Half-Life 2 Episode One: Completed in 8 Hours.

Playing to your strengths couldn’t be more key in video game development. If your AI pathfinding tends to spend 50% of its time bouncing off walls, it’s probably not a good idea to plan for AI characters running point for most of your FPS. Similarly, if your graphics engine’s main strength is effortless handling of very high resolution textures, it pays to hire the best texture artists without downgrading the resolution of their work at any point in the process. Valve has proven themselves this time around to be unqualified masters at playing the strengths of the Source engine like a well tuned piano.

I wasn’t a big fan of Half-Life 2 for a lot of reasons. First, Valve’s controversially low field of view setting was incompatible with my brain chemistry, and caused me to suffer painful nausea during the opening scenes of the game (until I adjusted to the new settings). Also, I didn’t much care for the tunnelish design mentality, frequent game crashes, and skipping sound effects. However, despite my problems with Half-Life 2, Episode One blew me away in nearly every respect.

The first iteration of the Source engine did not impress me very much either. Yes, the texture resolution and physics integration were fantastic, but the frequent glitches, claustrophobic draw distance, and ancient prerendered light system really put a damper on the experience. I put my vote in for Crytek as my favorite engine, early and often. However, I may have to change my tune now as Valve’s current version of Source has the most extraordinary example of High Dynamic Range (HDR) integration that’s currently out there. Even something as simple as an HDR pass on the specular highlight of a character goes an incredible distance to selling the integration of an environment. Also, Valve isn’t afraid to overexpose a scene. For example, the series of gameplay elements in “The Core” sequence are overexposed almost to the point of completely washing out the fantastically bright core area. This technique rams home the danger of radiation present in the core, while effectively selling the sheer power of that throbbing singularity at the center of the level. There quite simply hasn’t been an experience like it in gaming, ever. See these two screen shots of City 17 for a perfect example of HDR in action.

In Half-Life 2, most of the sequences with Alyx were actually kind of annoying. Despite all attempts to add life like animation to her face, she came off as helpless, robotic, and even bossy on a few occasions. In Episode One, however, Valve decided that their #1 priority was to make Alyx a likeable and useful character. They accomplished this feat both by adding new features, and by playing to the strengths of Source AI. For example, in the original Half Life 2 I was often stuck following Alyx, showing off all of her most robotic AI actions. In Episode one, Alyx is following me in nearly every sequence, highlighting her AI strengths. New features for Alyx include a hand-to-hand combat system, an uncanny ability to rely on me to illuminate her targets with my flashlight, and a contextual dialog response system similar to the one in Halo 2.

I humbly offer up one example of the well filtered interactions between myself and Alyx in Episode One. (Danger: light spoiler may follow.) After one particularly harrowing encounter in a pitch black underground room full of zombies, I breathed a great sigh of relief and turned to trudge up a flight of stairs. As I headed upward to safety, I was thinking to myself how helpful Alyx had been. We had been a great team, with me shining my flashlight on zombies as they immerged from the darkness and Alyx knocking them off with a few well-placed headshots. Just then, I heard the familiar groan of a Zombie approaching me from behind. Adrenaline jumped back to maximum mode and I spun on a dime with shotgun raised. “Gotcha,” Alyx says with her signature corny grin. “Yea, you got me all right,” I say without even considering that I’m speaking out loud to an AI character. Some might see that as a sign of my approaching insanity. However, I see it as a sign that game designers are finally getting it. It’s about the characters, not the shooting.

Alyx takes a few cues from the stage in Episode One by vastly upgrading the expressiveness of her facial muscles. A veteran of television and movies might call this overacting. However, as Valve fortunately realized, an FPS game with a strict no cut scene policy has much more in common with stage acting than it does with movie acting. Television and movies are composed of carefully orchestrated shots, giving every opportunity for actors to express the smallest nuance of human emotion through close-ups. Stage actors and FPS characters have no such luxury. Players are often viewing characters from a distance, or even catching expressions out of the corner of one eye. Over acting is a necessity in these types of situations, and the new expressions of fear, exhaustion, or humor in Alyx’s face and eyes are absolutely fantastic.

There has been some moaning and grumbling in Internet land about the shortness of Episode One. I completely disagree. In my opinion, the original Half-Life 2 included the single best FPS experience ever envisioned by man. This experience started when I was brutally attacked by my first antlion, and ended when my loyal antlions could no longer reach me. Problem: this experience was surrounded by a whole bunch of not-so-good rail shooter portions I could easily have done without. For me, one of the main promises of Valve’s episodic content is the end of fluff gameplay. Imagine a Halo 1 with a one floor library, or a Doom 3 with a few less “Boos.” I, for one, completely support Valve, and will be purchasing Episode 2 on its release day. Three cheers for “short” FPSes.

No review of Episode One could be completed without mentioning the commentary system. Not even Microsoft’s ample thesaurus can express how happy I am with the tantalizing commentary chat bubbles floating all over Episode One. I haven’t been this exited since watching all fifty hours of commentary on the Lord of the Rings DVDs. For the first time I feel really in touch with Valve’s hard working developers in a personal way that even reading Slashdot Games and the Escapist every day cannot provide. There is a tremendous amount of love in those chat bubbles, and it’s mutual.

I now interrupt this Half-Life love-in with a single important caveat. I hate to say it, but Episode One may suffer some problems inherited from its predecessor. I had the game stick on a sound glitch half a dozen times or so in the earlier levels. I say stick and not crash because the fix turned out to be pressing ctrl-alt-delete and then using the task manager to bring the game right back up without restarting. Unfortunately, these kind of hackish work-arounds continue to be a staple of PC gaming in general. I’m not holding Valve responsible because this particular crash could have easily been the fault of my atrocious Audigy 2 drivers, but be warned that the crashes happen.

Overall, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a better FPS experience than Half-Life 2 Episode One. I used to controversially place the best FPS crown on the helmeted head of Master Chief. However, I’m afraid I’m going have to have that back. “What’s that, Chief? You gave it to Johnson? Oh. Well, just have him put it in the mail.”

For any acronym soup fans out there, I reviewed the game on a PC equipped with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB of DDR 3200, and a PCI Express ATI X1900 XT 512MB graphics card.