Topic: Official Half Life 2 Episode 1 Thread

[Nick DiMola]

Who else is pumped to give this bad boy a whirl today? I'll be grabbing after work today and rocking it out for the rest of the night.

[Smoke39]

I'm hoping it'll be better than Emergence.

[capamerica]

I'm excited, but I want to hear some comments about it forst before I drop the $20

[Smoke39]

I haven't finished it yet, but so far I'm finding Episode 1 to be more interesting than HL2 (which I thought was somewhat dull, though I can't put my finger on why).  Iirc, they've been saying it would be a "dense" single player experience.  They weren't kidding.  It seems there's always something new to do, often involving Alyx (who they've done a great job with here, imo).  I'm diggin' it.

[Nick DiMola]

Well after playing for a little bit, I must say this game is awesome. It feels so nice to return to City 17 so soon(relatively). I think a much cooler way to move the Half-Life story is through these episodes. A very solid engine is already in place and just designing maps is a cakewalk. The beginning of this story is awesome and feels like an interactive movie. I would love to see more games do in game cinematic this professionally.

[Smoke39]

Speaking of that early scene, I think Eli's voice acting was a lot better in Episode 1.  In HL2 he always sounded so calm about everything.  He actually sounded pretty stressed out in Episode 1.

I've been playing through it again with the commentary.  Heehee, Gabe always sounds like he reading from a script in these. X3

[Syl]

I found it rather enjoyable.  Had some incredibly tense moments, and Alyx really did make the experience better.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v404/Sylaran/Game%20Screens/HL2A01.jpg

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I still don't have a clue what the hell type of BBcode system this forum uses, those were all supposed to be linkable thumbnails, but regardless - 25 shots of my adventure through the game.  Minor spoilers, but the engine still holds up extremely well.  (Jaggies are mainly a byproduct of the jpeg compression - 1280x1024, all graphical settings max, 4xAA, 8xAF and HDR full)  

Smoke: What didn't you like about Emergence?  

[Caliban]

It's a shame HL2 (which I didn't finish) and CSS (I have so much fun with it) were constantly crashing my computer so I decided to uninstall it and that's where I'm at.

[Smoke39]

Quote
Originally posted by: Syl
Smoke: What didn't you like about Emergence?

Well like most people, I was pretty upset with Blade's silence.  I played through the first Sin that came with Emergence before Emergence was released, and at the end the thing that stood out the most for me was Blade, JC, and their relationship.  That was completely thrown out the window in Emergence, and it struck me as a stupid attempt to mimick HL that didn't fit Sin at all.

I also thought the story was lacking.  They had a good set-up.  Just like HL2:Ep1 was all about escaping City 17 to avoid the exploding citadel, Emergence was all about going after this Radek guy.  A relatively small, relatively simple goal to build an episode around.  But they didn't develop the characters or anything at all, really, except for making Jessica out to be a huge pain in the ass.  If she's gonna boss me around, Blade needs to at least yell at her or something and put her in her place.  There also wasn't much closure.  In HL2:Ep1, I knew I escaped the city, even if the ending brought up another question.  In Emergence, you're not even sure if you got Radek.  Was that Radek's helicopter?  Did I really get him, or did he just run away?  What was I injected with?  What about Jessica?  What about the war-mutants?  Setting up the next episode is one thing, but they didn't really finish the first, it seems.

In general, I felt kinda let down.  Where was the cool car chase through the city?  Why is there so little to do other than run and shoot?  In Sin you could pseudo hack computers, you had objectives, the levels were a bit less linear and restricting.  I don't know, I had fun, but I was expecting more.

[Artimus]

I still haven't gotten HL2, but I shall soon.

[Syl]

Smoke: I agree with most of that, i have only gotten about 25% through SiN 1 (i'm very glad it came with Emergence) but i do miss Blade's talking.

For me though, the lack of story really didn't bug me at all.  The outright stealing from F.E.A.R and HL:2 bugged me the most, but i think the game made up for it in it's own way.

1.  It cost me $18, compared to F.E.A.R, this game was very worth the money.
2. I'm a massive stat-whore, and SiN definately had the stat-tracking.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v404/Sylaran/Game%20Screens/Sin10.jpg <- my last run through of SiN stats.
3. Because of hte length, the game is very replayable.  I've already beat it twice, the auto-adjusting difficulty makes a ton of difference.  My first time through the game, for instance, i only killed 44 chaingunners, my second time through the game I fought nearly 100.  (There was barely a single "grunt" after the first major ugly ass boss) The game is also overloaded with "YOU FOUND A SECRET!" and it lets you know about them.  Some of these secrets are just hilarious:
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So are a lot of the "phone calls" (Take one of the 4 digit numbers you see on posters and enter them into one of the terminals, hilarity)

For Me, SiN Emergence was all about the small moments and the way the guns just felt incredibly right.  Overall the game was far from being something "amazing", but i felt like it wasn't trying.  It was an absolutely awesome, short diversion of an FPS, which is why i bought it.  

Artimus: HL2 is down to $30 now, i'm sure you can actually get it  + extra's for cheaper right now.  I highly reccomend it, the Source engine is also remarkable in that it scales, very, very well to slower systems.  

[Smoke39]

I only really liked the magnum.  What did you think was stolen from FEAR?  The melee and lame, useless mutagen slomo?