even satisfied: I want more and more... hoping it's endless ;)
Thanks to Valve and Siera for this fun moment... I'm now waiting for HL3 ! 

http://horsti.pinguinhoehle.de/~palpatine/lonestar/HL2%20Dominos.wmv
2.2mb 

Okay, so it's very, very obvious, but it's also very, very cool. Respect to him and respect to Valve for making such things possible. 

Now let's see the D3 version >:} 

D3 domino would be build with exploding barel ... 

I just found it:
http://www.playground.ru/files/5905/
Screenshots:
http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/9963/95dh.jpg
http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/157/140kd.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8726/151dv.jpg

What is this:

- The Cinematic Modification adds Hires-Textures to all human characters, some non-human characters, nearly all items, walls and vehicles (and the vending mashine of course). (Hint: If you prefer the original Low-Res Textures, delete or rename the "materials" folder inside the Mod.)

- It replaces the original HL2 music with a more classic score in the style of large Hollywood productions, that fits to the specific game-situations. More orchestral, more ambient, with unique themes for combines and Alyx. (Hint: If you prefer the original HL2-music score, delete or rename the "sound" folder and the "scripts" folder inside the Mod.)

- It adds a new weapons-balancing and strengthens all the weapons to a more realistic level. No more firing numerous rounds at the combines; kill them with 3 to 5 direct hits, just like in real-life combat, but beware: Your opponents weapons are comparable. After 3 to 5 direct hits (or 1 direct headshot) you *will* be killed. (Hint: If you prefer the original Weapons balancing, delete the file "skill.cfg" inside the Mod's cfg-folder)

- The additional Insane Hires Props are previous unreleased Hirestextures for nearly all props in the game, even little items like binders, computerparts, doorlocks and so on. The huge amount of details will give your HL2 virtually the look of a render-intro, but be warned: The amount of new textures will tax your hardware to the limit. Better don't use this pack with outdated DirectX8 cards. Don't even think about it, unless you are using a 256+ MB card.

I can't test it since I don't have HL2, but I would love too :> 

Which is not only free of any real substance, but doesn't stack up to the quality of the original art.

wd texture sharpening dudes, make something orginal and useful next time. 

At least it's a step in the right direction for the texture-replacement trend. Just going by the shots, it looks pretty consistent with the original content. 

looks like they added layer of dirt/damage over some. well, not much difference, but atleast they look NOT worse :)