Gah! What is the deal?

Normally, never had any problems joining servers, but I've come across a few where I connect just fine, dl whatever just fine but once I get the map loaded and the info screen comes up, I'm stuck

I can't click OK to start playing, I get no audio and the only way to get out is to force a shutdown

So far it's been one of the TSGK servers(XXV I believe) and the GC-<Full Life Clan> server

So what the hell and how do I fix this?

not clue but try reinstalling?

i had something like this happen when joining off friends, and didn't get to shutdown the friends menu in time. Normal you don't see friends but can't move and esc will get you to the motd screen in the server. But this time i couldn't do crap and had to shut hl2.exe off to get it to work.

It could be the friends bug mentioned above, Valve really need to fix this.
try using the beta steam client.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... p?t=696061

Shouldn't be the Friends list. I rarely open it or log into it

ive had this happen once, just alt+tab'd out, closed hl2, restarted and worked fine for me...

stretch