Half-Life 2: Episode Two

What’s Taking So Long?

Episode One was heavily criticised in certain corners of the world for it’s brevity and a common whinge was for people to say they breezed through it before they even knew that the game was underway.

Personally, Episode One took me around four hours on normal skill, playing with the same sort of attention that I did in Episode Two and at the end I do admit I felt a little short-changed.

Playing Episode Two however is a decidedly different affair – the game has much more information to relay to players because it works as the middle part of a trilogy. There are far more peaks and arcs to the story and the game itself is paced much, much faster.

I don’t know if I’ve managed to fully force this fact upon you, but Episode Two is relentlessly paced and at times it feels like Gordon has been chugging litres of Iron-Bru. The game is filled with arena battles and large-scale attacks where the player has to run several gauntlets at once.


Episode Two took me around six hours to complete, starting first thing in the morning and emerging from the White Forest in the late afternoon with my shoulders feeling like they’d been stabbed by white-hot icicles. Granted, a lot of this time is spent in cutscenes and conversations (one-way, naturally) with the other characters, but Episode Two is still impressively long for an episodic game. It also represents incredible value for money when you take both Team Fortress 2 and Portal into account.

Oh, and the super-secret hidden music track.

Conclusion

And thus, this review comes to an end and another portion of The Orange box can rest its head down and know that it has greatly pleased the bit-tech team.

I’ve already said that I’m going to give Episode Two a ten-out-of-ten score and I’ve tried my best to communicate why. That’s been a little hard at points because the single greatest drawing point of Episode Two is the fantastic story – and what a story it is, filled with tragedy, pain, hope, thrills, chills and automobiles.


Perhaps the greatest accolade to lay on Episode Two at this point is for me to again acknowledge that I was wrong to bitch about the delays in the episodes. Episode Two was worth the wait, worth every second of it.

With a compelling story which is excellently told, a fantastic and proven gameplay mechanic and an utterly enthralling way of communicating with the player via digital actors like Alyx, Episode Two is one of my favourite games ever. That’s not an expression I come to lightly.

You have to go play it and you have to go play it soon, but take my advice and make sure that you play it in as few separate sittings as possible. This isn’t the type of game you should dip in and out of for five minutes at a time, though you easily could. This is the type of game you should spend some serious time on, exploring the world that Valve has delicately crafted for you.

If ever there was a good reason for you to neglect your real life and play a computer game for hours on end then Episode Two is it.