The Half Life 2: Episode One thread..

[dangel]

Played it a fair bit (but didn't complete it yet - i'm not rushing!) and I have to say it's incredibly good - the graphics are fantastic (echo comments on HDR - wow), the sound (music/effects/voice acting) is simply superb and alyx is amazingly believable as a real person (even her jokes are good). I've not seen anything that can top the facial animation in this game. Sheer gaming perfection - and even the story is interesting. I'm playing it through on 'hard' and at times it is _very_ hard (being mobbed whilst waiting for the elevator springs to mind).

Worth the money? Hell yeah! Fingers crossed the dollar remains nice and weak for the next two installments too

[Smokey21]

To clarify, HL2: Episode One was not intended to bring in a new audience but merely to carry on the story for the people that played HL2.

Says who? It still could of added more things, had more varied levels.

Seriously 3hours is a bit sad for 18months. Why are games so ****ing short these days.

[dangel]

Says who? It still could of added more things, had more varied levels.

er.. Valve I think - aftermath (as it once was called) was always supposed to finish out the story that so abrubtly ended. From what i've read, there's much more coming in the following episodes (apparently we get outside the city) and the first is merely an 'intro' as such.

Seriously 3hours is a bit sad for 18months. Why are games so ****ing short these days.

Shrugs - 10 quid for 3-5 hours (depending on how fast you like to complete these things) is pretty much a bargain thesedays. The whole thing should come in at circa 30quid which isn't unreasonable IMHO. How much does an 8 hour console game cost? 40-50quid?

The difficulty is in waiting for the next bits I wonder if much of the work is now done (in terms of skeletal content) and hence the following episodes will take them less time to put together..

[Smokey21]

I like to complete games as slow as possible, but it only took 3 hours. A combination of me being a FPS vet, and the fact it's far to easy. They really need to up the difficulty, to say Far Cry's veteran standards.

It could still of had more varied locations. It felt exaclty like HL2, which was by no means a bad thing, but still.......

No new weapons? HL2 needs a sniper rifle, or a OICW type weapon like from SOF2, or Far Cry.

How about bringing back the bull squid and houndeye? that would be cool. We also need to see Vortigunts in action. We still haven't seen them do anything yet in the game.

[noTHINGface]

A combination of me being a FPS vet, and the fact it's far to easy. They really need to up the difficulty, to say Far Cry's veteran standards.

Remeber not everyone is though(!) Perhaps an additional 'super grim' difficulty level is in order but I found it about right on Hard. My mate had a go on easy (never played a PC FPS in his life) and he had a hell of a time!

[Smokey21]

Indeed, i said a higher difficulty, you could still have the other difficulties of course.

[Veles]

Worth every penny I paid for it...wait I didn't, it was a present

But It's worth the £10ish off steam (not for £20 in the shops though).

Not sure how many hours I played it for, but I know I had fun all the way through. Running through it again on easy now to listen to all the commentary, very nice added feature there, I had no idea how much thought they put into the tinyest little things.

[noTHINGface]

Im playing through again with the commentary - is a nice feature, I think that Riddick was the first title I came across that used this. It does provide an interesting insight as to what the devs/designers were attempting to achieve with each section. Looks like Im turning into a HL2 fan again.

[Davey W]

Sorry, I've not read anything about that part.

Are we talking of some sort of commentary as your playing the game? If so, an interesting idea.

Davey

[ajbrun]

Of course. It's in the options, I think you need to enable it as it's off my default.

[Veles]

Sorry, I've not read anything about that part.

Are we talking of some sort of commentary as your playing the game? If so, an interesting idea.

Davey

If you've played the lost coast HDR demo then the commentary is just like the commentary in that. In fact, the reason they put it in is because they got some good feedback on the commentary in lost coast so decided to add it into HL2: Ep1

[Davey W]

Excellent.

Play.com was out of stock of HL2:E1 so I've got Sin ep 1 on it's way and a wait for HL2:E1

After I finished HL2 I stopped steam from auto running as I wasn't using it. Sounds like I will need to run it let it download the HDR demo.

Davey

[Vega]

I think that playing lost coast then 'BUYING EP1' is a bit of a rip off ....steam should have waited and not split up the episodes and done 1 FULL add-on and charged £10-£16 this would have been fairer

[ajbrun]

I think you'll find lost coast was a free demonstration...

[pr0p4g4nd4]

I like it where Alyx makes up "Zombine" ^_^

[Vega]

I think you'll find lost coast was a free demonstration...

i think you'll find that i bought EP1 but didnt mention anything about buying 'lost coast'
just an eg. of what i thought about EP1 and what i thought should or could have happened