Half-Life Episode 2 (Contains spoilers!)

Entirely impressed. Got up this morning to a great release, and beat both E2 and Portal...Now I'm the type to go after the achievements so yeah I'll replay them, but it's just time to go back to some quality TF2 now

Just completed portals to! Great game, very funny and well made. Though it were a bit easier than i tought it would be

THE CAKE IS A LIE!

Quote from Zyndrome

THE CAKE IS A LIE!

What he said!

Did anyone almost shat bricks when the green Antlion Guard came after you in those narrow caves? I was thinking "Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god..." when I ran like hell and could feel it just behind my back.

Quote from curman

That's really what made me enjoy Episode 2 so much. There was an actual element of gameplay that invoked a certain panic inside of you while playing. I for one was jumping out of seat runnin' down that cave to find the next hideout. It was a great chase sequence.

Oh god yes. I was jumping out of my seat and screaming "RUN FASTER ITS CHASING ME AHHH!"

btw, where's Barney?

I musta missed him being mentioned

did anyone think that portal was better than episode 2? I thought the whole apature science thing was like revisiting black mesa in a weird sort of way :} felt good to be in a lab setting.

I thought Portal was great, absolutely loved the turrets. If someone could mod them into standard HL2 I'll play through the entire singleplayer campaign again ("I don't hate you.." aww, such a cute automated killing machine).

Ep2 was also good, although I've seen way too many previews/trailers for it so I recognized maybe 80% of the areas. Guess that's my own fault though.

Right after getting the car, exiting the tunnel and entering the forest-area, I got a real Redneck Rampage feeling, if anybody has played that game. Dunno if thats a good or bad thing.

Also, the car "oh christ its an ambush" section seemed really tacked on, like "we need 15 more minutes of gameplay here, you got two weeks". Textures and what seemed like buildings directly from DoD source, somewhat simplistic/unpolished graphics etc. The rest of the game was good though.

I'm still sort of split regarding the achievements. In one way its cool, since everybody likes to be "rewarded", in another way it sort of takes you out of the game since you stop and do stuff you normally wouldn't do (thinking especially of the "kill 300 larvas" challenge. I normally wouldnt have stopped to shoot every damn larva until I ran out of pistol ammo if I didn't know about that achievement.) Maybe they're better fitted to multiplayer, since I like them in TF2.

Overall I'm happy about the whole thing, I'll probably play through Ep2 again just to check out the dev commentaries, should be interesting.

So what do you think valve will do with portal? Make a portal 2 with the woman character? or give gordon the portal gun when he gets aboard the borealis (Which so happens to have apature science equipment). Its pretty evident that they are investigating this portal technology especially if you go into the developer commentary on portal. should be interesting...

Also did everyone love the strider level? i personally loved that part in episode 2. was the best part of the whole game. Finally a spot in hl2 that isnt linear!!!!

i thought the ending was brutal, i literally sat there just thinking, "omg it's just not gonna do that, it's just NOT gonna do that *BAM* i cant believe it just did that."

i really think that there will be a sort of merging story with portal 2/ep3, i reckon both protagonists are gonna meet; maybe not directly, maybe just get a glimpse of each other (both standing in awe for a second, then realizing they're still competitors), but something along the lines of that.

*portal spoiler?*

i am curious of this new protagonist though, with the backstory and all. my current theory is something based on that she is/was a prisoner (orange suit) transferred/bought by aperture science for testing. as for aperture science itself, well, we get that story when completing it. guess black mesa wasn't the only one with accidents...

*/spoiler*

On Portal: The SDK-Project guy had an idea noted down at his page I find quiet intresting:

"My first though was: “Uhmmm… Alyx’s mother?”."

In my opinion valve could pull a really interesting plot twist from now on. We already know that Gordon is going to rescue something from Aperture Science in EP3, well what if in Portal 2 (if they do make one) you also have to rescue that equipment in a race against Gordon? You could see Gordon, and fight him (gravity gun vs portal gun would be interesting), and you get two games with two different characters, which have both the same objective but work for different factions.

I hope they do something like this

Quote from barrakid

In my opinion valve could pull a really interesting plot twist from now on. We already know that Gordon is going to rescue something from Aperture Science in EP3, well what if in Portal 2 (if they do make one) you also have to rescue that equipment in a race against Gordon? You could see Gordon, and fight him (gravity gun vs portal gun would be interesting), and you get two games with two different characters, which have both the same objective but work for different factions.I hope they do something like this

Watch for Valve! They'll steal your idea!

Nice blood, HL2's like SOF now

Here's my 2 side of the coin!

I've never written anything bad about Valve and this isn't a exception. The story is good (sometimes I can't understand cause they use "hard" english words) the graphical updates are nice, The achivments are nice (but like the other dude said, can "ruin" the game play a little) Overall I'm really satisfied with EP2.

A little short maybe and I would like less underworld levels next time.

Portal was nice too, a little easier then I expected but I can see user made maps soon being downloadable.

I noticed that they included a lot more humor in this episode then in any HL game before. While I love humor and loved it in game I can have a hard time when its in "serious" games and movies (like Terminator 3).

Anyway Its a masterpiece like everything else that leaves Valve's office. I didn't understood if they attached the data Alyx have gathered on the Rocket tho. If not, why couldn't they launched it before Gordon and Alyx got there?

And did you guys saw the brain D0g threw out of the Strider? Coool