Half-Life 2 demo and Steam: Crap
It starts by installing this stupid Steam crap. Why do developers think that everyone should be OK with loading crap upon crap every time you start Windows? Why the hell does anyone need a program to run at startup to play a freaking game? Sorry, but if it's not anti-virus software, it doesn't need to run.
Then I get to the game, and as soon as it starts with me on the train, it starts to choke and the audio gets choppy until it eventually freezes. This is after one of the most ridiculous load times I've ever seen. Made Doom 3 loads look like a cartridge-based console game. Since the Steam crap was running, I could tab-out, and kill the process, which took a few minutes.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to drop $50 on a game that you require me to register for, load a startup program and then crash. Nice going, Valve!