Liveblogging HL2: Episode One

thats what i found repetative the escort bit, but thats just me i guess. some good puzzels in this one and little details, did you notice at one point if you turned your tourch off, alyx played a prank on gordon??? ^^ LAMO

 

Yeah I guess they could have done more with that - particularly considering the handy-dandy free ammo. The prank was pretty funny - fooled me anyway! Dr. Kleiner's appearances cracked me up. Especially his considered medical opinion..

 

me aswel, god dam alyx. what other little details did you notice? when you pointed the tourch directly at her eyes she would sheild them, found that good.

 

@Will: Sniper + laser guided rocket = mess.

I'm trying to think of other little touches that were particularly good. I think Alyx's A.I. in general is praise worthy. Much better than the cannon fodder we were given in the orignal game - she uses cover a well, avoids grenades and is pretty damn useful in a firefight.. assuming its not in the dark.

It might have been nice had she not been invulnerable to add a bit more realism to the game. Though considering those grenade toting "zombines" always made a bee-line straight for me I'm not sure if it would have much of an overall effect on the difficultly of the game.

 

lol zombines, that was some suttle comady by her!

either it was the computer im using but i found the g-man skin looking even more stunning that in hl2 (upgraded since i played it)

 

She knocked me off one of the bridges on the very first level running past me (away from the big sucky thing).

I thought it was all too easy to let Alyx make all the kills in the co-op parts in order to conserve ammo.

 

That's pretty funny. Sorry, I probably shouldn't laugh. Yeah, the reason I suggested making Alyx vulnerable was to stop that ammo conservation tactic. Though I have to admit that didn't worry me too much. I'd have been far more irritated if she walked straight into the line of a sniper laser or stayed next to a grenade as the normal friendly A.I. seems to. It's refreshing to fight with someone vaguely competant.

 

3.5 hours of gameplay for $20? Not even close to worth it. I paid $35 for Opposing Force which was a --full-- game. When the price drops, I'll consider it.

 

20 is nothing, you'll probably find that sorta ammmount in ure pockets or on the floor somewhere. Raid your penny/cent Jar!!!

It filled my night anyways, wither or not i'd rather be at a pub spending the money, or at home is debatable, but anyways. Will happily go to bed now o/

 

I guess you do have a point there.

 

well maybe for you, but for alot of people, $20 / £11-12 is a fair amount of money, escpecially for a mere 3 hours entertainment ....

Edit

I believe mr blogger, this is due to the fact that those combine rockets drop all over the place, drop headcrab's down
Hospitals and heavilly crowded, concealed areas are likely to end up with many zombies

 

Lasts longer than a movie for about the same price (theatre+food or DVD purchase), plus it's interactive. I've only done about half I'd guess as I had to go to work, but I'm not at all regretting the $18 I spent (woot for 10% off preorder)

 

I too found that my PC crashed when I changed resolution, anyone else get that?

Also, I managed to get Alyx killed, oops! It would appear that she is not completely indestructable, but just very tough.

 

mine keeps crashing my computer, and my friends crashed to the desktop

 

overpriced. and i'm worried that a "try before you buy" would end up playing the whole darn short thing.

 

£11 overpriced! lol the cheek tbh of this place. I havn't bought it.. but because of exams. This is less than a dvd (film) you buy in the shops (£15) and those are only 1.5 - 2 hours! What next? Your gonno say petrol is overpriced jeeez! [<-- thats a joke by the way]

 

To some people £11 isn't an insignificant ammount of money. They want something that if they come back to they can sink their teeth into for a few hours, not an afternoon. Regardless of the fact that this game costs less then other games, I still think it delivers half or less of the value for money, based on reported playtimes.

Oh and petrol is overpriced.

 

Nice timing. I'm working through HL2 now (Finally got it from a friend) and am looking forward to Lost Coast next, then this

 

I've played a while through it now, and I'm at the part with all the Antlions. I have to say, I am impressed so far. It's like they took all the really cool cinema-like experiences from Half-Life 2, refinished them in better graphics, then polished up the animations, and packed them all into a shorter game. I thought the part where Dog throws the van was really cool, and so was the whole Core sequence with the energy bridges and such. Seems to run really well too, I've got like High on everything and frame syncing on.

 

Took me 5 hours (HL2 took me some 20 hours) Really enjoyed it.

Imho, those "mysterious ships" at the end appear to be the same pods the mysterious blob-aliens were in near the start of the game and you experienced the same red pulse when they flew overhead, which would seem to back that up (The combine bosses escaping the citadel's destruction ?)

Looked to me like there was a mini-strider in one of the video sequences at one stage, wonder if those will be in one of the next episodes ?

Oh graphics, I had everything maxed out at 1280*1024, not sure if it uses AA and HDR at the same time, HDR was definetely on and added a lot, didn't really notice jaggies so half suspect AA of some sort was on ? slowdown was almost non-existant (activated fraps on the G15 LCD at one point, lowest was apparently about 30, though I wasn't paying much attention to it) I think I even forgot to clock the card above stock before I started

Edit add : also at the end, sat through the credits scrolling, watched the HL2 logo appear, glimpsed my desktop momentarily and then it was loading the menu back up, no trailer for me.