Half-Life 2: Episode One

"A short review for a short game"

Half-life 2 was a great game. I would give it a nine out of ten. Episode 2 was almost as good as Half-life 2. Again, a nine, or maybe a high eight. So how is it that Episode 1 manages to be so mediocre?

I had high expectations for this game. Breen had taken my crowbar. I like my crowbar. It was payback time. But Episode 1 did not deliver at all. At the end of Half-life 2, we all thought City 17 had exploded. It turns out it hadn't quite exploded yet, there was just a small explosion on the tower. The explosion is about to happen and people are being evacuated. At the beginning, Gordon is freed from the G-man's control by the Vortigaunts, and he proceeds to go wreck up the Citadel some more.

On reflection, the most striking thing about this game is how unnecessary it is. If the two or three plot points that actually came up in this game had been put into HL2, increasing the game length only slightly, Valve could have saved itself all sorts of dev time and release Episode 2 faster. Rather than releasing three episodes, one of which is worthless, they could release two episodes filled with solid content. But instead, the game-making juggernaut decided to void their bowels of this game, and it shows.

Graphics/Sound: 9/10

The graphics supposedly include a new effect--I wouldn't know, I had to turn the settings WAY down (unlike Half-life 2) for it to run at a decent pace. Half-life 2's graphics were very good--about as good as a modern game needs to be. Anything more is overkill, and serves only to raise the system requirements. The sound was exactly the same as the last game, so there's nothing you can say about it that hasn't already been said. The graphics and sound get a nine out of ten, because that's about what HL2 deserves and there's not enough of a change here to warrant a different score.

Gameplay: 5/10

The gameplay is not as intelligent as Half-life 2. In HL2, you were always either on the road or doing something very exciting, both of which I enjoyed. Episode 2 doesn't give either feeling, instead taking the weakest part of Half-life 2 and drawing it out over the course of the whole game. There's one interesting puzzle, which loses its interestingness after the tenth time you do it. There's nothing new added in at all--you get the super gravity gun for a while, but you got it in the last game. The weapons are all the same as the last game (and pretty much the same as the original Half-life).

You run around the city for a while, kill some people, then take a train out just as the citadel explodes. That's about it. In one particularly annoying part you run through the same area three times to bring citizens to the trains to help them escape. It reeks of contrived gameplay and only serves to bring up game length. That's another problem with this game: it's short. Once I got all the technical issues sorted out, I beat it in two afternoons, maybe four hours. Short isn't necessarily bad--Portal was extremely short, but there's no doubt that it was an astounding game. This game is four hours of nothing. Everything that isn't ripped right from Half-life 2 is bad.

Story: 2/10

The story is barely advanced at all, but if you want to know every detail of what happens in the Half-life series, I guess it's worth it. There's not really any new character development, and only a couple of things actually happen. Everything that happens after the first half-hour or so of the game is filler.

All in all, this game is easily Gordon Freeman's least interesting misadventure. I'm not as disappointed as I should be, because I didn't pay full price for it--I got it with the Orange Box, which I highly recommend.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/10/08

Game Release: Half-Life 2: Episode One (US, 06/01/06)