Your right Slayer, the Half-Life 2 Demo was sorely disappointing.
For those who haven't played it yet, what Valve have done is taken Chapter 1 (Arrival) & 6 (RavenHolm) from the full game.
While this wouldn't be so bad, what they've done is seriously cut-down Chapter 1 to the first 3 Sections, so you only get a glimpse at the story. Also although RavenHolm is an interesting section that shows some of the games good features, it really doesn't do the game justice.
With Half-Life, we had to wait a year (well if you lived in the UK only 3months) for the Demo, which was a fully independant section that put you into Gordon's world .. without spoiling any of the original story. It also gave a nice taster for the game.
Half-Life : Day One / Uplink was definately something that changed my skeptical nature about Half-Life on if it would beat Quake2.
This Half-Life 2 demo really is presented in such a way that things feel quickly moved along just to get sales up over Christmas.
What Slayer is saying above is that;
The game feels like he's playing a movie, and the story is presented well with good graphics. But the demo feels more like they're trying to show off thier new Engine rather than the game itself. He likes being able to pick-up and move things, however this makes him feel that the Multiplayer gaming will be alot better than the actual game itself.
Over Christmas I'm buying a new version of Half-Life 2, I'm sick and tired of being pissed around by Valve and some bastard who's stolen my key. So unfortunately not had the chance to play the Deathmatch, but from what I've heard about that; it really is only one mode of gameplayer : All-Vs-All (Deathmatch), which is quite boring.
While the story is like Half-Lifes and quite involving, personally speaking I don't see it as much has improved since Half-Life despite the graphics and environments. Even then given I'm stuck to playing it on an FX5200 (given my 480w PSU died on me, and 6800 keeps rebooting my machine running on a 250w PSU in Shader Games), so the game itself doesn't look all that impressive.
From my point of view, it's good... but not the best.
