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Review of Episodic Content, Half-Life 2 Episode One
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Jun 05, 2006 01:15 PM
from the future-of-content dept.
from the future-of-content dept.
Half-Life 2 was worth the wait. Great story, beautiful graphics, and inventive gameplay made the game a worthy successor to Valve's 1998 classic. Last week gamers were finally allowed access to the next part of the story. Half-Life 2: Episode One is a fast-paced and entirely worthwhile continuation of Gordon Freeman's tale. It also raises some really good questions about the very idea of charging for small chunks of content. Read on for my review of this $20 experience, and a few comments on the episodic content debate.
- Title: Half-Life 2: Episode One
- Developer/Publisher: Valve
- System: PC
In fact, in almost every way possible Episode One is a success for Valve. This game is the first in a trilogy planned to end next year, and Valve has done a fantastic job in capturing interest with this initial effort. Unlike SiN Episodes , which amused but failed to engage, Episode One was so gripping I almost immediately restarted the game with 'commentary mode' enabled just to see if I could glean any more from a second go-round.
As entertaining as the story is, this title truly shines in its gameplay. Creating Half-Life 2's gameplay was a long process of trial and error. For the player, a degree of handholding was required to teach the skill required to play. Episode One, in contrast, relies on your knowledge of FPS controls and experience with the original title, packing the relatively short game with eyebrow-popping moments. New uses for the gravity gun, clever physics puzzles, the near-constant presence of Alyx Vance, and some very challenging gunplay all add to the title's brisk pace. Of particular note are the moments where Valve tweaks the player expectations. A quick crawl through the ducts becomes a drawn-out odyssey through heavily trapped rooms; you know you're having fun when death provokes a laugh instead of a sigh of frustration.
Episode One looks great, of course. Some additional shiny has been added to the title, but for the most part you're going to be seeing the same textures and environments as in HL2 proper. It would have been nice to see some dramatically new areas, but the urban jungle you traverse on your way out of the city is as engaging as it is familiar. Sound effects are also reused, but the musical stings to accompany important moments are new and seemed more carefully composed than some of the previous offerings.
The fact that Valve has released a great product should come as no surprise. What strikes me most about this title is its place in a larger debate. Episodic content has provoked a number of earnest conversations this year; how much to charge, how much content is enough, and how often content is released all seem to be sticking points in the gaming community. When Bethesda began releasing commercial mods for Oblivion earlier this year, there were a number of people that felt three dollars for horse armor was a tad much. Subsequent releases for that game have been weightier, and their low price (just $1.98 for a pirate ship) seems to have allayed criticism of those offerings.
In comparison, last month's SiN Episodes was 5-6 hours of gaming for twenty bucks. About it, I wrote "If Emergence was $15, this would be a sure thing; at $20 I'm not sure this particular ride is worth the price of admission." Now that I've seen what my $20 can get me, I know it's not worth the price of admission. If we can expect Valve's success is a high-water mark for episodic content there's going to have to be a serious reexamination of pricing and release for future, lesser offerings. I'm willing to wait for Episode Two at this point; as far as I'm concerned Valve already has my money. At the same time, I'm unlikely to purchase the next episode of SiN. The story just didn't grab me, but the amount of time we're going to be waiting is what really frustrates. With no word yet on a release for the next episode in SiN's season, we're looking at a three months wait (or more) for another length of lackluster writing and time-worn gameplay.
What I enjoy most about the concept of episodic content is the potential. Can developer schedules achieve a brisk enough turnaround? Will enough gamers purchase the second episodes of SiN and Half-Life 2 to ensure there will be a third? With the popularity of Xbox Live, will more developers jump on the episodic bandwagon? I, for one, certainly hope so.
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So.... uhh.... /shifts eyes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So.... uhh.... /shifts eyes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
not doing that (Score:5, Insightful)
Five hours of gaming for $20... I must admit my reaction has been tempered now I think that $20 is like £14... but that is still a lot for 5 hours. If I buy a game for that much I would want a lot more than 5 hours of play; maybe I'm just tight. I've bought games in the past for less than this (infact I actually got a copy of Metriod Prime 2 free from nintendo) and they have given me easily over 20 hours and counting.
Re:not doing that (Score:3, Insightful)
I may play the game again in commentary mode, which was enjoyable in HL2:Lost Coast. But, in contrast, I have devoted countless hours (read:many many days of life and *cough*work*cough*) to CS:Source, and it jus
Re:not doing that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not doing that (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:not doing that (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I just saw a Cirque du Soliel show in Vegas and spent $125 [admission.com] for two hours of entertainment. So clearly entertainment should be priced at $60 an hour. So clearly HL2:E1 should have been about $240 and the original HL2 is worth more than $600. My copy of Freakonomics, which I got for $18 [amazon.com] and took me about 3 hours to read is grossly underpriced; why wasn't I charged ten-fold more?
Perhaps on the other hand, why are video games so expensive? Why does anyone buy them at all? Instead of dropping $50 on the newest video game (about 15 hours of entertainment), you could buy 6 paperback novels (about 24 hours)!
Different forms of entertainment isn't directly exchangible. You need to compare games to games. Market forces have set games at roughly $50 for 15 hours of play. That's what other games roughly charge. The competition for HL2:E1 isn't a few movies: it's Far Cry Preditor.
(And keep in mind that for both examples you gave, there are cheaper and quite popular options. I rent far more movies (about $3/movie; watched by 2 people) than I see in theatres. I purchase far more books in paperback than hardcover. I even sometimes use the library or borrow books from friends.)
Parent
Whoring myself out with more episodic content (Score:5, Interesting)
Valve likes it [hylobatidae.org], anyhow. And yes, I'm a complete fanboy!
Fantastic (Score:5, Interesting)
Movie? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone heard any rumours/press in regards to this? Maybe I'm just hopeful (and overly optimistic that if it happened, it wouldn't be a massacre), but a movie involving post-war apocalypse, a savior scientist, the comedic relief (Barnie), a hot sidekick, a nuttie scientist, cruel otherworldly footsoldiers, government conspiracy, and aliens that attach to one's head for happy zombification sound like a good combination to me. Hell, headcrabs and headcrab-zombies are probably in itself one of the cooler things... like an upgrade to the freakiness of chest-bursting nasties from the Alien movie series.
Episode One.1-3, The Movie (Score:5, Interesting)
20 dollars? try 12.99 retail (Score:4, Informative)
Re:20 dollars? try 12.99 retail (Score:3, Informative)
Then again, I don't know how much appeal this game would have to those who haven't already bought HL2...
The problem (Score:5, Interesting)
What all of you suckers who buy into episodic gaming can expect in the future is increased prices, more frequent releases of episodes with less and less content, and purchasing the initial version of the game that has had features that SHOULD have been included scraped to provide "must-buy" content for the inevitable episodes. Unfortunately that last one affects EVERYBODY who might buy a game, not just the idiots who buy the episodes as we all saw with Oblivion's horse mod.
All episodic gaming is is an attempt at prepping consumers to be nickle and dimed for every game element the companies can think of. Think ringtones, wallpapers and games on cellphones, only more expensive.
Re:The problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Motion Sickness (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody else have these problems? Or know if it's better in episode 1?
Virtual Aspirin for HL2 (Score:5, Informative)
1. In the game list, right click on Half-Life 2: Episode One, and select "Properties".
2. Click on "Set Launch Options..."
3. Add "+sv_cheats 1 +fov 90 +default_fov 90".
4. Click OK, Close, and launch the game.
5. Headache-b-gone!
If HL2 gives you headaches, while other FPS games do not, this fix is for you. It sets the field of view to 90 degrees, instead of HL2's default 75.
Parent
Half-Life 2...great story? (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing (Score:3, Informative)
Wow.. I actually.. *agree* (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was finally able to purchase the game, I downloaded at about 400KB/s, which is pretty respectable for my connection (though it can do ~1MB/s to the right server).
The production value of the game is very good. The character interactions are very good and the constant interaction with Alyx is very good. She does neat little things like covering her face when there's an explosion hear her.
The story is "ok". I'm pretty picky about plot in general, so "ok" from me probably means "pretty good" for most other people.
My beef with the game has to be Alyx's health/ammo levels. She has infinite ammo, so there's bits where in order to conserve ammo, you have to pretty much just wait around for her to kill baddies (and point them out with the flashlight.. which while being cool at first gets old). The second bit is that she can die, but there's absolutely no indication of how much health she has. There's no number anywhere and it's not depicted on her character, either. She's fine, she's fine, she's dead. If she starts saying "Oww!" a lot, then you probably need to get her away.
Anyways, they've got my $20 for episode 2.
Well worth $20 (Score:5, Informative)
There were new "gimmicks" introduced (new enemies, new puzzle components) and variants thereof used very well. They were fairly easy to figure out but that didn't make it any less satisfying when the way forward would open to more cool stuff. You seriously can't go more than a few meters without something cool happening.
The commentary is a bonus. I was disappointed that there were only a couple that took control of you or tweaked the rendering engine temporarily to show you something, more of that sort of thing would have been real neat. But the commentary itself was still very good, you learn a bit about the behind the scenes stuff (sort of like a mini "Making Of" while in the game. However, sometimes it's hard to hear commentary if in-game characters are talking at the same time. Fortunately you can always move away to more easily listen to the commentary.
The only qualms I have is that I had a weird hanging problem (maybe something with my drivers, who knows) but on a second play through it disappeared.
Also, I missed vehicles. The episode 2 teaser reveals large outdoor areas, hopefully you'll get a vehicle for part of the episode.
In short: I am quite looking forward to episodes 2 and 3 and will preorder as soon as the option becomes available on Steam.
HL2:EO (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the cool features that were added was the ability to play through with the commentary engaged. After I finished the Episode, I played through with the commentary which answered a lot of the 'concerns' I had as to why things were a certain way. Had some of the pessimists actually participated in the commentary they wouldn't be so quick to oust Valve on some of the decisions they made regarding Episode One.
Now, I'm not saying Episode One is a perfect game. All I'm saying is that a lot of the griping about the content is not necessary.
Here are some things (my short list) I found good about the episode:
New content - Stalkers, Combine Zombies, and helpful roller mines to name a few.
Puzzles - While many of the puzzles weren't overly difficult I thought they offered a fresh change from 'same old, same old' puzzles set. Plus, the core puzzle took be back to the good old Half-Life 1 days with some of the puzzles encountered there.
Good Intro - Some of individuals didn't like scripted scene at the beginning. I thought it a very well introduction for veteran and new players alike. Now if you didn't like it because you just prefer run and gun, it's your purgative, but say that next time. I thought it did a good job of setting up the story of the episode and what your 'goal' was for the content.
Different from HL2 - While I thought they did a good job of extending the story line, I thought it was cool that they didn't follow the same example 100%. The game play all though similar had a different feel to it, to me it seemed there was more sense of urgency and I thought they did a good job of conveying that to the player. You can actually trap yourself! :P
Intriguing, Good Story line - Now, I started playing Episode one not really expecting any questions to be answered. The thing I have really enjoyed about the Half-Life series is how entwined you become in the story line and want to know more. It makes you think; guess some people don't like that!
And the bad(short list) things:
Linear - The one thing that I have never really liked about the half-life series is how linear the levels are throughout the game. Of course this is not why you play Half-Life but it's always in the back of my mind.
Drawn out - Some of the sections/ideas were a little too drawn out in my opinion for the content. For example, the ball sockets got a little old after a while. Also, I thought there were too many areas that were pitch black
Dexterity required or bugs? - Some areas I thought required a little too much finger dexterity, such as were you had to knock the falling debris out of the way with the gravity gun, for some reason I had a hard time with my timing, it seemed sometimes the Ggun wouldn't even shoot sometimes, but I couldn't tell if it was me or what.
Unfair insertion - Also I didn't really like the fact that I was pushed into fighting the Antlion Guard without knowing it was there.
Well, with that, I thought the Episode was good in general and I can't wait for the next!
Sorry, Valve, But I Am Still Not Convinced (Score:4, Insightful)
Half-Life 2 may well have exceeded the original but I have yet to find out as I've never been near it, not even a hacked copy. Why? Because of Steam.
If Google want to offer me a free Search Bar that gives me the option of running in a basic mode or advanced mode where my surfing habits are tracked, that's fine - they've given me something for nothing and the choice to be tracked or not. If another software company wants to offer me some free software on condition I look at some advertisements, that's fine also - I won't install the software but they've been good enough to warn me first, which I appreciate.
Steam, in my experience, is different. Maybe it's changed now but when I tried it a few years ago against Half-Life (1) and Counterstrike as (what I then thought was) a piece of software for getting easy updates to both games, I found it far too intrusive - plus I heard lots of stories about what that piece of software was sending back about my machine to Valve. In the end, I got rid of it and stuck with manual updates.
Sorry, I don't care how good a game is - if I don't trust what that game producer is doing "behind my back", I won't buy it, it's that simple; in just the same way as I won't buy any DRMed CD by even my favourite music artists and I won't rent movies that "self destruct" after a single play.
Unfortunately, it all gets back to the "mindless cattle" consumers amongst us who get totally lost in the hype and marketing around products that make it bad for the rest of us - it's those same people who hand over their rights, and mine, to companies who want nothing more than to crowbar more money from us while treating us all as criminals.
I don't mind going into a shop and paying for a game - whether it's on the day of it's release or on a budget label later on.
I'd prefer NOT to have to insert that CD into my PC every time I play that game but then I can probably find a "No CD" crack on the Internet and keep that CD nice, shiny and unscratched in a dark case somewhere so I put up with that.
I'll endure having to have a registration code for a game because if that game's producers have spent some additional money on hosting some game servers for me to play on, that seems a reasonable way of giving the true customers value for money away from those who decided to copy the game.
But I definitely WILL NOT allow any piece of spyware like Steam to do it's dirty little job of ratting it's way through the contents of my PC & pay for the privelige.
As far as I am concerned, Valve can produce the most stunningly inventive game ever invented and offer to pay me to play it - but if it's got Steam as a back-end, I still won't touch it.
If Microsoft are the OS mafia & Sony are the music thugs, then in third place are the Valve triads....
Episode One: A quick personal review (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone obviously has likes and dislikes in the gaming world as much as in everything else, and while I simply do not have much interest in most of the other games this company or most others have to offer, (save for a couple of Counterstrike matches on a LAN) I do not remember ever being drawn into one as much as I did when I belatedly got into Half-Life 2 a year and a half ago. An avid Sci-Fi buff and Cyberpunk enthusiast, the original premise of the game struck a deeply resonating chord in me, one that no other game so far has managed to, as I have found most of them to be far too awkwardly simplistic, or just hard to get into.
The keyword here is immersive and what really got me was just how easy the game's developers had made it to fit yourself into Gordon Freeman's character. Again, not being a gaming maven who spends at least 6 hours a day in front of a console, it was a bit of a shock how HL2 got me hooked, like no other game ever did before. The attention paid to atmosphere and details makes for a very eerie experience, the 'Physics Engine' they use is really darn good, and without trying to start a flame war, I would in some levels tend to feel the same way about this particular franchise as I felt about George Lucas and Star Wars in the late 70's, which is to say pretty darn excited.
The gaming experience on this Episode One is nothing short of breathtaking. As others have mentioned, there are plenty of cute puzzles and new tricks to keep one guessing, the introduction of some new and welcome characters like those lovely grenade-wiedling Zombines, and after spending a leisurely two sessions playing through this in 'Normal' setting, must report that I feel just as elated as before with HL2, as I reached the climactic ending. Obviously, I cannot give the game a newcomer's look as HL's key-commands are tatooed in my synapses, but the flow was very natural, and it definitely felt like we all picked up where it left off the last time around....
There were no bugs that came to halt the otherwise smooth experience. Wish I had the necessary resources to experience the HDR effects, but it would appear that my laptop's graphic card is not capable of rendering it. Oh, well...
On the down side, I did find some of Alyx's scripted answers and come-ons a bit irritating after a while, as they tended to detract from an otherwise solid storyline, bt that's something I am willing to live with. The commentary is a pretty fine way to acquaint yourself with the finer points of game design if you so desire, and very unobtrusive.
But as in good wine, what matters most to me in the end is the aftertaste, and I must report that I - for one - cannot wait for the upcoming release of Episode Two later this year. I find that the episodic format suits this game pretty well, and as long as we know what to expect, do not find it offensive or bothersome.
So there you have it. A solid 8.5 at least, with a big grin on my face and plenty of other-worldly and futuristic inspiration. Fantastic game, well worth my or anyone's time.
Z.
Disclaimer: No, I do not work for Valve or any associated companies... after a game like this, I almost wish I did!! (LOL!)
Re:Download problems? (Score:3, Funny)