"Lots of shooting, not much plot development"

When Half Life 2 hit the streets, I picked up my deluxe edition and plowed through it in every spare second I had until I completed it. I considered the overall experience to be one of the best virtual experiences I'd ever had, so it has been with some anticipation that I was waiting for the release of HL2 Episode 1.

I preordered the title on Steam and had no problems downloading or getting started with my game.

After watching a cut scene that ruins the end of Half Life 2, in my opinion the entire opening of this title is a cop out, we find ourselves in the ruins of City 17 with Alyx and Dog. After some rather bad acting and bad dialogue, we are given our first task of the game and we're off with Alyx in tow.

This was supposed to be a big innovation in the game but I think it didn't really turn out so hot. First off all she can't be hurt, which means you'll never develop a any kind of need to protect her(ala Ico or Meryl in Metal Gear Solid) or any sense of relief that she saved your ass when you got into hot spots(Snake in the second arc of Metal Gear Solid 2).

She tries to help but tends to block doorways and just push you out of the way if she needs to get someplace due to scripting. It makes her feel like an robot, not a person. And her dialogue...is really bad for the most part. I think the actor did a good job, but all the humor just doesn't work. Especially given the context. Worse, her character doesn't really change or grow. Who cares about her story if her story is, "I shoot things"?

Not me.

She essentially is a key that opens some doors and occasionally shoots some zombies/soldiers. Better than most NPCs but not by much. At least she doesn't get stuck on corners.

Then there's the rest of the game.

There's no new weapons or gadgets to play with either which was a little surprising. A few physics puzzles here and there, lots of monsters to shoot and quite frankly the experience feels fairly "been there, done that".

I don't think games need to add new weapons and environments with every iteration if the story is compelling, but for all the talk of advancing the story, it really doesn't advance at all.

There are little snippets of info you can get if you hang around when you find other people or hang out on the opening menu screen but the core plot of G-man never really goes anywhere. We don't learn anything new about him or Gordon. And for a game about trying to flee a city that's about to explode, there's really no sense of desperation at all in the game.

Sure there are some intense battles but nothing that was tied into the story like the battles in Half Life 2 where the fighting felt desperate and epic. Like you were fighting for something. Here, it's just a bunch of rooms strung together with things to shoot. Part of that is the writing and part of it is the virtual acting, which is really not that great. Despite the fact that the characters mouths match the dialogue, the eyes and other muscles on the face seem dead, not to mention the lack of gesture in the rest of the body.

I also encountered a few bugs during the game.

In the first 3 minutes of the game Dog opens an area for you and Alyx to enter. However if you don't go through that opening immediately, Dog closes it and leaves you stuck on the wrong side with no way to advance other than a reloading from a previous save. During one of the gun ship battles I got stuck on a particular patch of floor and couldn't move until the battle ended. There were a few more. No deal breakers but in general, this lacks a lot of the polish that made the original Half Life 2 shine.

A lot of people gripe about the length, which I think was fine. But I wish they had done more in the time given.

This was reviewed on a Athlon 64, 3.2 ghz with GeForce 7800 256.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/06