Half Life 2 Episode 1 Review

So yeah. I picked it up last night and played through it. And that’s an indication of how short it actually is. But it was good. Highly enjoyable, and they upped Alyx’s commentary and she’s surprisingly quite good at the comic relief. Had me laughing several times. She sticks by your side just about the entire time only leaving you when you need to work a particularly “difficult” puzzle and don’t need her in the way.

Sadly, many parts of the game feel like a bit of a re-hash. Atleast, in the very beginning. I got the “I’ve already done this” feeling several times, but it eventually wears off and you’re back to enjoying some more Half Life 2. Be prepared to make extensive use of the gravity gun because that’s the only weapon you have for a good while.

Extensive zombie fighting throughout. Many of you know they introduce the new zombie class, made from the combine soldiers, and these guys are a bother to kill. They’re tougher and once they get close enough, suicidal. They bust out a grenade and hold it up in the air a la “I’ve got it!!” and then explode. Interestingly enough I found that you can use the gravity gun to take away their firestick and throw it out of harms way.

Now, I’m not much for zombies, but they did happen to give one of the cooler moments in the game for me. Without trying to spoil too much, you’re in a dark parking garage type building and your flashlight is the only light available. So Alyx of course doesn’t shoot at anything unless it’s in the light. Making for a difficult time as you swing your flashlight around looking for more enemies and yet at the same time need to keep your light on the enemies you know about so she’ll shoot them down. So, back to the main story. You’re in this dark area and you’re waiting for an elevator. Waves of zombies are coming at us. They’re all over the damn place. Thankfully Alyx can’t die so I tend not to worry to much about her (your friends being immortal helps with the emotional distancing). Things are going along just peachy, I’ve got about a dozen zombies of all kinds in the room, I just lit one up with a gas canister and then my flashlight dies. I”m running around shooting in all directions Alyx is yelling something, (like “ow”) and I turn around and all I see in the middle of the room is one zombie on fire and the glow from that is giving me just enough light to see a dozen or more zombies all attacking us. It felt like a movie.

They keep the rest of the episode pretty fresh in having you do “new” things. One of which is an awful awful escort mission. The only saving grace for that was in seeing one of the escortees take a shotgun blast to the face from a combine soldier who jumped down behind him. That’ll teach em to stray.

All in all, I’m not too sure I like this episodic content deal. Atleast not for 20 bucks a shot. While the episode was fun and enjoyable it felt a smidge too short. But maybe that’s a good sign in that I was so engrossed that I didn’t realize that I’d been playing for 3 hours. Still, I think 15 bucks an episode should be the maximum price. $20 dollars is usually reserved for the crappy full games that no one’s heard of. It may be a crappy game but it’s still a complete game and you don’t feel so used after having played it.