Concerned Extras

Fall ‘07 now.

First: If you haven’t played Episode 1 but definitely plan to, please don’t read this. I’m not going to be detailing the game step by step or anything like that, but I’ll talking about a few specific elements that are far more fun to discover on your own. If you’re on the fence about whether or not to buy the game, then at least proceed with caution as there will be some mild spoilers and descriptions of certain elements of the game. I can sum it up right here, however: if you enjoyed Half-Life 2, you’ll definitely enjoy Episode 1.

The game begins a few hours after the end of Half-Life 2, and quickly shows you how Alyx survived and how you managed to emerge from stasis against the G-Man’s apparent desires. It’s a short yet intriguing intro, and about the closest thing to a cutscene that’s ever appeared in Half-Life.

The Citadel has been heavily damaged by your orb-flingin’ ass at the end of HL2, and is both falling apart and preparing to go supernova. To give the citizens time to escape City 17, you have to go back inside the Citadel (you wake up outside) and deal with the unstable reactor core, then travel through the ruined city, both above and below ground, battling zombies, soldiers, and antlions, to reach a train station the citizens are using to flee the crumbling metropolis.

Along the way, some stunning information is revealed: namely, that you’ll have to play Episode 2 and Episode 3 to understand just what the Sam Hill is going on here. It seems that while the Citadel may be falling apart, a new danger is preparing to explode from its shuddering bowels like some sort of alien version of the runs, and it remains to be seen what that means to the planet. My guess: probably nothing good.

Keeping in mind that this is not a sequel to Half-Life 2, but instead a continuation, the game succeeds brilliantly. There are a few boss fights, plenty of puzzles to solve, and some new twists on the familiar Half-Life 2 gameplay. I played through the episode in one sitting, in what I estimate to be about four and a half hours, not quite the six hours we were promised, but considering that playing through a second time with the commentary track on is a lot of fascinating fun in and of itself, the game is more than worth the price of admission. The familiar enemies and style of gameplay make it a seamless transition from the end of HL2, but the new twists means you’re still learning to play while you play, and it never feels like Valve just threw some leftover levels at you to make a quick buck.

You’re challenged to find new ways to use your old weapons, particularly the gravity gun. Familiar enemies, such as antlions, remain unchanged, but there are new ways you are forced to deal with them, which adds some freshness to the situations you find yourself in. Inside the citadel, the Combine orbs have a new use and are the crux of many of the puzzles. Even rollermines have a fun new role to play at a few points in the game.

You’ll see and interact with many of the characters from HL2, such as Dog, Dr. Kleiner, Eli Vance, Barney, and of course Alyx, who accompanies you for nearly the entire episode. Like Half-Life 2, you walk away with some shadowy new information to process, and just flipping through the Steam forums or poking around Wikipedia will show you the new theories popping up on everything from the possible genetic background of the ministrider glimpsed in the game (it’s apparently called a “Hunter”, though I would have gone with “Sprinter”, myself), to speculation about the ultimate fate of Dr. Breen. Plus, the Vortigaunts! What the hell got into them?

A wonderful addition to the Half-Life 2 beastiary is the Combine zombie. Sometimes they shamble, sometimes they rush you, and they can take a fair amount of punishment before they go down. They have a great secondary attack as well, one that’ll have you backpedaling like mad to avoid. Particularly enjoyable is that they have that harrowing zombie moan, though it’s altered due to the Combine’s mechanized speech patterns, which is a fantastic and creative touch.

Stalkers (former citizens who have been brutally transformed into skeletal slaves) play a part inside the Citadel, too, though they aren’t so much an enemy as an obstacle. You don’t really fight the Stalkers as much as you solve them, and even still, their roles are fairly minimal, though they’re still wonderfully creepy, tragic, and have an weird and unexplained hatred of Combine orbs. I was sort of hoping for a bit more hot Stalker action, as the trailer for Episode 1 seemed to hint at, but they really just amount to barriers instead of baddies.

The Combine soldiers feel different, too: more mobile, more agile, and harder to take down at range. As in Lost Coast, they can repel down on you from above, plus they’ve learned to blow open doors and rush you in a haze of smoke and debris, and leap quickly down from overhead walkways to engage you.

This episode’s main focus, of course, is Alyx Vance. She’s by your side for the duration, and as any gamer knows, most NPCs generally begin to show their robotic guts after just a few minutes. Repeated dialogue, clunky AI, path-finding issues, and odd reactions (or lack of reactions) to things going on around them generally spoil any brief illusions of intelligence among computer-controlled characters. Valve puts Alyx by your side for hours — hours — and she comes through with flying colors.

Don’t get me wrong: she doesn’t mimic a real, human-player companion (which is good, because if she’d started jumping up and down for no reason and saying “OMGLOL” it would spoil the atmosphere), but for an NPC she’s remarkably compelling, capable, and endearing. She’s been upgraded from HL2, and has a lot of new moves and neat dynamic scripting tucked under her utility belt. Shine a flashlight in her face in a darkened room and she’ll shield her eyes and grimace. Try to engage her while she’s busy disabling a control panel and she’ll ask you to hang on a second. She can navigate her surroundings just as well as you can (better, really: she can climb). If you reach an impasse, she’ll make some suggestions on how to proceed, without ordering you around incessantly.

A great deal of the audio commentary is devoted to her; all the thinking, testing, tweaking, and experimenting that went into Alyx to get her just right, and Valve did get her just right. You lead the way and she keeps up. You help her, and she helps you. You never really feel like you’re babysitting her, neither does it seem like she’s running the show. It’s a great balance.

I think perhaps the only problem with having Alyx around to talk to for hours at a time is that it really reminds you that you don’t talk, ever, something that only seems strange when someone else is around chatting you up. The refreshing nature of Gordon’s utter silence feels weird for the first time in the Half-Life world, simply because there’s someone with you at nearly all times. She cracks jokes, she gets deadly serious, she expresses concern and caring for you, and you don’t say a damn thing in return. I know women are drawn to the strong silent type, but I’m starting to feel like Freeman is kind of a dickweed.

The level design of Episode 1 is up to Valve’s high standards, particularly inside the Citadel. Things are going terribly wrong as you explore the innards of this dying behemoth, and it goes far beyond the flickering lights, showers of sparks, and exploding control panels that usually indicate a facility in distress (like Black Mesa in HL1). In its death throes, the Citadel seems to be lashing out (or in) at anything that moves, and it makes for an exciting and deadly obstacle course. Enjoy the sight of Combine soldiers perishing in one of the Citadel’s malfunctions, and then realize you’re about to cross through the same area where you just saw them get obliterated. Great stuff.

City 17 isn’t doing so well either, and you’ll traverse the ruined streets as antlions burrow up through the pavement, soldiers ambush you, and zombies pour out of buildings. There are parking garages, buildings, and a hospital to struggle through as well, sometimes in complete darkness. And, since Valve knows how much we enjoy seeing NPCs fight each other, a tradition dating back to their first game, there are a number of sequences where zombies and Combine and antlions duke it out with each other in a way that makes you feel like it would be happening even if you weren’t there. Hang back and wait to pick off the survivors, or wade right in and get your gloves dirty.

There’s a nice showcase of HDR as well, as in one sequence a gunship fires down upon a building you’re in. As sections of the roof explode into splinters, sunlight pours in, momentarily blinding you as you search for a clean shot, which makes the battle more challenging. The game sounds great, of course, and there’s some excellent new music that amps up the excitement and suspense. The audio commentary, as I said, is highly enjoyable. As you play through a second time, you’ll find a series of hovering, spinning commentary icons you can enable, allowing you to listen to a number of Valve team members talk about the specific areas you’re in, their design process, and a lot of neat game-building philosophy.

All that said, I’ve got a few minor issues with the game. There were times in Episode 1 where I felt more like I was playing the original Half-Life, which isn’t really a bad thing — I love the original game and I even still play it from time to time. Thing is, the original mainly confined you to interior areas and had you spend hours creeping along narrow hallways, peering through the darkness, and clearing out small rooms at a relatively slow pace. There is a lot of fun and tension in this style of gameplay, but I think Half-Life 2, with its expansive outdoor areas, really spoiled me for this kind of gaming. A lot of it is preference, I guess, but I really enjoy being outside with room to spare as opposed to being crammed into a corridor, hunting for an exit and having monsters pop out at me.

The game also feels a wee bit short on action. Some of the commentary explains the designers’ concerns about player battle fatigue — for instance, in HL2, the game alternates between extended, intense combat situations and relatively peaceful sequences. This allow you to take a breather by solving a puzzle or getting some dialogue from various NPCs between heart-pounding battles.

In HL2, I think this balance was absolutely perfect. The action sequences were long, sometimes very long, but never too long, and it was great to have cool-down points in between, chances to look around and explore in safety or get information from the game’s characters, or just admire the scenery.

In Episode 1, however, the action sequences all felt a little too short. It seemed that no sooner were you joining a battle than the battle was over and you were called upon to solve a puzzle or find a way to unlock a door. As a result, the game felt a bit stop-and-go: like driving in heavy traffic, every time you get up to top speed you have to hit the brakes. While it’s good to have a change of pace in a game, I think it comes a bit too quickly overall in Episode 1.

Like I said, you don’t gain any new weapons during Episode One — again, not really a downside because the HL2 weapons are still fun, there’s plenty of chances to use your gravity gun, and there are emergency flares you can use to set zombies on fire, which is enjoyable and more or less constitutes a new attack. I’m fine without new weapons (with one possible exception – see below), but one thing I truly wish Valve would implement is the ability to look down the sights of your guns.

When I played the full HL2 conversion modification S-Mod a few months ago, this was its most enjoyable feature. It really gets you in the firefight if you can forget the on-screen crosshair and sight right down the barrel at your enemies. It adds immersion and excitement, lets you feel the guns really jumping in your hands, makes you feel like you’re really aiming, and is far more fun and visceral than shooting from the hip. I think it’d be a kickin’ option to add to the next episode. It just amps up the combat in a way a superimposed crosshair in the middle of the screen can’t manage.

Another thing: there’s a sequence that takes place probably midway through the game, which has Alyx taking up a position in a sniper nest, and using a sniper rifle to pick off Combine soldiers and zombies in your vicinity. The commentary on this level tells us this was originally designed to take place before the player had any weapons, which would have given it a bit more urgency. It’s still a neat part of the game, and it’s fun watching Alyx blow zombies away just before they reach you.

Frankly, though, it would be a hell of a lot more fun to do the sniping yourself. If Alyx were the one running around, helpless, while you picked off threatening enemies with the sniper rifle, wouldn’t that be a lot more enjoyable? Granted, Alyx is indestructible (as far as I can tell), but it could just as easily be a group of citizens you need to shepherd across an area by clearing a route for them with the rifle. (I even tried this out in Garry’s Mod, spawning a couple Judith Mossmans (Mossmen?) and Kleiners to run feebly around amid a swarm of zombies while I used the Counter-Strike Scout rifle to protect them, and it was fun). It seemed that, for this sequence, Valve was more concerned with giving Alyx cool things to do than they were with giving the player cool things to do, and that’s not really a cool thing. To do.

I’m the hero, right? That’s a big part of why I play games, after all. If I want someone else to do all the fun stuff while I stand around watching, I’ll just turn off the computer and live my normal life. And I’m not saying it’s not neat to see Alyx doing things like slamming the butt of her shotgun into a zombie’s face, but it would be much more neat if I could do them, too. Same with the sniper sequence. Let me do the shooting. I’m the player, and since it’s single-player I’m the only player, and I should be the catalyst, not the observer.

While we’re on the topic, I also think it might be about time we got our hands on that sniper rifle in general. They’ve appeared in both Half-Life 2 and in Episode 1, but they’ve remained maddeningly out of reach (Alyx doesn’t turn hers over to you when she’s done). Sure, we’ve got the crossbow, which is a great weapon. You can zoom with it, and it’s more challenging than a sniper rifle since you don’t get instant kills — the bolts (threads of rebar, in a nice ramshackle rebel touch) are physics-driven, so you have to allow for gravity and your target can evade the shot by moving. Plus, nailing soldiers to the wall will never get old.

But I kinda want that sniper rifle, man. I’ve been playing the HL2: Capture the Flag mod which has the Combine sniper rifle as one of its weapons, and it’s just plain fun to send someone pinwheeling from miles across the map. I know the rifle could make key moments of the game too easy, but it’s not hard to limit the amount of ammo lying around, as with the crossbow, to ensure it’s not overused.

Anyway. Despite those minor gripes, Episode 1 is a fun, exciting adventure. There’s enough variation to feel like this isn’t a retread, and yet it does feel like a genuine continuation of the story. It’s probably too early to declare episodic content an unqualified succes, but it definitely appears Valve has made yet another good move by exploring the possibilities.

Bring on Episode 2.