Half Life 2: Episode Two
We’ll get this one out of the way first as this is where I reckon most players will dip their toes once they’ve got The Orange Box installed.Right from the off, the storytelling that made Valve and Half Life famous is back as you get a re-cap sequence to remind you of what went on in Episode One, running right up to the escape on the train and subsequent crash, which is where we were left with a Saturday Matinee-style cliff-hanger. I won’t reveal any of the story but your task this time around is to get Alex, with that important data from the Combine transmission, back to a base outside of the now devastated City 17.
Episode Two starts off with the now obligatory gravity gun session with plenty of emphasis on using objects in the environment to either progress or attack the zombies and headcrabs running around the area. And I say obligatory because although you’re running around in a new environment, the actual gameplay and mechanics of the game are something we’ve all seen before.
Click for larger imageNow because you have to get to a place called the White Forest, you’d expect there to be a fair bit of outdoors action, yes? I for one was looking forward to perhaps creeping around a forest, running from tree to tree to and generally enjoying something of the panicky, lack-of-cover firefights that made Call of Duty 2 so good.
Click for larger imageBut it was not to be. The open air sections of Episode Two, whilst being ok, we’re not really the leap forward I was hoping for. Progress is still very linear and, other than the HDR we’ve seen in Lost Coast and improved textures, reflections and other visual effects, it’s pretty much the same as the outdoor sections in Half Life 2… just more natural.
So maybe we’ve got some innovation on the gameplay? New weapons? New areas? Um, well, no. I think the big problem is that other than teleporting you to the Combine home world, we’re stuck with the fact that Valve have covered pretty much every type of area you could expect to visit… So once again we’re going into tunnels, mines, silos, abandoned houses etc etc. You do get one new weapon in the last level and meet one new bad guy as well as seeing the updated return of the acid spitting baddie from Half Life… but that’s about it.
Click for larger imageAnd if you think I’m sounding a bit negative towards Episode Two, it’s not because Episode Two is in any way a bad game, it’s just that we’ve seen it all before and you can only take so much goodness before it becomes a tad tedious. And that’s nearly how I found Episode Two. I realised that I was playing the game just to see what happened, not because I wanted to blast away at Combine soldiers… And then that ‘wanting to see what happened’ became a ‘want to get to the end’ but not because I wanted to see the climax.
In the same fashion as you might skip through an action film you’ve seen a dozen times, watching the good bits and then skipping on to the blazing finale, I found myself playing Episode Two just wishing I could get this section over with and move on. We’ve seen everything in here before in Half Life 2 and it felt like I was replaying parts of that all over again. That said, whilst not being a satisfying play, Episode Two does Half Life 2 gameplay extremely well… But like the difficult third album, I found Episode Two verging on being more of a chore than a fun way to pass a few hours.
Click for larger image
