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I vaguely remember playing it. It was total garbage (the leaked copy). You could play maybe a few levels etc. Ultra buggy.

I think my buddy burned it to 3 CD-Rs and it spread around my gaming friends in HS pretty quickly.

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That's not accurate at all, the beta was revolutionary - you could play with the physics, the gravity gun.

It wasn't a proper game yet for sure, but as a 2003 tech demo the beta was one of the best, you could recreate the legendary E3 demo [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddJ1OKV63Q

Yeh I recall the leaked version quickly gained a poor reputation. I had zero interest in downloading or playing it. Not surprised that sales of the final release were unaffected.

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