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• Reviewed on: Windows PC (3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of Kingston 400 MHz Dual Channel DDR RAM, and a 128 MB NVIDIA GeFORCE 6800 OC graphics card; displayed on an HP PL4200N 42" Plasma HDTV)
• The Good: More of the same great graphics and game play we saw in the original; a few innovative action/puzzle sequences; the cryptic ending of Half-Life 2 is (sort of) explained.
• The Bad: It's over before you can say, Hey, that cost me twenty bucks! Well, not quite. But almost.
• The Verdict: Ridiculously short, but a lot of fun while it lasts.
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REVIEW:

You get what you pay for. That's the lesson learned by anyone who rushes out to pick up Half-Life 2: Episode One thinking that its $19.99 price tag constitutes a great deal.

I sat down and began playing Episode One at around 7:15 PM, then stopped playing at 10:55 PM. I wasn't taking a break or calling it quits for the evening — I'd intended to play until midnight. There was simply nothing left to play. I had finished the game.

As the credits began to roll I stared blankly at the screen, scratching my head and thinking about how a movie like The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King lasted just about as long as Episode One but cost only half as much to see it in the theatre. It's been a long time since I thought going to the movies was a bargain.

When Valve announced that it would be releasing a trilogy of cheaply priced 'episodes' that would expand upon Half-Life 2's story, gamers knew that the chances of being treated to a trio of games each as epic as the original were slight. But three hours and forty minutes? That seems just a bit ridiculous. One can only hope that episodes two and three prove longer lasting.

And now, having expunged that bee from my bonnet, I have to suck it up and admit that Episode One is actually pretty darned good, short though it may be.

Half-Life 2's conclusion left millions of gamers hanging. Our hero, the dimension travelling scientist/warrior Gordon Freeman, and his ally, a cute freedom fighter named Alyx, were about to be enveloped by a massive explosion atop the citadel at the centre of City 17. But before that could happen time was frozen and some wonky metaphysical stuff happened, leaving many players a bit confused.

Episode One begins with time still frozen. We're provided a cut scene that explains how Gordon and Alyx survive the blast (though we're still left with a load of questions), and then we spend the rest of the game trying to get the heck out of Dodge before the citadel's deteriorating reactor goes boom and levels the place.

It actually plays a bit like the last quarter of Half-Life 2 in rewind. You'll spend a chapter in the citadel flinging Combine soldiers around with the always entertaining gravity gun, then work your way from the centre of the city outwards, shooting up zombies and head crabs and such. There aren't any new weapons, and the only new bad guys are Combine soldier zombies with head crabs stuck to their noodles (Alyx jokingly names them 'zombines' shortly after they're first encountered).

But even though the scenery, characters, weapons, and enemies are all quite familiar, Episode One still manages to deliver a number of suspenseful moments as well as some highly original game play, thanks to several puzzle sequences that take place during intense firefights. One particularly thrilling scene sees Alyx trying to cover Gordon while he uses his gravity gun to push rusting car wrecks over sand pits from which antlions are quickly emerging.

In fact Alyx accompanies Gordon through most of the adventure, setting up some interesting game play scenarios. In one scene she covers Gordon from a second floor window with a sniper rifle as he makes his way down a street, while in another situation she uses a machine gun emplacement to protect City 17 survivors as Gordon guides them to safety. We never get to control her directly, but her presence — and assistance — is definitely noticeable.

Visually, Episode One is virtually identical to Half-Life 2, which is to say it looks pretty great. I wasn't able to tell much of a difference between the two, but apparently Valve did make a few upgrades, chief among them new high-dynamic range (HDR) lighting effects — though you'll need a high-end graphics card to see them. Episode One also employs an updated version of the Havoc physics engine that powered its predecessor; just about everything in the game is subject to ragdoll movement, and Newton's Law is definitely in full effect. But the physics of the original were so impressive it's hard to tell just what impact the engine update may have had on Episode One.

It's also worth nothing that Episode One is a standalone product, completely playable on machines that haven't a copy of Half-Life 2 installed. As such, Valve has included both multi-player modes from the original so that anyone who picks up Episode One without having purchased its precursor (all one of you) can still enjoy some on-line shooting.

There's really little else to report. Think of it this way: would you have paid $80 rather than $60 for a special edition of Half-Life 2 that had five extra chapters? If so, Episode One is probably worth picking up. For those of you who just want to see how the Half-Life story shakes out, keep in mind that Valve's MO has always been — and continues to be — to raise a least a couple of new questions for each one they answer. If you have patience it might make sense to hold off on the individual episodes as they're released and buy the anthology of all three that will surely one day be released, and likely at a better price.