"It's utterly worthless."

I hate saying it, but it truly is.

Half-Life 2, on the other hand, is exceptional. While it is not a personal favourite, I genuinely believe it to be one of the best, most important games of the last ten years. There is not one negative thing I can say about it.

There is not one positive thing I can say about Episode One.

I'm going to be lazy here, and use bullet points to list some shining examples of what makes this game such a terrible waste. Hopefully you will be able to pick up on the running themes.

-The first hour is almost identical to the last few hours of Half-Life 2.
-We are supposed to get excited about receiving a powered-up gravity gun.
-Fighting an airship with a rocket launcher is treated as a setpiece.
-Running away and hiding from a Strider is treated as a setpiece.
-Early in the game, a physics puzzle involves preventing the ingress of an endless horde of antlions. The same solution is used at least ten times throughout the rest of the game, with no form of variation.
-Almost an hour of the game is spent in total blackness other than the beam of a flashlight. (what's sad is that Half-Life 2 was possibly the only 2004 game that didn't do this)

I could go on like this. I won't detail the absolute worst offender, as it would be a spoiler, but I have no hesitation in saying that the way in which Episode One ends is exactly how we thought Half-Life 2 had ended in the first place. Yes, that fantastic ending is essentially retconned (in the worst, laziest way), then reproduced.

If you haven't picked up on the running themes I'm hinting at, they are 'creative bankruptcy' and 'FPS cliches.' Everything that happens in this game already happened either in Half-Life 2 or in every other game ever made. This basically means that the entire game is redundant - there is simply no compelling reason to bother with it. Even if you want to play purely for the sake of the story (and I don't believe that the Half-Life series has much 'story' to begin with, though this is debatable), this game can offer you nothing, as everything that happens just leads to the same point where we left Half-Life 2.

Granted, if you can look at the above list and honestly think "there's nothing wrong with any of that," then go ahead and play the game. Just keep in mind that what I've listed fairly well represents the game in its entirety - I'm not slamming it for having boring, unimaginative sections, I'm slamming it for being a boring, unimaginative game. Every bit of it. In a sense, this makes Valve's foray into 'episodic content' a successful one - with the familiar situations, the water-treading, and the way nothing matters aside from the cliffhanger ending, the game resembles bland network TV more than any game before it. The problem is that we don't wait 18 months for the next pointless instalment in a cookie-cutter TV show, and we don't pay for it.

It's hard to believe, but Valve have dropped the ball in every way possible. The free tech demo Lost Coast was more satisfying and better-directed.

I won't deny that the basic gameplay is still quite fun, though nowhere close to the best in the genre. However, I refuse to give points or kudos for this, as it's just a remnant of what was already there. If somebody made a sequel to a great movie which consisted solely of somebody watching that great movie, it would not receive points for the quality of the first movie. I'm using the same rule here. I'm also not mentioning the graphics or sound, for the same reason, beyond saying that the hallowed HDR effect is just as ineffectual here as it is in every other game that uses it (why they feel the need to simulate something that the player's eyes are going to do anyway is completely beyond me). Oh, and that the 'colour correction' feature is a nice addition to the engine. It's subtle, but it certainly does improve the overall look of the game.

What's even more of a shame is that the Half-Life franchise essentially pioneered the concept of a worthwhile expansion pack. Audiences were so used to them being little more than new areas in which to do the same things that when Opposing Force came along, we were surprised as hell. Opposing Force was a tremendous success in every way - from a conceptual point of view, a gameplay point of view, and a content point of view.

Episode One, on the other hand, represents everything that is bad about expansion packs, everything that is bad about sequels (despite not being one), and everything that is bad about the video game industry. I cannot possibly overemphasise how important it is that this game does not succeed.

And the lower price point is no defense. This game is a quarter of Half-Life 2's length, yet two-thirds of its price. This alone is a perfect example of false economy, but there's more to it than that. Half-Life 2 constantly showed us new things, gave us new experiences, and made us glad we were playing. Episode One does none of these things even once.

We are paying for what we already have.

Please, please don't fall for it.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 06/25/07, Updated 10/30/07

Game Release: Half-Life 2: Episode One (EU, 06/02/06)