More on Half Life 2: Lost Coast
Sadly, the AI doesn’t seem to have improved any in this update and is still not as good as F.E.A.R.’s bad guys. They still take cover and work as a team to some extent but will quite happily queue up in a doorway to be shot so once you’ve silenced the gun, shooting your way out isn’t too much trouble.
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Click for larger imageGraphically, Half Life 2: Lost Coast looks far more detailed than it’s parent game. This isn’t because I’ve not played Half Life 2 recently, as I’ve been enjoying it all over again on the HEXUS.gaming Test Rig and Lost Coast has more detail in it’s textures and in the environment itself. It’s probably all this wonderful HDR stuff, truth be told but to my mind there’s just a lot more debris and what I guess you’d call ‘scene dressing’ to make a more realistic game world. Of course, this being Half Life 2, much of it is interactive, though as before, it’s all pretty useless in helping you with your objectives… still, it’s nice to see there’s loads of effort gone into the new levels.
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Click for larger imageSo, from first impressions, what we’ve got here is essentially more of the same as Half Life 2, but looking nicer. The gameplay’s the same, the game mechanic is the same and so far, bearing in mind this is the first 15 minutes of play, the weapons are the same. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as why fix what ain’t broke? And even if you do decide to be ultra-picky and moan about lack of new stuff, the damn thing is free to Half Life 2 owners anyway, so what’s the problem? Oh, and before anyone cracks on at me about this being an HDR tech demo, you’d be right, it is, but it’s also a playable game too, which is what the majority of us will be downloading it for.
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