Episode One: A Mini-Review

Category : games + half-life + review

So now I finished playing through Episode One for quite possibly the fourth or fifth time, and have come out with a small assortment of screenshots from various stages within the game. I won’t reveal any big spoilers or give you walk-throughs here, you’re hopefully smart enough to figure all of that out on your own. What you will find here is just a quick look at some of the improvements and some general observations I’ve made while playing. But if you really want a complete in-depth summary full of spoilers and speculation, feel free to read the full Wikipedia entry.

All of the shots have been scaled down to a reasonable 800×600 for the sake of bandwidth, also it makes some of the images look a little cleaner. If you don’t feel like reading, just flip open the first image and flip through the slide-show. Enjoy.

Half-Life “2.1.5″

Episode One is primarily focused upon character development as well as including several updates to the already powerful Source engine. Having commentary enabled will give you a greater sense of all the technical challenges, enhancements, with reasonable explanations behind why Valve chose to go this direction.

After being unearthed from the rubble by Alyx’s pet, Dog. You get to witness the aftermath you wrought upon the citadel in the previous chapters. The first thing which attracted my attention with commentary enabled were the improved commentary bubbles, which now can be spotted easily from a distance unlike in earlier versions which were just rotating sprites.

Alyx Vance.

A note-worthy feature in Episode One is that Alyx has undergone a complete make-over, which includes her receiving a little battle damage to flesh out her character more for this episode. Her AI has also been greatly expanded to make her respond almost like a person in real life might, take for example: When confronted by a players attempt to be obnoxious with the flashlight - 1, 2, 3, 4.

As you make your way through the darkest areas, you’ll often hear requests from Alyx to shine your flashlight on enemy targets for her. This is also where you’ll probably notice that she has one hell of an angry face. And in some cases appears as if she’s outright pissed and about to shoot you if you look back at the wrong angle, or if she’s just turning and you happen to be in her line of fire.

If you do decide to look around after laying waste to a herd of zombies, Alyx’s AI will cycle through all kinds of random feedback at various stages. If you’re not already recieving the typical vacant stare or smile, you might get a puzzled or questionable facial response. Or you may find her looking at you with serious intent to move on. But you can always crank out this goofy looking smile sometimes followed with a reassuring “Are you with me?”.

Tools and toys.

While not entirely “new”, roller-mines become more useful and less annoying than they were previously. The newest useful little pickups are what appear to be road flares - 1, 2, 3, 4. You’ll find these scattered all around and typically in the darkest of places. Bonus to those who figure out they’re better for setting monsters on fire rather than just lighting up small areas.

New Enemies & AI

The first class of enemies you’ll likely encounter in the depths of the citadel with the exception of solders are stalkers. Stalkers are rarely a threat, and depending on how you approach them, will not attack you. But be warned, if one does happen to spot you or feels threatened they’ll begin to shoot lasers out of their eyes.

A totally new addition to the zombie family now includes zombified combine soldiers, which Alyx jokingly refers to in game as “zombine“. While your first encounter with this new type of zombie is brief, you instantly learn of it’s deadly potential if you’re forced to deal with more than one. However, at the same time, you’ll also learn that this new class of zombie is inherently dumb and likely to dispatch itself and other nearby enemies if encountered from a great distance.

Don’t be fooled, while regular soldiers are pretty easy to clean out with a well placed shotgun round to the head or chest, “zombine” require a little more effort. Just because they can’t accurately lob a grenade into your general direction, doesn’t necessarily make them an easy target either. Here I stumbled upon a couple of zombine quickly discussing their strategy as one raises the warning flag to back off. In about half a second I had a up-close encounter with the two as they charged me forcing me to expend some of my just found shotgun ammo.

Probably the most favorite encounter is that when one is placed into a heavy-weight match-up involving a strider. The AI on this guy has been seriously put into hardcore mode and it’s very apt at keeping an eye on your location making the game of cat and mouse deadlier. With the improved AI, escaping an assault by one now proves more difficult overall.

Easter eggs

No game is complete without a few well placed easter eggs. While I haven’t bothered to deliberately go hunting for them, on my second time through I did stumble upon some smalltalk which for a moment caught my attention. Perhaps there is one hidden deeply away in one of the many vistas which have been stressed about in the commentary, who knows. But if you know of any more, do drop a note and let me know. Otherwise, that’s pretty much the end as far as this review goes.

Bugs and oddities

Hooray for bugs! While I only found some minor visual flaws in level geometry on the parking deck levels, the one bug that caught my attention the most was Alyx and her new skin. As HDR under Source appears to be well implimented with most of the kinks worked out, the general lighting and effects are so far superb. But there are still a few quirks.

For example: The lighting in a few areas be it green or blue, appears to make Alyx look a bit over-saturated. As you can tell, when other lights are combined with the flashlight it makes Alyx halo-rific! Otherwise, just more reflective than she should appear to be.

The other bug which so far I’ve been unable to accurately reproduce, but still worth mentioning is the odd case of levitation. After Alyx followed me into this room while stepping over all the clutter which was scattered durring the battle I noticed she became completely stuck in mid-air, refusing to budge even after I had cleared the debris. If I can manage to reproduce it, I’d like to know what would happen if I attempted to carry on. But in any case, to solve it, I simply rebuilt her platform and eventually pushed her back onto solid matter in order to get her moving again.

Summary + Feedback

While I wasn’t expecting much to begin with beyond an extension of the current story-line, I will admit I was pleasantly suprised. With some new toys, beasties and twists on gameplay I would have to say Episode One was a tasty appetizer. I fully understand the ammount of work that goes into creating games and testing them from every angle. However, I do have a few gripes and here’s my top 3 list of “most-annoying things encountered” when playing the game.

  1. Flashlight Mechanics - I think that the one thing that really annoyed me the most is the fact that your ability to sprint while using the flashlight is still ridiculously tied to the same meter. Unless I’ve completely overlooked something and there’s something about Gordon Freeman players are not hinted about (he’s a robot), a flashlight battery should have nothing to do with ones ability to run. It makes no sense even in the brightest areas of the game, a better question might be: Will Dr. Kleiner actually fix it?
  2. Too many lab coats - While this generic “scientist class zombie” was perfectly acceptable for the Black Mesa facility to imply that all the zombies were all once happy lab coat-wearing scientists. Am I supposed to belive that durring our decade or two lay-over with the G-man, only those who wore a lab coat were susceptible and deliberately targeted for zombification? There’s dead bodies all over the place, but only zombies appear to sprout a lab coat while showing off the bloody remains of their intestinal tract.
  3. Send and Recall - While Alyx makes for a terrific NPC geared for co-op, it’s a shame that at some points she doesn’t wander around or just scout ahead in the current surroundings. Her AI now seems to follow you around like a love-sick puppy crying for attention only when she needs it. It would be a nice feature if at some points the player could send and recall her like you can with typical squads to communicate an attack or retreat.

This “top 3″ is small in comparison of what I originally had in mind and would likely drag, so be relieved I didn’t go there. In any case, I still look forward to see what’s in store for Episode Two. Hopefully there will be more familiar encounters with a number of new enemies found in previous games along with some new ones. I think what I look forward to most, is a bigger challenge since Episode One seemed a little too easy by my standards.

After all, fatigued players should know when to hit the pause button if they really need to take a break. That’s what it’s there for, isn’t it?

+ TrackBack

SiteMap