With all bias or fanboyism aside anyone who judges any leaked version of HL2 that is not the final gold version has no grounds for making any sort of claims against VALVe's planned feature set when they find it not yet implemented in the leaked alpha/beta/last minute pre gold/whatever.
Some accusations are reasonable enough, but something as retarded as ?the AI isn?t exactly the way they claimed? or whatever, that?s clearly crossing the line. The AI is probably some of the last bits tweaked and tested before the game is finalized.
The game just isn?t finished, and I?m betting it would have been delayed to 2004 with or without the leak. The whole Juarez community thinks they have everything figured out but VALVe could very well delay the game another year, such as Half-Life 1 and any given development version of CS:CZ, and we could see something entirely new. I?ve been waiting since HL1 for HL2, and I intend to wait until it?s released. Not because of high moral obligations or something retarded like that, I downloaded the doom3 alpha, but because I want to play HL2, not some build of the month that is missing half the content/features, doesn?t have everything implemented, is subject to change completely and spontaneously in terms of game play dynamics and design, and isn?t a piece of software VALVe considers to be a real product that can carry the HL2 name.
When it finally does come out and you can?t block doors with tables or bust open soda machines to get a bunch of free pepsi, then we?ll talk.