Game Review: Half Life 2: Episode 2
Episode 2 was released
October 10th 2007 as part of the Orange Box. It was one of the 3 new
games released for the first time in the Orange Box. It met massive
critical acclaim, and was praised as the best the Half Life series had
ever been. Like Episode 1, improvements for the Source Engine had
happened that were not available to the previous game. The major
improvement is even more advanced facial animation technology.
The
story is awesome. Basically without giving too much away, you and Alyx
Vance have destroyed the Combine fortress and now you two must bring
something back to your rebel comrades residing in a facility called
"White Forrest". Now that the Combine Fortress is destroyed however, it
has opened a super-portal which will act as a mega-highway for Combine
reinforcements if it is allowed to mature. Of course, the Rebels have
other plans. 
That
"Something" that you and Alyx have can stop the Combine from opening
that portal of theirs, but the remaining Combine running amok around
the land aren't going to make it easy for you to get to your
destination, especially these beings known as "Advisers" which have
telepathic powers and seem to be wildly deformed. There is some
speculation that these creatures might actually be the original Combine
race and that they using their vast power slowly subjugated other
species.
Anyway, enough about story, let's get onto beating
stuff up shall we? There really isn't much new when it comes to killing
stuff in Half Life 2: Episode 2. You have all your regular weapons
obviously, with no real new additions to the arsenal. You do have a car
though.
The car is the biggest addition. And this isn't that car
you had before, it's a worn out muscle car. And it's pretty awesome
too. Since you spend lots of the game with Alyx, and a car, it gave me
more of an adventurous feel.
The graphics are easily the best in
the Half Life series. Especially one scene where the G-Man gets a
chance to have a little heart to heart chat with you. Facial animation
is even better than that of Half Life 2: Episode 1 so you can kind of
guess that it is really good. Also, the environments look really nice,
and it seems they got an upgrade too. There is a lot of detail in all
of them, and it just feels overall like they took a bit more time than
with the previous games to make sure everything looked the way it
should.
The sound is the same, voice acting is top notch as
always. I always did want some better sound effects for when the
Antlions fly at you but that's just me being picky.
The game
does introduce some new characters, but I won't introduce them here.
They are all cool and have a lot of depth to them. The romance
side-story thing between Alyx and Gordon seems to progressing ever
further, which is always welcome.
The game is short, really
short. About 6 hours I would assume. If you are looking for some epic
adventure, you should look elsewhere. Nevertheless, as a part of the
Orange Box it makes sense, and individually the game is like 20 bucks.
I highly recommend you buy the game, it is fantastic, even if a bit on
the short side
In the Orange Box score: 5/5
Individually: 4.5/5 (Because of it's length)
