Yeah it's alright lol
Half-Life 2 had a lot of good shit to it that, even though I was very aware that I was playing a 20 year old game, I still had an incredible time with it.
In Episode One, I felt like it was more of a rehash of the game mechanics; all there was that was actually extra was utilizing the suped up Gravity Gun (my favorite parts of this) and throwing cars over antlion holes. Nothing else really stuck out to me in that department.
Story wise, I think that it's a nice lil addendum to the whole Citadel siege and kinda holds that same sorta feeling that Blue Shift had for me, in that it was more focused on like the little stuff, like the people... except Gordon is still there. It's fine, it's short, and it's serviceable.
I will say that the writing for Alyx started to annoy me greatly, mostly because it felt like she couldn't stop saying one-liners? I know that Episode One is very focused on having Alyx in the story which I am a huge fan of, but in the underground pitch black areas it started to get a little obnoxious.
Speaking of the underground areas, I thought there was a heavy over-reliance of the pitch black areas to fight and do arenas in? it felt like it crossed over from being a cool idea into a bit of a gimmick that was meant to pad out the time of this. I got that feeling a couple times in Episode One, which kinda sucked, but whatever.
I will say, i really loved the Citadel parts and the Strider boss fight at the end, I thought all of that was super well done, and I had a really good time with it. In the end, it's just alright, which is a little disappointing after Half-Life 2's high highs, but what can you do!
Half-Life 2 had a lot of good shit to it that, even though I was very aware that I was playing a 20 year old game, I still had an incredible time with it.
In Episode One, I felt like it was more of a rehash of the game mechanics; all there was that was actually extra was utilizing the suped up Gravity Gun (my favorite parts of this) and throwing cars over antlion holes. Nothing else really stuck out to me in that department.
Story wise, I think that it's a nice lil addendum to the whole Citadel siege and kinda holds that same sorta feeling that Blue Shift had for me, in that it was more focused on like the little stuff, like the people... except Gordon is still there. It's fine, it's short, and it's serviceable.
I will say that the writing for Alyx started to annoy me greatly, mostly because it felt like she couldn't stop saying one-liners? I know that Episode One is very focused on having Alyx in the story which I am a huge fan of, but in the underground pitch black areas it started to get a little obnoxious.
Speaking of the underground areas, I thought there was a heavy over-reliance of the pitch black areas to fight and do arenas in? it felt like it crossed over from being a cool idea into a bit of a gimmick that was meant to pad out the time of this. I got that feeling a couple times in Episode One, which kinda sucked, but whatever.
I will say, i really loved the Citadel parts and the Strider boss fight at the end, I thought all of that was super well done, and I had a really good time with it. In the end, it's just alright, which is a little disappointing after Half-Life 2's high highs, but what can you do!