Half Life II Episode I(Impressions)

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-06-01 01:46pm

The game was released on STEAM as of 1304 EST.
Going to load and play it now and see how the HL2 people do Eposode content.

DesertFly · Post by **DesertFly** » 2006-06-01 03:59pm

It looks so cool!!!! I really wish I had a computer that could handle it and the money to get it. I only played through the original HL2 because it was on the computers at the school I was attending at the time (EWU), and I miss it every day. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night thinking about its shiny textures and sexy physics--things that can never be mine. *sniff*

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-06-01 04:38pm

This is HL2 Episode One.
Now with CoD2 quality scripting, massive brawl style battles with combine and zombies going at it. A few "Boss" battles inculding a rematch aginst the Insect Gunship that kicks all kinds of ass since the Dev's made the area where you fight him out of all sorts of destructable material. When I finished my fight between the Gunship's chaingun and my errant rockets, there was nothing left of the place.

Four hours in now and I have to say Alyx is very useful. She of course stops at a few doors while you fiddle around with whatever thing need's fiddling with and that gun of hers does some damage. Of course I think she has godmode on as even when I let five zombies beat down on her she killed them all and seemed to be just fine. Even when I stacked ten barrels next to her and put a rocket in her face+all those exploding barrels sure killed ME but she was fine.

And of course Spoilers so far
Like all the reviews said your making your way out of the city, but first you have to duck in the Citadel and get the Darkmatter containment reactor cooling and failsafe's working so you acutaly have time to escape the city.

If your wondering what the G man is pissed about you find out in the first twenty seconds of the game when the Volty's show up to snatch Alex from the roof of the citadel along with you. But before they can make their nice escape with you into whatever space, the G-man shows up, snatchs your ass out of time and space agian and before you can get tossed in cold storage the Volty's show up agian.

It takes ten of them to hold the G-Man off(They do a werid chant/shielding thing between you and the G-man) Cue you snapping back to reality at the bottom of the tower and banged all to hell up.

Note the new Combine zombies suck balls, they are zombies with BODY ARMOR, and GRENADES, yes that's right they yank grenades off of their belts, pop the pin and try and hug you. Sonvabitchs!

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-06-01 04:57pm

Oh ya, I'm leaving work at 5 today

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-06-01 05:10pm

Spoiler section updated. I'm taking a break for an hour for food then back in.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-06-01 05:24pm

Any idea on overall length of the game? Oh, and how big is the download?

Atavarius · Post by **Atavarius** » 2006-06-01 05:26pm

Four to Six hours depending on Difficulty Level. Just finished, great start to the episodic content. Can't wait for the next one!

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-06-01 05:27pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Any idea on overall length of the game? Oh, and how big is the download?

1Gig plus, but the people in the know, preloaded it week's ago when you could get it for under $20.

And as I said, four hours, twenty minutes of playtime, and I'm killing my way through pretty quick as I hunt the plot. And I've yet to beat it.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2006-06-01 06:09pm

Mr Bean wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote:Any idea on overall length of the game? Oh, and how big is the download?
1Gig plus, but the people in the know, preloaded it week's ago when you could get it for under $20.

And as I said, four hours, twenty minutes of playtime, and I'm killing my way through pretty quick as I hunt the plot. And I've yet to beat it.

More like two days ago...

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-06-01 06:27pm

Well that was fast. I played the game through from start to finish with one boot to desktop in the process. It is, to me, painfully short. I finished it in maybe 4 hours, but it felt more like 3.

I'm honestly not sure how much I like it compared to the full game. $20 for ~4 hours worth of content doesn't quite strike me as the right balance. To me, this is utterly without replay value, especially the first section which was more or less a rehash of the final part of the game.

Alyx is very useful, because she's invul-tagged and has unlimited ammo. Let her do most of the damage whenever you can to conserve your own ammo. Hell, a few times I even let the zombies bunch up around her then set off an explosive right on her. She's none the worse for wear because of it, and frankly, I'm glad.

Points that bothered me:
-ZOMG TOTAL DARKNESS. What happened to that fancy HDR? Seriously, it was just plain irritating to only be able to see a part of my screen at any given time because the devs want to make a zombie game.
-Short short short. Seriously, a vehicle sequence would have been nice, or more firefights early on. By the time you get to the good stuff, combat wise, the episode is almost over.

Things that I enjoyed:
-Continues the story and rescues HL2's ending (which was such a pisser) from being something to kill the devs over.
-More HL2.
-Return of the original voice actors
-Weird new plot.

Things that are spoilers:
-They're going to kill Alyx in the next episode, I know it. God damn it.
-Finally an episode without headcrabs every ten damn feet? Here's hoping.
-Those things leaving the citadel. They were SO the evil big bad slug aliens. You know, I know, the American People know it, Bob Dole knows it.

In all, it wasn't bad, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to spend another $20 on something like this.

Consider, for a moment, that developers can sell games over Steam and get roughly as much profit for selling the game at a reduced price (20-30 dollars). This is for many reasons, but the fact remains that the experiment appears to have succeeded. Does Valve really need to charge roughly $5 an hour for a game?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-06-01 07:31pm

Four hours fifty six minutes. It's a shame because just before the end happened I thought I was in for one more last kickass sequence. Instead it was "the end".

Spoilers
You get on the train out of City-17 take off, only to have gunship try(Note TRY) to chase you down a tunnel. I was blazing away at all the shit I saw at the end, hoping aginst hope that I this was action sequence time, but no it was the end.
And the preview trailer for Eposide 2 looks like it's time for Freeman to hit the great out-doors.
Note you only see the trailer after you hack the game or beat it.

*Edit NOT ENOUGH G man!

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-06-01 08:13pm

After being thoroughly unimpressed with Sin Episodes, and therefore I don't feel like shelling out 1/3 to 1/2 a game's cost for 1/6 to 1/4 the content, I'll pass until this thing is cheaper.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-06-01 08:54pm

I think the sun will have set on episodic content within a few years, relegated to the "seemed like a good idea at the time" bin. It seems like it still takes 12 to 18 months for one of these things to come out, and then with such a small amount of gameplay. With that much dev time, they might as well just spend another 12 months and produce an actual game, or taken the same amount of time for an expansion pack. With that kind of time frame, the technology is old and worn before you can even make 3 episodes.

People don't want to pay $20 for four hours of gameplay. You might point out that we plonk down $35-50 for 10 hours, FEAR being an example, but we do that because it's a new game with shiny new graphics, physics, and gameplay concepts. Episodes aren't like that.

Episodes work for TV series because they air only a week apart. People still remember the mysteries and cliffhangers from last week so they eagerly tune in. By the time a new game episode comes out, it's been so long that the last episode is out of peoples' minds completely, and they view it the same as any other game purchase. Once you get a few episodes out, potentially interested gamers new to the series will feel that they need to play the previous episodes first, and then balk at the price of the whole package.

It seemed like a good idea when people started talking about it a few years ago, but it really isn't. HL2:E1 should do OK, but it would have done just as well if they had called it an expansion pack, because that's really all it is.

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2006-06-01 09:53pm

I wonder if they'll offer a bunch of the episodes in a discount pack eventually.

Also, I want Adrian Shepperd back damn it.

TheMuffinKing · Post by **TheMuffinKing** » 2006-06-01 10:09pm

I liked this episode! I didn't like how it seemed so short. I thought what you guys spoilerized was pretty badass, and furthered my desire for more half life! I seriously recommend getting this, even for the twenty dollars.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2006-06-01 10:37pm

It should be noted, for fairness, that the game is set to "easy" by default. While I don't think it will make a huge difference, a replay on a higher difficulty level might be in order to be completely fair.

I still think it will end up being far too short for the price of admission.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-06-01 11:28pm

I had a pretty good time with it. It was a little short for twenty bucks, but I still feel it was money well spent.

I like the story, it's not fantastic or anything; but good.

Does anyone happen to know a source which might have info on steam sales? Even out of date ones?
I've always wondered how well these guys are acutally doing, but I've never seen any real numbers thrown around. Save for one; that they made something like 7 times more money per copy sold via steam versus in the store. And I don't really know how true that acutally is...

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-06-02 12:22am

Tasoth wrote: Also, I want Adrian Shepperd back damn it.

I don't think that's ever going to happen, unfortunately - I don't think Valve owns Shepperd. However, I would love to see the main man of the HECU take on Freeman.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-06-02 12:29am

Shepperd was the military guy in the HL1 expansion, right? The guy that used convieniently placed laser guns to kill the vagina monster? He was cool. Who knows how his vest gave him all the powers of a full suit, though.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-06-02 12:40am

People willingly pay $50 for 8-9 hours of game play. A lot of shooters are that short. Very few actualy go beyond 12 hours.

Getting 5 hours of game play for $20 is not a bad deal.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-06-02 12:40am

Stark wrote:Shepperd was the military guy in the HL1 expansion, right? The guy that used convieniently placed laser guns to kill the vagina monster? He was cool. Who knows how his vest gave him all the powers of a full suit, though.

Sheer awesome maybe?

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-06-02 12:40am

Ford Prefect wrote:
Tasoth wrote: Also, I want Adrian Shepperd back damn it.
I don't think that's ever going to happen, unfortunately - I don't think Valve owns Shepperd. However, I would love to see the main man of the HECU take on Freeman.

Valve wrote all the stories for the HL add-ons. They most definately own Sheppard.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-06-02 12:47am

Ford Prefect wrote:Sheer awesome maybe?

He always uses his powers for good or for awesome. Also, he's immune to V-22 crashes - that's a useful superpower for any HL army dude.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-06-02 12:50am

Alyeska wrote:People willingly pay $50 for 8-9 hours of game play. A lot of shooters are that short. Very few actualy go beyond 12 hours.

Getting 5 hours of game play for $20 is not a bad deal.

Thing is, if that $50 game provides you with multiplayer, and perhaps mods then you're really getting far more hours than just whatever the single player provides.

There's no need to kid ourselves, $20 is a bad deal; but then again $20 on it's own is a trivial amount, so it's really not that bad.

Ford Prefect · Post by **Ford Prefect** » 2006-06-02 12:51am

Alyeska wrote: Valve wrote all the stories for the HL add-ons. They most definately own Sheppard.

I wasn't sure, because Gearbox Software made OpFor; though it turns out they made Blue Shift as well, and there were no problems with Valve using him in HL2.