I finally broke down and bought Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. I’ve been holding off on both games until I got a computer capable of running them, and my current laptop fits the bill. This should really come as no surprise to any fans of the Half-Life series, but both games are amazing. Simply awesome.
If you aren’t already aware, Episode One is the first out of three installments of a new thing called episodic gaming. Essentially, take all three episodes, cram them together, and you’ve got Half-Life 3. Anyways, Episode One came out a while back and Episode Two is slotted for release later this year, so it’s not as if the games are coming out all rapid-fire like. They’re also fairly short. Episode One, for instance, had only about 5 hours of gameplay, compared to 30+ for most full-sized games. That’s the nature of episodic gaming.
While I absolutely loved Episode One, I can’t help but chafe at how short it was. Granted, it was only $10 off of Steam, but it felt like I was cut short in the story. Valve, the guys behind Half-Life, have said that the wait between Episodes One and Two was a lot longer than they were hoping, and that the time between Two and Three will be a lot shorter. Episodic gaming is, after all, a relatively new idea, unless you count sequels, which are something entirely different (in that the story in the second game doesn’t pick up immediately following the events of the first game).
Anyways, I originally meant this to kind of be a review of Episode One, but it kind of went off into a review of episodic gaming. I’m really no good at reviewing things. But I am good at whacking zombies with a crowbar, and that’s enough for me.
