Ok so when i first heard that Valve was going to go with an episodic
model, so their games would be released sooner and would allow for a
more TV model. Where their are cliffhangers and you can't wait to play
the next installment. Then after a while I started to think it was
stupid. The length of the games was the main issue. If it was 5 hours
and you would get the next installment soon... as in at most a month I
would love the idea. The best part about shows like 24 and Lost is
waiting to see whats going to happen. However, then I started to hear
that Episode 2 and 3 would come out within 6 months each. Ugh I
thought. This whole episodic thing is going to crash and burn, but
after playing it I have eaten my own words. First off yes it took me
around 4-5 hours to beat it. Yes my game crashed like hell many times
because my PC hates Half-Life. I figured out the problem and fixed it
so I'm not going to include that in my score.
Doing the game in a way where everything needs to have a point and
there is no time to waste really helped this game out a lot. If it was
slow paced in any way it would ruin it. And valve does not screw up in
that department. Non stop action interwoven with great character
moments. It's so much fun to just watch the characters interact with
the environment, each other, and sometimes even you. The animations are
just amazing. Perfect lip sync and amazing voice acting really bring
out the characters. Even more so than Half-Life 2 did. There are some
really cool player controlled real time "cutscenes" that I won't spoil,
but be prepared to smile. Sure the game has all the same weapons from
Half-Life 2, but really this is just the beginning in a trilogy of
episodes. In the end the game does enough new things that it didn't
really matter to me. It of course ends a cliffhanger, though not in a
huge story related manner. That aspect only comes in with the episode 2
teaser trailer.
Since this is based off of the Half-Life 2 engine almost entirely it
does look a little dated when compared to games like Crysis. However
Crysis isn't even out yet. It's pretty sad that no PC game has come
along since Half-Life 2 and raised the bar any higher. There are some
nice effects though added to the game. Not just the obvious stuff, but
nice changes under the hood that you don't really notice until you go
back and play Half-Life 2.
Overall I think that this could turn out to be a very good little
Trilogy. Where the sum of the parts could total to be longer and better
than Half-Life 2 itself. If the teaser trailer for episode II is any
indication the direction being taken is going to be a little different
from Episode One which in the end should help with creating some new
and fresh with each installment. Oh and there is the commentary track
throughout the game. Very similar to the Riddick design, but sadly
everyone is reading off of a piece of paper. Which makes the tracks
much much shorter than Riddick and sound far to forced. I suppose they
wanted to have a plan and give out useful information. But in the end
the best part about Riddick was how the developers would just talk and
say whatever came to mind about the subject. It was spontaneous, funny
like a real commentary track should be. Yes you should prepare for what
you are going to say, but don't read from a script.
In the end the problems in the game really just didn't matter to me. I
having so much fun. The lack of vehicles and truly varied environments
didn't matter! The lack of anything really answered in the story didn't
matter either! In the end this is part of a bigger story, so at the
moment i'm willing to let things go. I just hope it all ends up being
worth it!
