Much better in here than out there.

Another bothersome fly, swatted.

Gordon Says: "..."

In short, HL2 was a great game, but it was also one of the toughest to review objectively, given the baggage that came with the game for many players.  Now, Episode One is here, and it’s a direct sequel running on the same Source engine (with some major improvements, like HDR).  Does it move to correct HL2’s considerable problems?  Does it capitalize on its strengths?  Is it denser, as Valve had promised?  Is it worth its $20 U.S. price tag?  Let’s find out.

At the end of HL2, Gordon Freeman caused the overloading of the Combine Citadel’s portal reactor, apparently taking out the evil Dr. Breen.  At this point, the frame simply froze, and one was left (cliff-)hanging until Episode One.  How did Alyx Vance, the lovely co-protagonist, and Gordon survive the reactor overload?  Well, you’ll see the answer in the game’s first minute, which doesn’t mean it’ll make sense.  Anyway, at that point Episode One’s dense plot (yes, you read that right) will unfold with impressive speed.  You’ll be accompanied by Alyx as you make the trek through and out of the Citadel, through some underground tunnels and sewers, across City 17 streets and rooftops, and finally to your ticket out of town.  If that sounds a lot like Half-Life 2, that is surprisingly not the full story, as a lot more happens in Episode One per minute than in HL2.  HL2 was a lone-wolf experience, with only maybe three or four sequences with any real human interaction – the rest was combat.  By contrast, Episode One has you accompanied by Alyx the whole way through, with plenty of dialog, and there are more overt clues about the nature of the Combine and other details in one chapter of this game than all of Half-Life 2.  This is entirely a positive thing, as the 2004 game’s “mystery” always came off more as “lazy vagueness” to me (the “script writer was on vacation” syndrome).

While it lasts, Episode One’s storyline is certainly satisfying, due to trademark immersion, the density of plot points (no matter how mechanical), and the warmness of all human interaction (chiefly with Alyx Vance), even if that interaction is one-sided.  (Gordon is still a mute.)  Unfortunately, this is the first episode of three, so don’t expect any closure or resolutions (if you do, then you clearly have never played a Half-Life game).

GAMEPLAY

So, how does it play?  Valve clearly made a concerted effort to stuff as many different challenges and encounter types into the game as they could, with great success – there simply isn’t much filler here, and every encounter has some sort of set piece that makes it interesting or special.  The Citadel sequences are all about getting from A to B by redistributing glowing energy spheres from place to place, and other such gravity-gun-centered puzzles.  Those aren’t particularly exciting in terms of gameplay mechanics, but that’s okay, because the Citadel is a veritable gape-fest.

After that, it’s onto some good, old-fashioned zombie killin’ action in dark tunnels, sewers, caved in parking garages, etc.  The zombies and head crabs are disgusting as ever, and there’s even a new zombie type; the “Zombine” is a Combine soldier zombie that’s like a normal zombie, except he’s fast, and has the nasty habit of producing live grenades out of nowhere.  Next, there are the simple physics/valve/duct/jump puzzles which would be nothing special had the game not tended to spice them up with the occasional Poison Head Crab Surprise or Infinite Zombie Spawn Holocaust sequences.  I’ve always hated those, but I have to admit that there is one truly thrilling sequence involving infinite zombies which will send your heart racing.

In the “disgusting enemy types” department, the Starship Trooper-inspired, dog-sized ant lions are back, with a new gameplay convention consisting of plugging up their burrowing holes with cars using the gravity gun.  Those sequences are fun, especially one in a parking garage with 3 burrowing holes, and ostensibly 2 cars available for plugging.

Of course, there’s still plenty of Combine shooting, as well as some anti-vehicle combat.  As usual, the FPS combat is silky-smooth, at least once you’ve found the right weapon to use.  Unfortunately, Half-Life 2’s frustrating flaws come into play here.  Basically, the weapons haven’t changed in the slightest.  The submachine gun is annoyingly weak, the Overwatch pulse rifle is still unusably inaccurate and still has a tiny clip and no ammo capacity.  Most egregiously, grenades still can’t be thrown while wielding another gun.  Seriously, Valve, guys, can’t you take one day out of your busy tech demo making schedule to implement this now-standard gameplay mechanic that’ll make the combat maybe 30% more fun?

Selecting a weapon is still kind of annoying.  Why not just assign a number key per weapon, instead of grouping unrelated weapons under one key?  I don’t know if it’s just me, but trying to change weapons in the middle of a battle made me lose lots of health.  That’s not to say the game is hard.  The difficulty level is about right, but, unfortunately, most of the deaths will probably occur due to the aforementioned inventory juggling issues.

The bright spot of Half-Life 2’s weaponry, the gravity gun, triumphantly returns in Episode One.  Not only is it still critical for every physics puzzle in the game, it also seems more useful in normal combat than it did in the previous game.  It seems like there are more objects available to launch at zombies and shield Gordon from Combine bullets.  There’s nothing better than dodging filing cabinets thrown at Gordon by zombies, then launching them right back, possibly hitting some fuel barrels and causing big explosive chain reactions.

Making the game much more manageable and fun is the fact that Alyx gets in on much of the action.  You’ll frequently see her grapple with zombies, re-jigger those weird soccerball-like roller mines that are attracted to Gordon, open doors, operate machinery and gun turrets, provide sniper rifle cover, give advice, and – of course – mow down enemies with her infinite-ammo pistol.  Not only is she useful, she’s also more or less invincible.  True, I actually saw her die once, but Gordon could never survive that many grenades and fuel barrels exploding right in his face.

Overall, the gameplay rating is between an 8 and a 9.  The puzzles are an 8; the “thinking” combat is an 8; the duct crawls are an 8.  However, when the game finds that visceral element, where the player can no longer think and must move and shoot or die, where the action flows smoothly and effortlessly, where the difficulty comes from challenge and not the difficulty of the controls, that’s when the game gets a 9.  Ultimately, it’s somewhere in-between: 8.5/10.

Note: The above gameplay score is not affected by stability concerns, but see Conclusion below.

 

One of the safer areas in the Citadel.

The game has a distinctive art style.

What the?

GRAPHICS

Graphically, HL2 was easily one of the most stunning-looking games ever.  Since then, we’ve seen a number of technically impressive games, like F.E.A.R., Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and Oblivion.  By comparison, Source is stunted, with static lighting and character models left unmarked by multiple bullet wounds.  On the other hand, unlike those other engines, Episode One’s Source is also remarkably forgiving of less than top-of-the-line hardware, even with its extensive High Dynamic Range effects enabled.  The game recommended the following settings on our review machine: 1024x768, 2xAA, 4xAF, all effects on High-Quality, HDR enabled.  This is on an Athlon 64 3400+ with a GeForce 6800GT and 1GB of RAM, which is quickly becoming the average gamer’s system.  With these settings, the game ran at a smooth frame rate, rarely dipping into the 30s.  Trying to run something like GRAW or Oblivion at the above settings, with those hardware specs, and you’ll be lucky to get a 10fps average.

So, while one must dock it for its technical shortcomings – corridor crawls look especially lifeless due to a lack of dynamic shadows – the engine compensates with its performance and art design, which is still unmatched and superior even to Half-Life 2 itself.  Consider the Citadel levels, which were a fairly boring amalgamation of lifeless cold blue.  Well, the Citadel comes alive in Episode One, with a rich color palette and incredible particle effects perfectly conveying the fact that the building is bursting at the seams with uncontained energy.  Just wait ‘til you see the reactor room again.  Meanwhile, the hazy, dusty air of City 17 is equally richly conveyed, especially with the source of the haziness – the degraded Citadel – looming large in the background.  Regular building interiors, still sadly lacking in bump mapping, look less amazing artistically, but the textures are as high-resolution as always, so they never look less than convincing.  Plus, the new facial animations (concentrated purely on Alyx, this time around) are the best in the business, by far.

Overall, I give the graphics a 9/10.  We applaud Valve’s commitment to presenting a cohesive world at a solid frame rate on realistic hardware.

Note: The above graphics score is not affected by stability concerns, but see Conclusion below.

SOUND

While Episode One is a flawed game in a few ways, the sound work here is definitely beyond reproach.  Not only is the voice acting simply perfect, but the script is warm, witty, and often quite amusing.  Alyx’s companionship throughout the game is incredibly important in making Episode One a personally involving experience, unlike the largely cold and sterile Half-Life 2.  In the area of sound effects, Episode One again delivers handsomely, with deafening weapon sounds, disturbing zombie wailing, and so on.  Oh, and you’ll always know there’s a head crab in the area, because the sounds they make as they crawl around are… just… gross.  Finally, the music – again, a combination of techno and hard rock/metal – is rarely used but works beautifully to underscore the best action sequences.  Our editor-in-chief, Bjorn Holine, has been raving about the music left and right, and I can certainly see his point; I just wish more action sequences were cool enough to deserve the background music treatment.  That way, maybe we’d hear it more. 10/10

Note: The above sound score is not affected by the stutter bug, but see Conclusion below.

REPLAY VALUE

Episode One is about 6 hours long, for the average player.  While there is an optional commentary mode, wherein one can hear developer comments while moving through the game, I’m not sure that really counts as added replay value.

The reason is that no matter how many times you replay the game, it’s going to play out the same way every single time.  True, you might kill the same enemies with the gravity gun instead of the SMG, or, perhaps, you’ll let Alyx do more dirty work, but the point remains: the game’s areas are usually cramped and limited, and there is basically only one way to approach a battle, choice of weapons aside.  I understand why Valve chose to go this way; a heavily linear and scripted game is much easier to manipulate for maximum emotional impact – every encounter has some underlying emotional or visceral impact, which was carefully planned by the developer.  Unfortunately, replay value is thus almost completely lost.  I believe Valve could here learn quite a bit from Bungie, the makers of Halo.

In short, the game is good for 6 hours of fun for $20.  That is below average – worse even than Tomb Raider: Legend’s 15 hours for $40. 6/10

CONCLUSION

Half-Life 2: Episode One is a more than worthy successor to Half-Life 2, as it kept all of the latter’s strengths, and even added some more, such as HDR and far improved character interaction and plot density.  The problem is, it hasn’t nearly the same bang for the buck – lacking length and new multiplayer features.

Episode One suffers from serious stability issues.  I haven’t mentioned these thus far, to give a clear impression of the game to the average reader, who might not encounter any of these problems.  However, there have been reports of widespread crashing problems in the game, experienced on one of 2404’s two test machines, though not the one used for the review.  The game is still incredibly difficult to configure (with minute-long delays making one incorrectly think the PC has crashed), it still has long (but rarer) load times, and it still has the stutter bug 2 years after Half-Life 2’s release, including on the review system.  You may or may not get hit by the stutter problem, but if you do, expect distracting hitches before every new explosion sound.  I’d love to dismiss this as a statistically insignificant problem, but if, 2 years later, people still get this frustrating issue – which also exists in Source-based SiN Episodes: Emergence – the blame has to lie with the engine’s developer.  What’s worse, Steam is as likely to exacerbate the problems as fix them with the mandatory updates that are sure to come in the future.

The final score is 8.6/10, docked by 0.5 points for engine issues, for a total of 8.1/10.  Which of the two scores will match your experience depends more or less on how lucky you are.

 

HDR in action.

Alyx vs. Soccerballs of Death

The Half-Life saga continues.

Pros/cons:

+ Beautiful, cohesive sci-fi world, made doubly so by Alyx Vance.

+ A dense plot progression rich in incident.

+ Varied and solid first-person shooter/puzzle gameplay.

+ Well-performing graphics with great art design.

+ Flawless voice acting, witty script, and rocking music.

+ Loading times are rare.

+ Gravity gun!

– Extremely short, even at the low price.

– Very linear combat.

– Lack of dynamic shadows indoors.

– Same old weapons lack punch and are hard to select.

– Grenades cannot be thrown while wielding a gun.

– Possibility of stability problems.

– Possibility of stutter bug.