I just finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2. This means that I am now out of Half-Life. Since I recently finished Season 1 of Sam & Max (my full review: fun, not bad, annoying DRM on boxed copy), this means that Team Fortress 2 is my only reason left to boot into Windows.
Episode 2 was plotted very well, and some of the new graphical touches were quite good. The realistic shadows cast by everything when you have your flashlight on is new, I believe, and looks very good. It’s too bad all the lights in the game don’t cast shadows like that when appropriate. The worst new enemy, the hunter, is like a little strider… at least in the terror that it will start to induce in you. The things are tough, fast, and have a pretty tough weapon on them. In a brilliant sequence very close to the end of the game, you are pitted against waves of striders who are guarded by little groups of hunters. The combination is extremely adrenaline inducing. I died numerous times until I discovered a strong run-and-gun approach that worked well. By the end I was running out of many kinds of ammo, which only increased the tension.
There are many other great parts. The antlion colony looked fantastic and was very well designed. The shimmering effects add a nice touch and don’t look out of place like they do in most games when used “just to make things shiny”. The bloom effect used in Episode 1 continues to be well used. There are some fun physics puzzles, and you get some very tantalizing clues that really make me wish I could just jump into Episode 3.
When I came to the final scene, I saw something that made me really excited for what was going to come next. All of a sudden the generic scripted scene became a full scripted scene with action, drawing me in further. Some events happen (I won’t spoil them) and then the screen blacks out and the credits come up. You can tell the folks at Valve know what they are doing, because I would have happily plunked down $20 at that moment to continue playing the next episode.
Episode 3 is a complete unknown at this point. I try not to know too much about the plots of video games before I play them, but a quick check online shows that basically nothing has been released about Episode 3. According to the only real piece of information I found, they hadn’t even nailed the story down, and that was less than two months ago. There was also the obligatory “when it’s done” kind of message. I believe I’ll be waiting a while for the release.
Now that I have played everything, it’s very clear: Orange Box rules.
