"Aah, I remember the good old days, back in Black Mesa, back when I saw working alone. I was a real hero back then, you know." "suuure you were, Gordon." "No really, Barney, just ask the vortigaunts. I used to roam all around black mesa, beating back small armies by myself. I didn't have technical support, medics or even reliable safe havens. All I had were my brains, my suit and whatever I could carry." "With your technical skills, I have my doubts you could even get the doors to open." "Don't you insult me, you simpleton! I launched a missile! I went to the Borderworld and fought an enemy even the combine couldn't defeat! I battled the mother of all headcrabs! I brought down an entire empire by myself!" "I think you had enough for one evening, Gordon. Let's just get you home before you do anything you regret." "*cry*" Hello and welcome to another installment of ijffdreviews. Today, you get a twofer: episode 1 and episode 2 of Half-life 2. As always, the spoilers will be unmarked if they regard these games, or any of the earlier games in the series. As always, let's start with the things I liked. The citadel levels early in episode one are absolutely amazing. Especially the dark matter core looks really cool. The gameplay of these levels is also really improved, having an actual variety in terrain and challenges, compared to the fairly monotomous half-life 2 levels. It did feel like really lazy writing that the gravity gun got turned back to normal (it was juiced up considerably in the last levels of half-life 2), only for it to regain its power within minutes of acquiring it, but overall, those levels were pretty amazing. In fact, there were many memorable levels, like the "wait for the elevator in complete darkness with a failing flashlight while hordes of zombies descend upon you" level, the "be at the complete mercy of an alien stalker death-machine, until you figure out a way to maneuver through the terrain without being torn to shreds and reaching the rocket cache" level, the "you are stuck in a collapsing building that is being torn to shreds by helicopters" level, and especially the "fight off a combine invasion consisting of afore-mentioned death-machines and super-agile and accurate hunter-killers that specifically prevent you from destroying the death machines). So yeah, these expansions contain same great experiences. The expansions also manage to much more capture the feel of the original half-life, featuring several more puzzle-like challenges, a greater spread of elements from the original half-life, such as trip-mines, vent-crawling and crossing a gap using unconventional and rather suicidal methods (like using the rotating radiation shielding during a dark matter meltdown to cross the room). The final boss of episode one even feels like a proper half-life boss, requiring you to maneuver past him several times in order to reach the weapons you use to destroy him. The new enemies in the game are fun. The zombine is essentially the armored, faster version of the normal zombie, who sometimes pulls out a combine grenade. The acid ant-lion is durable, agile, screws up your interface, heavy on damage and likes to retreat. The stalker is probably the coolest enemies, firing bullets that stick into you on impact, exploding seconds later, and an AI that makes them shoot stuff you are holding, like the weapons you need to use during the final mission of the second episode. The expansions are however lacking in other new content. The car from episode 2 is pretty underwhelming, and you get no new weapons to use. Would it really have killed the developers to put in a new weapon,or just one of the weapons from the original half-life? This however does not mean there aren't any new weapons in the game. Those just aren't for you, but for Alyx. Which brings me to my biggest complaint: ALYX. In half-life 2, you already felt like you were playing the wrong character, with Alyx doing at least as much as you, probably more (fought through an organized combine invasion while you were busy fighting zombies, attacked Nova Prospekt without having an army of ant-lions to back her up and somehow managed to turn up in the combine citadel at the same time you did. Episode 1 manages to be even worse in this regard. Alyx is now travelling with you for much of the game, and when she dies, you lose. She is the one that comes up with the solutions to almost every problem, and most NPC's don't actually react to me anymore, instead only reacting to Alyx. There were only a few areas where Alyx didn't go with you, like the black matter reactor, and those felt pretty refreshing because of that. Still, Alyx is a well-written, well-rounded and overall pretty likable character, and gives plenty of praise if it is appropriate, so it's not nearly as annoying as it could be. Still, I wish I could have used the sniper rifle, and not her. Episode 2 manages to be both better and worse in this regard, since you spend most of the game without her tagging along. On the other hand, a large part of the game is devoted to you saving her ***, and both the G-man and the vortigaunts imply that she is more important to what's yet to come than you are. At least in episode 2, you don't want to play her story instead. Though I still wish I could have used the sniper rifle in episode 2, but nope. Overall, half-life episode 1 and episode 2 show a clear improvement over half-life 2, which was already pretty amazing. Though they are a bit lacking in new features, they present a good story with some really cool challenges. I would rate episode 1 an 8.5 out of 10 and episode 2 a 8.75.
Quite surprised how high the scores for these are compared to the others but hey, these expansions sound awesome and a big improvement, i guess Valve still need to sort out the problem with Gordon and Alyx >__>
