Half-Life 2: Episode One

Half-Life 2: Episode One is the first of three stand-alone expansions to Half-Life 2. It picks up moments after the first game ended - which you may recall was on a massive cliffhanger - and nicely sets up the events of Episode Two.


Before the events of Half-Life 2, the Earth was invaded and subjugated by a ruthless interdimensional alien race known as the Combine. Inhibiting humanity's desire to procreate with suppression fields, draining the oceans and gradually transforming the surviving humans into cybernetic slaves or indoctrinated soldiers, the Combine are clearly not very friendly. However, aided by the alien vortigaunts who used to be slaves of the Combine but were liberated by the actions of your character, Gordon Freeman, at the end of the original Half-Life, humanity has formed a resistance. Freeman's unexpected arrival in City 17, the main Combine base of operations in Eastern Europe, triggered a mass-uprising against the Combine. At the end of Half-Life 2, Gordon and Alyx Vance infiltrated the Citadel and defeated the plans of the Combine and their ally, Dr. Wallace Breen. Unfortunately, although their plan succeeded, the zero-point energy generator at the top of the Citadel exploded, apparently incinerating Alyx, although Gordon was 'rescued' once again by the mysterious G-Man.

Episode One picks up moments later as the G-Man suddenly finds his powers neutralised by a bunch of vortigaunts, who teleport both Alyx and Gordon to freedom. The resistance is evacuated City 17, but as thousands of people flee for safety the defensive shields around the city collapse and dangerous wildlife starts flooding in, causing havoc. Gordon and Alyx's task in Episode One is simple: to re-engage the Citadel's shields to stop the reactor exploding for a few hours longer, and then to get the hell out of the city.

Episode One is impressive for distilling the Half-Life experience down to a few intense hours of fun. The episode isn't as long as any of the other games or expansions in the series, clocking in at around four hours in length, but it does cover a fair amount of ground. New weapons are disappointingly nowhere to be seen, but there are some new enemies and some interesting set pieces. As usual, combat is fast and furious and the physics puzzles aren't quite as blindingly obvious as in HL2 itself. They've also generously increased the battery life of your torch, which given that chunks of the game take place in darkness as you have to fight off zombie and headcrab hordes is a good thing.

Much of the game's enjoyment comes from having Alyx by your side for most of the game. She is easily the most impressive allied NPC to ever appear in an action game, and her reactions in a few situations are surprisingly lifelike. However, Valve definitely missed a trick by not allowing a co-op mode with another player controlling her.

Episode One (****½) is a fun game and an enjoyable addition to the series, if you can stomach yet another cliffhanger ending (although that is eased due to the fact of Episode Two already being available). The game is available in the UK as part of The Orange Box (PC, 360, PS3), and the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack (PC), and in the USA as part of The Orange Box (PC, 360, PS3) and the Half-Life 2 Episode Pack (PC).

Wertzone Classics: Half-Life 2

The original Half-Life, released back in October 1998, was the title that redefined the first-person shooter genre. As well as featuring the best combat of any FPS to date, it hit on the idea of never having the player's character, Gordon Freeman, speak or stopping the action to have an expository cut-scene. However, some players found the resulting lack of explanation for the confusing plot to be frustrating. Despite this, Half-Life and its expansions (Opposing Force and Blue Shift) won a substantial number of awards and went on to sell millions of copies. A sequel was inevitable and after a protracted development cycle (including the partial theft of the game's source code) Half-Life 2 appeared to much fanfare in November 2004. Since then, the game has sold more than 8.5 million copies, making it one of the biggest-selling games of recent years.


In the original Half-Life, junior physicist Gordon Freeman was present when an experiment with teleportation technology at the underground Black Mesa research facility in New Mexico went catastrophically wrong. Dimensional rifts to another world, Xen, were opened and hostile creatures poured through. Over the course of several days of non-stop combat, Freeman made his way across the Black Mesa installation, reversed the resonance cascade and briefly crossed to Xen to kill the Nihilanth, the alien entity who had noticed the catastrophe and sent its minions through to investigate. At the end of Half-Life Freeman was 'recruited' by the mysterious G-Man, who appeared to be a suit-wearing human with odd diction but was actually a being of tremendous power and unknown origin. He placed Freeman in stasis for the time when he would be needed again.

Half-Life 2 opens approximately ten years after the events of the first game. The G-Man awakens Freeman from stasis and informs him that the world is a very different place now. A disoriented Freeman is dumped on a train pulling into a station in an Eastern European city. The precise location of the city is never revealed, as whatever name it used to possess has been replaced by the terse designation, 'City 17'. Freeman learns that the resonance cascade at Black Mesa attracted the attention of a powerful alien race known as the Combine, who subsequently invaded the Earth and destroyed its military and governments in the Seven Hour War. The planet is now occupied, most of the population has been killed off and the surviving remnants are forced to work for the Combine. The Combine is draining the planet's oceans and it is hinted they are doing something to the atmosphere as well. Periodically the surviving civilians are taken away to be transformed into a cybernetic slave labour force or into cybernetically-enhanced soldiers utterly loyal to the Combine. Freeman also learns that his former boss, Black Mesa Administrator Wallace Breen, is now running the planet on behalf of the Combine, suggesting he may have had foreknowledge of what was to happen.

This information takes a little while to filter through, as the first section of the game sees a confused Gordon making his way through City 17, aided by his old comrade Barney Calhoun (the player's character from Blue Shift) and the other rebels, initially on foot and then by hovercraft. This section of the game eschews exposition in favour of action, with large-scale gun battles with Combine police forces and a genuinely exciting chase sequence through the sewers and along the river with airborne Combine forces in hot pursuit. Upon reaching the rebel hideout at Black Mesa East Freeman is given an experimental 'gravity gun' but is cut off from his allies by a Combine attack, and has to make his way through the town of Ravenholm which has been infested by aliens from Xen, such as the 'headcrabs' who turn ordinary humans into zombie-like automatons. The shift of tone from traditional action game to a Resident Evil-style survival horror is expertly pulled off. The second section of the game opens with Freeman having to drive along Highway 17 to reach the Combine's prison at Nova Prospekt in order to rescue an important Resistance scientist, Eli Vance. At this stage Freeman is joined by Eli's daughter, Alyx Vance, who proves an invaluable ally. Events at Nova Prospekt trigger the uprising of the human population against the Combine, and the last section of the game sees Gordon and Alyx taking part in full-scale street battles with more heavily-armed Combine forces and their powerful 'Strider' vehicles in an attempt to storm the Combine Citadel and destroy their base of operations.

Half-Life 2 is a tightly-scripted first-person shooter. Those who have gotten used to the freedom afforded the genre in Far Cry and Far Cry 2 (or to a lesser extent Crysis) may be taken aback at how linear Half-Life 2 is. In the original game the linearity of the game was rationalised by the setting, an underground base made up of offices, corridors, silos, factories and military checkpoints. However, in environments such as city streets and open stretches of highway, Half-Life 2's linearity is far more noticeable with only one direction to proceed in at any one time. In an age where FPS games seem intent on forging new ground in giving choice and options to the player, Half-Life 2's lack of freedom feels pretty dated. Once you get used to it, the strengths gained from choosing this route become more apparent, with spectacular set-piece action sequences, thrilling battles and even some nice moments of characterisation. Whilst you rarely spend time with NPCs other than Alyx, the animation, direction and voice acting of characters such as Barney, Eli, Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Mossman are all top-notch. The atmosphere of the game is also fantastic, with the excellent art direction and minimalist music providing a pervading sense of wrongness that this isn't how the world should be and it may all be Freeman's fault. At around 12 hours in length, Half-Life 2 is pretty long by the standards of most modern FPS games (such as Call of Duty 4, which barely clocks in at half that, or FEAR which comes in a good two hours shorter). Also, whilst the game looked extremely impressive on release its PC system requirements were modest, and most modern computers can run the game at full detail without breaking a sweat.

Whilst the pluses are all significant, and give the game its classic status, there are a couple of additional problems which come from the linearity of the title. Because there is only one route through the game and one possible ending, its replayability is severely limited. It's unusual for a player to find every side-room, explore every roadside building or locate every weapons cache on a first run-through of the game, so it's definitely worth playing through a couple of times but you simply don't have anywhere near the variety of say the original Far Cry, where the sheer openness of the levels means there are often a half-dozen or more routes through each stage of the game. A second issue is that both enemy and ally AI (Alyx being an honourable exception) is a bit lacking at times and worryingly comes across as less inventive than the much older original game, although still a step ahead of many contemporary games. A further issue is that the game ends (deliberately) very abruptly, literally in mid-sentence, so you may wish to have the continuation, Half-Life 2: Episode One, ready to go once you have finished this game.

Niggles aside, Half-Life 2 is a classic and gripping action game which is well-worth playing. The atmosphere is terrific, the combat visceral, the weapons inventive (particularly the gravity gun) and the game immersive, once you get used to its limitations.

Half-Life 2 (****½) is no longer available as a solo game in the UK, but only as part of The Orange Box, alongside Episode One, Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and the spectacular Portal. This package, available for the PC, X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3, is well-recommended. The game is still available as a solo PC game in the USA, and also as part of The Orange Box (PC, 360, PS3).

Wertzone Classics: Portal

Every now and then a game comes along that requires serious attention, simply because it is pure genius. Usually such games are mind-boggingly simple, and feature an idea so obvious that it makes other developers slap themselves in the face in disbelief that they didn't think of it. Portal is the latest such game to follow in this tradition.

Portal follows the adventures of a young lady named Chell, who, for reasons never explained, has been held in stasis for an unspecificed amount of time at an Aperture Science Enrichment Facility, waiting to undergo testing and training on the Handheld Portal Device 04 (aka, 'the portal gun'). Chell doesn't encounter any other people, but is guided through the testing facility by GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), an extremely eccentric AI which becomes increasingly demented as the game proceeds, directing Chell into increasingly hazardous test chambers (including a 'live-fire course usually used to test military androids') but urging her to continue through the promise of cake.

Each test chamber consists of a puzzle which the player must overcome by use of the portal gun. The gun can create portals on certain wall surfaces. Two portals can be created. By simply stepping through one, you step out of the other. Puzzles can be very simple (crossing a chasm by firing a portal onto a wall on the far side and another next to you, and stepping through) or mind-crushingly complex. Since you retain your forward momentum when you pass through a portal, some puzzles involving crossing vast gaps (with non-portal-compatible walls on the far side) can be overcome by generating a portal at the bottom of the chasm, another one on the wall behind you, falling down the chasm at tremendous speed, which then gives you momentum when you pass through the portal to cross the vast gap. Dealing with sudden shifts in orientation and direction is key to progressing through the game.

The puzzles are complicated by the increasing addition of dangerous obstacles, such as energy spikes you have to direct through portals to generators to open up the next area of the test chamber but which will kill you if you touch them, and the sudden addition of robotic sentry guns to certain chambers (which comically tell you they hold no ill wishes when you inevitably destroy them). You also have some help in the shape of the 'weighted companion cube' or 'box' which you can use to press switches, bat aside energy spikes or deflect sentry gun bullets. For a non-sentient inanimate object, the companion cube soon becomes a trusted ally in the game and the puzzle which requires you to 'euthanise' one of them is strangely disturbing.

Of course, there's only so many times you can solve puzzles revolving around portals and the laws of ballistics before it becomes a bit old, and to their credit the developers realise this and only provide twenty test chambers. The completion of the last chamber triggers the second (much shorter) stage of the game where you have to use your carefully-gained portal skills to escape the facility once it becomes clear that something is not right in the world outside (this is where the link to the Half-Life universe is hinted at), leading to the fiendishly satisfying final confrontation and the best end games credits sequence ever.

Portal is a tremendoulsy simple idea, fantastically well-executed. I can imagine the Half-Life 2 team at Valve feeling a bit embarrassed about the fuss they made about the gravity gun when Portal shows off the capabilities of the Source Engine's physics engine with much greater finesse, elegance and originality. At about 2-3 hours in length, it doesn't outstay its welcome (and your brain will be aching by the time you get to the game's conclusion) but it does leave you wanting more. Where a possible Portal 2 could go is unclear, but the game hints that the Aperture Science facility has been abandoned due to something crazy happening in the world outside, and it isn't too hard to tie this in with the Combine occupation of Earth in the Half-Life 2 series of games. Whether this means that any sequel will see Chell taking on the Combine with the portal gun, or perhaps involve her meeting Gordon Freeman, is unclear, but it's an intriguing notion.

Portal (*****) is superb. It's original, it's funny, it's well-executed, it's perfectly-timed and has a sense of humour as black as midnight. It's part of The Orange Box for PC, PS3 and X-Box 360 (see the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 review for Amazon links) and is available now. Go get it!

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

In 1998 the Valve Corporation released a first-person shooter named Half-Life into a somewhat crowded marketplace. When the dust had settled, their title had been acclaimed one of the single greatest games of all time and had won a frankly obscene number of awards. They achieved this by creating arguably one of the most immersive game models of all time (eschewing narrative breaks from the action in favour of game engine cut scenes and never letting the protagonist speak, breaking the spell that 'you' are the hero) and combining it with high-level production values and playtesting the game until it hurt. Through two expansions and a much-delayed full sequel, Valve kept the Half-Life series right at the top of its field, picking up accolades galore.

However, the six-year development cycle for Half-Life 2 (released at the end of 2004) was a cause for concern, and Valve hit upon the idea of breaking the planned Half-Life 3 into three lesser chunks of 4-5 hours apiece and releasing them at six-month intervals, minimising the wait for them and allowing them to modestly improve the Source game engine between each release rather than having to revamp it from scratch, which is what a full sequel would demand. This plan soon ran into problems, with Episode 1 arriving in Summer 2006 months behind schedule and then Episode 2 being delayed again, again and then again until it finally arrived eighteen months late. Hardcore fans were understandably annoyed, but Valve sought to placate them by releasing Episode 2 alongside the even-more-delayed Team Fortress 2 (in development since 1999, believe it or not) and what at first glance appeared to be a throwaway puzzle mini-game called Portal. More on that in a sec. The whole package was dubbed The Orange Box, and was released for the PC, X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3 a couple of months ago.

First to the meat of the package, Episode 2 itself. Episode 1 ended with Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance fleeing City 17 as it was consumed by a colossal explosion. Episode 2 picks up with our heroes abandoned in the countryside and having to make their way to the White Forest resistance base, where the rebels have secreted a project that could shut off the Combine from Earth altogether and give the human race a chance to rebuild. Along the way they have to brave antlion tunnels and numerous homesteads and outdoor areas where the Combine are on patrol.

To a certain extent, Episode 2 thus suffers from 'middle-of-trilogy' syndrome. Nothing is really resolved and large chunks of the game consist of trying to get from Point A to Point C without being killed by Gun-Wielding Maniacs at Point B. That is fine and arguably large chunks of prior Half-Life games consisted of the same set-up. However, this formula (travel-set piece-travel-puzzle-set piece) is getting a little bit old now and having an entire game based around it makes it especially feel limited, especially with new, hungrier games like BioShock and Crysis innovating like there is no tomorrow. The game also suffers from the most terminally boring opening to a Half-Life game to date. In a series which has some of the most atmospheric, immersive openings in computer game history, Valve choose to open Episode 2 with Gordon squabbling around in holes in the ground splatting bugs. Bizarre.

That's the criticism out of the way. Onto the good stuff. Once more, for most of the game you team up with Alyx Vance, who is still the most impressive AI-controlled ally character ever seen in a game. It's a shame there's no co-op mode where a second player can take control of her, but she's so good at covering your ass in combat and not getting in your way that it often feels like there's someone else playing anyway, which is a remarkable feat. When Alyx isn't able to accompany you, you get to team up with one of the vortigaunts, the electricity-wielding enemy aliens from the first game who are now your allies. The vortigaunt's bizarre diction and somewhat over-eager praise (not to mention their occasional descent into sarcasm) provides most of the comic highlights of the game, as well as a few knowing self-referential asides (the vortigaunts seem well aware of the prevalence of physics puzzles in the Half-Life universe and Gordon's uncanny ability to solve them). You're soon given a nifty vehicle and Alyx is back in the driving seat, dealing out the pain alongside you as you engage in a running battle to get to White Forest.

It's during this section of the game that you encounter the two new enemies. The Hunters are mini-Striders who are incredibly tough and have possibly the most powerful offensive weapons seen by any Combine characters to date. Whilst you soon work out strategies for killing them, they remain a tough and challenging foe, powered by some fiendish AI. The Advisors are a very different kettle of fish, having psychic and telekinetic powers which virtually render you helpless in their presence and generally relying on circumstances or unaffected allies to help you out. This makes facing them rather annoying (as they're there to railroad you into the next bit of the plot rather than serve as viable, defeatable enemies) but they are used very sparingly.

After you arrive at White Forest, it's time to defend the base from a massive onslaught of Hunters and Striders using a new high-tech bomb you have to attach to the enemy vehicles with the gravity gun. This section of the game was massively hyped-up in press releases, which spoke of an epic battle involving hundreds of rebel soldiers and enemy forces fighting a pitched battle across a huge chunk of countryside. In reality, the battle lasts about ten minutes, the area of countryside is remarkably small, the other rebel soldiers are virtually useless (since the Striders are now inexplicably invulnerable to the same rockets you killed them with in Half-Life 2 and Episode 1) and the Strider-busting bomb is rather clumsy to use. Once you hit on a winning strategy though, it becomes rather tiresomely easy. Still, this can be forgiven for the absolutely shocking ending to the game which leaves the player reeling and waiting anxiously for news about Episode 3's release.

Whilst Episode 2 is the second-weakest Half-Life game to date (only Blue Shift was less satisfying), neverless it is still a fun, enjoyable game. It is short - only five hours or so - but it packs in a fair amount of variety in that time. Veteren Half-Life players will no doubt be punching the air as some plot elements from earlier games - including one vital piece of information going right back to the start of the original Half-Life itself - are finally explained and resolved, but it isn't long before many more questions are raised. The final scene is absolutely terrific, leaving you wanting to know what happens next.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (***½) is a solid game but not as revolutionary as earlier titles in the series. Nevertheless, it's good to spend time back in that universe with familiar characters and get a few more clues as to what the hell is actually going on.

The game is currently available on the PC in the UK and USA, the X-Box 360 in the UK and USA, and the PlayStation 3 in the UK and USA as part of The Orange Box, which also includes Portal and Team Fortress 2 plus Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1.