Half-Life 2: Addendum

Even though I thought I might take a break to do other stuff, I've now played the rest of Half-Life 2 and I deeply enjoyed my time with it. Neither Episode is doing anything drastically different than the base game, but they're both.. more of that. New gimmick levels, a few new enemies or mechanics here and there, and a number of interesting new environments.

Lost Coast isn't a continuation of the story (though you can sort of see where it was meant to slot in) but it's a brief, enjoyable little level you can work through. There's a lot of verticality to it that reminded me of the canyon sequence from the original game. I don't have too much to say about it since it's nothing totally unique, and I can understand why it might've been cut (for pacing issues, or whatever). Still, it's a good 20 or so minutes.

Episode One, though, really is just a continuation of Half-Life 2. Picking up immediately where that left off, you spend a few hours escaping from the mess you made at the end of that game and it's a fun retread of the City 17 segments we'd seen so many of earlier. I say retread, but nothing in it feels repetitive. There's the same spirit of invention and variety to it that I truly enjoy. 

The gunplay and core mechanics are decent enough, but the thing that I think stood out so much about Half-Life 2 was how it never really rested on its laurels. Each level has some new
gimmick or weapon or AI buddy or something to draw your attention and keep things fresh. Some of these gimmicks are, well, more annoying than others (a few of Episode Two's encounters were starting to test my patience) but I have to applaud the constant reinvention and breadth the game has to offer.

Also, I think I made note of this in my earlier post, but it's been startling to see the bones of what would define a whole generation (or two) of video games in this. The way Alyx follows you around with one-liners and (occasionally) dialogue that responds to your actions, the way the story is presented, so much of this game feels like the blueprint for PS3-era Naughty Dog (and everything that followed in their footsteps). I had constantly heard people talk about Half-Life 2 as being an incredibly influential game, but I don't think I'd ever internalized just how deep its roots were laid.

As for Episode Two, I don't know that I have much more to comment on as far as gameplay is concerned because, frankly, it's more Half-Life 2. That being said, I think Hunters are a pain to fight, the "Magnusson" device is incredibly inconsistent, and carrying that gnome as long as I did was annoying (though that last one was, admittedly, a self-inflicted annoyance). The story was interesting and, maybe because one of the few things I knew about this game going into it was how it ended, the last few minutes of this filled me with a really strong sense of unease I appreciated.

I've also now read Mark Laidlaw's Epistle 3 and I think that probably could have been a fun continuation (snow would be exciting and a nice change of pace) but whatever form the next Half-Life takes it's probably not going to be that. I intend to play Half-Life Alyx whenever I get a VR headset (those are, what, $200 at minimum? So it might be a while) but I think I finally understand why people have been clamoring for a third game for so long. This entire mini-trilogy is excellent, but its story feels unfinished and Valve, for a long time at least, seemed like they'd never go back to making these sorts of games again. Maybe that'll change, I don't know, but I can understand people's frustration when they look at this fantastic thing from 2007 that took almost thirteen years for a followup, and when that followup did come only a small portion of their existing audience were able to play it.

Now that I have these under my belt I'm interested in playing through both Portals again to see how close those games' ties really are, but for now I'm a bit Half-Lifed out so I'm in no hurry to get to those again. 

Though, on that note, man. The Orange Box was probably the greatest boxed video game release of all time. The previously-existing Half-Life 2 and Episode One were included, but more importantly it was the debut of Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Portal and TF2 would eventually get much cheaper (even free) but all of that for $60? Holy cow. What a thing.