Musings of a technophile

It’s been a while since I played Half Life 2. I played it almost immediately after it came out, and found it to be an incredible game. The amount of detail put into the game is great – from unique weapons like the gravity gun, the the detail on some textures, to the extensiveness of the AI.

Fast forward a couple years – a friend of mine bought me the Orange Box for my birthday, which comes with Half Life Episode 1 and Episode 2. These are “expansion packs” to the original Half Life 2, which continue the story of Gordon Freeman and his fight against the Combine. The game takes up about one second after the end of Half Life 2 – where the explosion of the top of the citadel is occurring. The game characters commonly known as “Gman” (Valve has never actually given him a real name) had saved you at the very end of Half Life 2, but left Alyx behind. The Vortigants step in and save Alyx, along with take you (Gordon) away from Gman so that you may further help the people in City 17. You wake up in a pile of rubble and Dog and Alyx soon find you. From that point on you have to fight the Combine in order to stop the Citadel from exploding, and then the rest of the game is trying to escape from the city before the citadel self destructs.

Let me say, this game just builds upon the excellent experience of Half Life 2, although the game itself is very short (most people would beat it within 10 hours, if not within 5). Unlike Half Life 2, where you pretty much “go it alone”, in this game Alyx accompanies you throughout the entire game. That being said, she becomes an invaluable companion as she will attack enemies and unlock doors for you, along with interact with you a great deal (from normal dialog, to quick jokes and thoughts). I think it really did bring a great amount of realism to add Alyx in as a companion, and the amount of work on her AI is incredible. If you shine your flashlight in her eyes, she’ll put her hand in front of her face. If you are in the dark and hear enemies, you have to put your flashlight on them before she can see them and attack (normal AI I’ve seen in the past would just shoot the enemy anyways – irregardless of the characters ability to see in the dark).

Overall, I didn’t find Episode 1 as challenging as Half Life 2, for one the game seems to focus more on gunfights and survival than puzzles, which are few and far between. In addition there is only two bosses in the game, and neither of them are what I would call extremely challenging. However the story is just as good, and the detail is still of a high caliber. I think probably the most realistic thing to me is where you can see distances that are far away, and just the amount of detail that goes into it. Most FPS are just a series of hallways and corridors, but Half Life 2 is more about huge open spaces; instead of that boxed in feeling, you actually feel like you are walking down a real city block.

All in all, although Episode 1 is a great addition, and retains the high quality of previous Half Life games, I think the thing that stood out to me the most in it was just the amount of detail and realism that went into Alyx, it really is something to see.