Half Life Episode 2... Eek!

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Half Life Episode One... Eek!

Ok i bought this on steam for 9.99, i thought well.. Its about time i played the followup!, and with my new pc its gonna run sweet as hell.

So sure enough it runs amazing, Additionally... i heard it was short..

Short but sweet....

Well!.I finished download about 3 Hours ago, and completed the damn thing already!, infact it was probs less than 3 hours lol.

It was good.. But im so glad i didnt pay release price for it!

Looking forward to episode two though!
 
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DAMMIT! I got so damn excited when you said episode 2 :( I rushed to steam to find out >_>
Im depressed now lol
 
Souness said:
I'm not sure how people who make a point of storming through games as fast as they can can honestly say they enjoy them?
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I didnt even storm through it though mate, i just played it at a steady pace on Normal difficulty. I died a couple of times near the end when the strider was kicking my ass, other than that it was pretty straight forward.

I adore half life games. The first one was the very best gaming experience for me, Except zen of course.

Im still in awe of the Source engine, its stunning. It performs amazingly and looks so fresh.

I enjoyed Episode One, but it really was a lot shorter than i expected.. and i expected something short!
 
Episode 2 will only be 30% longer than Episode 1, from an interview i just watched on gamespot. That's quite worrying considering how much time theyve spent on it. Surely once youve got all the engine and stuff sorted then it takes comparatively little time to piece together a few more hours of gameplay?

Lucky for me i'm buyig it primarily for TF2!
 
its possibly TF2 and/or Portal that is delaying it or maybe they are releasing it around same time as 360 version??
 
Marky said:
DAMMIT! I got so damn excited when you said episode 2 :( I rushed to steam to find out >_>
Im depressed now lol
Click to expand...

rofl you did that also.... not the only one but i had a look at the video for it lol at end where dog attacks a walker
 
I only bought HL2 for CSS lol, never even attempted the 'story book' stuff.

I'll be doing the same when HL2 Ep2 comes out, to get some more frames if I decide to go multi-core.

I know it will support multi-core fully, but what about SLI and Crossfire - will it utilize them fully?
 
I can't help but feel that Valve are failing on the claims that Episodic content is the way forward. They originally stated that the three episodes would be released in quick succession.

Episode 1: 1st June 2006
Episode 2: By the end of 2006
Episode 3: Mid 2007

Well it's mid 2007 and we have still not seen Episode 2. Maybe this is why we are not seeing many other developers doing episodes yet. Although Valve are notorious for not matching their expected release dates by a long way.
 
Think they are taking their time to 'perfect' the support for multi-core, basically meant starting from scratch again and is very time consuming.

I'm just hoping that it'll be worth the wait, if I find the article I read it from I'll edit this post.

EDIT: Found the article!
 
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Yeah I remember them saying it will be great cause they can give us a new episode every 6 months, which wouldnt be bad as you could get more gameplay in less time really. but episode 2 is falling way short of delivering.
 
ep 2 started development the same time as ep1. that's a bit worrying when you consider how long ago that was...

source really isn't that resource intensive anyway so multicore support isn't that important, unless they are spending the time laying on the pretty.
 
The have revamped the old source engine don't forget, and from what i have seen and read, its going to be more demanding hence the reason for dualcore support. Ragdolls and world interaction is suppose to be much better in the new engine, and more pretty :D
 
well when hl2 came out back in mid 2004 its min specs asked only for a 1.2ghz cpu with 25mb ram recommended was 2.4ghz with 512mb ram.

so i really hope they have pilled on extra effects etc. playing through hl2 a few weeks ago i was surprised at how bland and empty many areas were.
 
I think that for episodic content to really work, it needs two separate, parallel development teams; one to work on the engine and technology development, and the other to produce content for the episodes.

I think where valve have fallen foul is by trying to make significant technological advancements with each episode. For me, any major rework of the underlying tech of a game engine is going to be costly in content creation terms, so a better approach is this: Use the same tech for the episodes as for the original game (one development team). Bring in a major overhall of the graphics engine only every 2 years or so, possibly alongside another full length title (second dev team).

I'm as big a fan of fancy new graphics engines as anyone, but for me it's not the way to go when making episodic content. I would have been happy having ep1, 2 and 3 all using the original basic HL2 tech, safe in the knowledge that they would be released 6 months apart and that afterwards HL3 would be on the way with a massive graphics-engine update.
 
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