Half Life 2: Episode 1

Half Life 2: Episode 1 - Attack of my old and busted PC.

I recently resolved some overheating problems that I was having with my pc (1 tube of heat sink gel and 2 new 80mm fans later). As a result of these problems, I haven’t done a lot of PC gaming recently, but on a recent trip to Sam’s Club, I saw the new Half Life 2 expansion for about $16. I played the original HL2 on XBOX (I’m usually a console gamer), and enjoyed it a great deal, so I thought I’d see if the old beast could actually play a recent game. My 1.2 Ghz Athlon XP with 512 Mb of PC 2700 and a Geforce FX 5200 was a budget system when I put it together in 2003, and It’s obsolete as a real gaming machine now. Still, it does barely meet the minimum system requirements. The installation process required me to update my video drivers, and took some time while I communicated with Steam, and downloaded the most recent updates. The recommended settings left me in 800x600 resolution with medium models and textures, and all of the features on. Surprisingly, the game actually runs fairly smoothly. It will occasionally drop a frame or 2 seemingly at random, but holds up well during firefights and heavy physics action (explain that one). It also seems to think about it for a few seconds at certain autosave checkpoints. The game itself picks up immediately where HL2 left off, and quickly downshifts back to HL2’s core formula of gunplay mixed with gravity gun puzzles. The game also includes the full multiplayer game, and the original Half-Life multiplayer, as well as the opportunity to download a plethora of community and professionally created mods and maps. We’ll see how the rest of the story unfolds, but I’m enjoying it so far despite the kink in my neck and the crook in my back from sitting hunched over my computer desk. With another wave of 360 games on the way very soon, I won’t be investing in any more PC games any time soon (maybe if Spore will run on this thing), but I could do a lot worse than Half Life 2 : Episode 1.

Anyone else played it?

Games in general have been going downhill. It seems most are focused on providing pretty graphics instead of gameplay. This is the wrong formula.

A little bit longer and that could have been a member article .

While I agree with you for the most part, I believe that Half Life 2 was focused quite a bit on gameplay, and had the graphics there only to enhance it. Yeah, the system specs were a little...staggering, but still, the game at it's core was still quite fun.

HL2 is the exception today. It has good gameplay, but it requires the use of a DRM-like system of Steam.

I won't be forced to use that.

Games have been sucking for some time now. They follow the same guide as movies. Force shit down our throats and make us pay.

EA is the worst. Increase the version of the game by 1 and charge the same price as a new game.

Madden 2007! Same as 2006... as 2005...

Madden is nothing. At least with Madden they don't take features out so they can later bill them as "new." NFS has done it 4 times for 2 different features.