Purple
Well, after weeks of carefully planned procrastination, I have finally got round to purchasing Half-life 2 : Episode One off evil smelly Steam.
One word review : Wow.
One sentence review : Better than Half-life 2.
Long spoiler-filled review :
Half-life 2 ended with the Citadel’s reactor blowing up. Just as it does, your companion Alyx is thrown backwards in the explosion. Time freezes, the G-man appears, says some weird stuff and returns you to stasis. At the start of Episode 1, you see Alyx being rescued from frozen-time by a group of purple vortigaunts (somehow). They then hold-back the G-man (somehow) and rescue you too. You soon find out the Citadel hasn’t quite blown up yet (somehow) but it shortly will, and you embark on a mission to slow its destruction (somehow), allow more civilians to evacuate (somehow), and get out of the city yourself (somehow). It’s a rather vague opening, but that's no bad thing.
The first two levels are Gravity-Gun centric, but they give you a lot of new tricks to do that weren’t in Half-life 2. There are quite a few new things to be found, and you can now modify rollermines so they aid you. Pretty cool. These levels are good fun, but nothing outstanding.
Then the third level rears its outstanding head, “Lowlife”. This is set below the city in maintenance tunnels and disused car parks. Now that the Combine defence field is gone, ant-lions and other nasty creatures are flooding into City 17. Also, Combine are now being zombified since they lost much of their defence with the destruction of the Citadel. “Zombine,” as they are known, make a fantastic new enemy. Quite speedy, tough to kill, and sometimes they pull out grenades and stumble towards you.
This level also contains lots of battles between the combine, zombies and ant-lions. There is one particularly good sequence where you need to locate and move three wrecked cars with the Gravity Gun to block up three ant-lion nests to give you time to open the painfully slow-moving gate. Alyx’s help here is invaluable, mainly because she is close to invincible. Not quite though, as I found out when I allowed a gantry to fall on her head. I thought it was part of a scripted scene. Not my most shining moment.
The fourth level, back on the surface, starts with a long and interesting speech over the public broadcast system the rebels have now taken over. It is actually worth listening to, and also quite amusing. This level has lots more great urban combat, including one of my favourite sequences. You’re inside a fully-destructible ruined building with a gunship overhead. You have to fire through the rafters while it’s destroying the building to try and take it down. Eventually, it crashed inches away, smashing through the weak wooden roof. Very cinematic.
One fantastic point is the sub-titles. I say this because whenever Alyx starts battling the enemy, it says [Fighting Sounds] in big letters at the bottom of the screen. Stunning! Even when she kneed a Zombine in the groin, it said [Fighting Sounds] rather than “Ohhhh goddddd myyyy crotttttchhhhh!”, as one might expect.
Possibly my favourite section was the final fight at the end, where you have to take on a Strider in a train-depot without any rockets. There’s a maze of crates and ladders to be negotiated while avoiding the tripod bastard to finally make your way to the rockets which you don't know are there until you fall upon them.
Various other things to mention : the sound-track for the game is fantastic with some excellent tracks. The levels never get boring either, and there are some excellent puzzles, which, unlike Tomb Raider games, don’t feel like they are purposely puzzles.
The Poison headcrabs are back again, reasserting their position as the most annoying in-game enemy ever. You hear the hissss and spin around, disgorging all your ammunition in the hope you might just hit the bloody thing before it jumps on you. Also, the final sequence with the Citadel actually exploding while your train rushes out of the city is amazing.
There’s plenty of in-game dialog to be heard, which I think is always a good thing. Alyx, unlike the rebel NPCs in HL2, doesn’t actually obstruct you. All too often in the other game, a grenade would land at your feet. You’d turn to try and flee and find some rebels blocking your way, calmly smiling. Then the grenade would explode, and kill you. Stupid rebels! If you’re their savior they should get the hell out of your way.
I have one big complaint though. At the end of the game you have to transport groups of rebels across open Combine-controlled ground into a train station. I think you have to do this 5 or 6 times. 3 or 4 were more than enough. True, each time you head back new enemies spawn, but there wasn’t enough done to keep it fresh. The Strider battle straight after made up for it though, and the end sequence. Now we just wait until Winter for Episode 2.
Oh, and I took all these pictures myself, mainly because some things are random (like the gunship crashing right next to me) and were just too damned cool to pass up. I want Episode 2!
One word review : Wow.
One sentence review : Better than Half-life 2.
Long spoiler-filled review :
Half-life 2 ended with the Citadel’s reactor blowing up. Just as it does, your companion Alyx is thrown backwards in the explosion. Time freezes, the G-man appears, says some weird stuff and returns you to stasis. At the start of Episode 1, you see Alyx being rescued from frozen-time by a group of purple vortigaunts (somehow). They then hold-back the G-man (somehow) and rescue you too. You soon find out the Citadel hasn’t quite blown up yet (somehow) but it shortly will, and you embark on a mission to slow its destruction (somehow), allow more civilians to evacuate (somehow), and get out of the city yourself (somehow). It’s a rather vague opening, but that's no bad thing.
The first two levels are Gravity-Gun centric, but they give you a lot of new tricks to do that weren’t in Half-life 2. There are quite a few new things to be found, and you can now modify rollermines so they aid you. Pretty cool. These levels are good fun, but nothing outstanding.
Then the third level rears its outstanding head, “Lowlife”. This is set below the city in maintenance tunnels and disused car parks. Now that the Combine defence field is gone, ant-lions and other nasty creatures are flooding into City 17. Also, Combine are now being zombified since they lost much of their defence with the destruction of the Citadel. “Zombine,” as they are known, make a fantastic new enemy. Quite speedy, tough to kill, and sometimes they pull out grenades and stumble towards you.
This level also contains lots of battles between the combine, zombies and ant-lions. There is one particularly good sequence where you need to locate and move three wrecked cars with the Gravity Gun to block up three ant-lion nests to give you time to open the painfully slow-moving gate. Alyx’s help here is invaluable, mainly because she is close to invincible. Not quite though, as I found out when I allowed a gantry to fall on her head. I thought it was part of a scripted scene. Not my most shining moment.
The fourth level, back on the surface, starts with a long and interesting speech over the public broadcast system the rebels have now taken over. It is actually worth listening to, and also quite amusing. This level has lots more great urban combat, including one of my favourite sequences. You’re inside a fully-destructible ruined building with a gunship overhead. You have to fire through the rafters while it’s destroying the building to try and take it down. Eventually, it crashed inches away, smashing through the weak wooden roof. Very cinematic.
One fantastic point is the sub-titles. I say this because whenever Alyx starts battling the enemy, it says [Fighting Sounds] in big letters at the bottom of the screen. Stunning! Even when she kneed a Zombine in the groin, it said [Fighting Sounds] rather than “Ohhhh goddddd myyyy crotttttchhhhh!”, as one might expect.
Possibly my favourite section was the final fight at the end, where you have to take on a Strider in a train-depot without any rockets. There’s a maze of crates and ladders to be negotiated while avoiding the tripod bastard to finally make your way to the rockets which you don't know are there until you fall upon them.
Various other things to mention : the sound-track for the game is fantastic with some excellent tracks. The levels never get boring either, and there are some excellent puzzles, which, unlike Tomb Raider games, don’t feel like they are purposely puzzles.
The Poison headcrabs are back again, reasserting their position as the most annoying in-game enemy ever. You hear the hissss and spin around, disgorging all your ammunition in the hope you might just hit the bloody thing before it jumps on you. Also, the final sequence with the Citadel actually exploding while your train rushes out of the city is amazing.
There’s plenty of in-game dialog to be heard, which I think is always a good thing. Alyx, unlike the rebel NPCs in HL2, doesn’t actually obstruct you. All too often in the other game, a grenade would land at your feet. You’d turn to try and flee and find some rebels blocking your way, calmly smiling. Then the grenade would explode, and kill you. Stupid rebels! If you’re their savior they should get the hell out of your way.
I have one big complaint though. At the end of the game you have to transport groups of rebels across open Combine-controlled ground into a train station. I think you have to do this 5 or 6 times. 3 or 4 were more than enough. True, each time you head back new enemies spawn, but there wasn’t enough done to keep it fresh. The Strider battle straight after made up for it though, and the end sequence. Now we just wait until Winter for Episode 2.
Oh, and I took all these pictures myself, mainly because some things are random (like the gunship crashing right next to me) and were just too damned cool to pass up. I want Episode 2!
posted by Mkzrj at 2:50 pm
2 Comments:
Nice review, but those screens were poorly resized? Let it down for me, as it doesn't look as spang-dangedly good as I would imagine it does.
Perhaps one day I shall purchase half life 2 for mineself.
I think you should.
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