Game Review Half-Life 2: Episode One (average share: 89.2%)
One thing you can say about the Valve Software team: they don’t like to rush. After six years to create the sequel to Half-Life, it took another eighteen months for the first mini-expansion to arrive, Half-Life 2: Episode One. As the first installment in a trilogy to be offered in episodic format, the good news is that Episode One is a welcome return to the world of Half-Life 2, with the same great graphics and gameplay that helped the game win numerous awards at the end. 2004 (including GameSpy’s PC Game of the Year).
Episode one picks up exactly where Half-Life 2 left off: with you (as scientist/killing machine Gordon Freeman) standing on top of an exploding Citadel, with your partner, the brave Alyx Vance, about to get toasted. Without spoiling things, let’s just say that Alyx stays out of harm’s way, and you two quickly reunite outside at the base of a smoking Citadel. After establishing an uplink with old friends, Dr. Kleiner, and Alyx’s father Eli (once again voiced by Robert Guillaume), you discover that the Citadel is about to go insane, and to give you , Alyx and many other citizens more time to escape the city. 17, you will have to go back inside to try and delay the collapse.
There’s a lot of exposition at the start of Episode One, as characters are quickly reintroduced and tasks are laid out before you. The introduction includes the reappearance of Dog (Alyx’s pet robot), making your re-entry to the Citadel a memorable one. Once inside, you and Alyx spend a lot of time exploring the dilapidated monolith, giving you a chance to reacquaint yourself with the gravity gun. In no time, you’ll be dropping combo soldiers just like the good old days. As you fight your way into the Citadel’s central reactor core, you’re faced with a healthy dose of puzzles, which start off fairly simple but require more imagination to solve as you progress.
Once you’ve delayed the Citadel’s collapse (and gained additional information on what the Combine are doing in the process), the second half of Episode One focuses on Gordon and Alyx’s efforts to break out of City 17. Of course, escape is anything but simple, as you’re first forced underground where you have to deal with headcrabs, zombies, and antlions, and then you fight your way out onto the streets where you’re knee-deep in combat with soldiers. Combine, who aren’t too happy about the information they stole from the Citadel.
The gameplay in Episode One never strays too far from the familiar Half-Life formula: levels stay fairly linear as you progress from one challenge to the next, with plenty of events timed to move the plot along. The early levels in the Citadel feel more unique, due to the heavy emphasis on storytelling, the gravity gun, and all the puzzles involved with stabilizing the reactor. Things slow down a bit once you go underground and start fighting zombies, though there are some interesting scenes where you have to shine your flashlight on enemies so Alyx can see them and shoot them in the dark. Once you come out with a full complement of weapons, things move along much faster, although it can feel a little too familiar at times, like you’re replaying the latest sections of Half-Life 2 instead of new content.
Probably the biggest change introduced in Episode One is how Alyx fights at Gordon’s side for most of the game. Many shooters have tried this and failed, with NPCs getting lost or getting in the way or just plain annoying. Valve hits the right notes with Alyx; she doesn’t scold Gordon, she can competently follow him around and even provides helpful support most of the time. There’s a fun sequence in the later chapters where you’re free to run and fight alone, but it’s much more fun to lure enemies into Alyx’s line of sight so she can attack them from afar. Aside from her use in combat, Alyx is also used effectively to put a human face on things and keep the story moving, and Episode One is a better game for that.
As was the case in Half-Life 2, the graphics in Episode One are stunningly beautiful; There may not be another graphics engine today capable of producing such attractive scenes in so many different settings. From the dramatic views outside of the ruined Citadel to the glowing reactor core and dramatic lighting effects when fighting zombies in the dark, it’s almost impossible to take a bad screenshot in Episode One. Once again, the NPCs they’re rendered with amazing detail and animation, and Valve has included the advanced HDR lighting effects it showed off last year at the Lost Coast tech demo. Best of all, Episode One seems to be just as hardware compatible as Half-Life 2 and ran smoothly at 1920×1200 on our test machine (a 3.4 GHz CPU with 2 GB of RAM and a video card GeForce 7800 GTX).
One of Episode One’s most unique features is the addition of developer feedback, which, once enabled, can be accessed via chat bubbles scattered throughout the game. There is a fair amount of feedback, with the developers at Valve mainly offering insight into the design decisions that influenced sections of the game. Commentary offers a fascinating look at why parts of the game turned out the way they did, and while Episode One isn’t the first game to try this (the PC version of The Chronicles of Riddick also had a commentary feature), it’s a feature. that are worth checking out once you’ve finished the game, and something we’d like to see more of.
The biggest question you’ll likely have about Episode One is whether it’s worth the $19.99 price tag. At around four to five hours of new gameplay, it goes by very quickly, which is very disappointing when you consider that we’ve waited so long for new Half-Life 2 content. (Episode two is currently scheduled for late 2006.) There’s also the Steam factor – so far Valve’s download service seems to be doing just fine, but the game is also in stores now for the same price for those of you (like me) who like to have a box and a disc. . (For the record, Episode One is a standalone title that doesn’t require Half-Life 2 to play, and includes access to the previously released Half-Life 2 deathmatch.)
Half-Life 2: Episode One offers exactly what you’d expect from a Half-Life expansion: it returns to the intriguing setting of City 17, offers plenty of tight action sequences and well-crafted puzzles, and is arguably the most engaging. shoot today. At $20, it goes by pretty quickly, but the developer comment adds some replay value, and it’s impossible to imagine anyone who enjoyed Half-Life 2 passing it up. It’s exciting to see the developers finally embrace the idea of episodic content; the big question now is whether Valve can keep up with the demand.
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