HL2Ep1: The return of the mute, crowbar-wielding psychopath

[Balasarius]

Originally Posted by nutsak

What's the problem here? It cost you half of what a normal game does (1/4 for us in Australia) and ran about half the length of a normal game. Remember it's an 'addon', not a new full game. Just finished it then and I really like the way Ep2 seems to be going.

The problem is I paid $4/hour for gaming. That's a bit excessive. I pay around 15 cents an hour for WoW.

I'll probably play through it again, once they fix the "hitching" and tweak the performance, but still. It's borderline value, imo. For a Half-Life title? Sure, I guess. Any other title? No.

[Quitch]

It took me five hours and fourty minutes. I think it would take most people on hard over five hours to complete. Let's say five and a half hours. It cost me $21, so I got an hours gaming per $3.82. Now your average FPS is, what, ten or twelve hours for $50. Let's say twelve, which gives you an hours gaming for $4.16. If we're really generous and say fifteen then we get $3.33, which isn't that much cheaper. I don't think Max Payne lasted me longer than six hours, but it's one of my favourite games and so I replayed it on every difficulty, just as I will replay Episode One for the commentary.

Sure, you might get a multiplayer component, but I think we all know there are only a handful of FPS games which ever do well online. Half-Life was not one of them, until the mod community stepped in years later.

I really don't think this is particularly bad value for money. Maybe if you play on a level which makes the fights too easy for you, then yes. After all part of their equation is going to be that the fights will hold you up, and that sometimes you will die. Waltz through them in any FPS and the play time collapses. I'm fairly sure that the jail arena in Nova Prospekt accounts for an hours worth of playtime at least on anyones Half-Life 2 game.

This is why playtime itself is such a meaningless measure of entertainment, because a huge amount of that playtime isn't dialogue or exploration, it's gun fighting, and the time you spend doing that will vary massively on how good you are and what difficulty you're playing at, and often if you look at the time you took to do a game, you can trace a lot of it down to two or three really hard bits, be they gun fights or puzzles. In an RPG how much time is accounted for by lugging loot back and forth, or simply traveling from A to B?

The question can only ever be, did you feel you had enough fun to spend that sort of money again? For me the answer is yes.

[Jonathan Blow]

Originally Posted by Balasarius

The problem is I paid $4/hour for gaming. That's a bit excessive. I pay around 15 cents an hour for WoW.

Obviously you should cancel your WoW account and play Minesweeper all day, because it is a much better value! 15 divided by 0 is.... a lot!

[Hump]

Just finished. I'm very pleased with how it turned out and my only regret is that it ended. If Valve can manage to keep this level of quality up they can have my $20 every time. Good stuff.

[Balasarius]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Blow

Obviously you should cancel your WoW account and play Minesweeper all day, because it is a much better value! 15 divided by 0 is.... a lot!

I already beat minesweeper.

[nutsak]

Originally Posted by Balasarius

The problem is I paid $4/hour for gaming. That's a bit excessive. I pay around 15 cents an hour for WoW.

Unless you got the discs for nothing you've already outspent on WoW vs HL2 Ep1. Besides, since when does game length = amount of fun ?

[Funkman]

Definitely worth it. I'd say its about 4-5 hours of pure set pieces. Every moment is building to the next insane action sequence. If Valve keeps making them like this, I'll keep buying them.

[HRose]

People, stop dividing price for hours played. It's so utterly retarded.

Plus, as I said, this is more an expansion pack than a total new game you buy in a shop. It's more content on top of HL2.

When you buy a brand new game you don't just buy "x" gaming hours. But you also buy all the technology that was developed to support a whole new experience.

In fact people buy games more because they are diverse than because they are longer. This is why they could prefer Prey or Bioshock to HL2 ep1.

When you paid for HL2 you bought years of development to support what was possible in the game. This is just a new episode with minor tweaks.

The point is: if the production costs have been MUCH lower for this episode compared to the original HL2, then also the price to the public should have been more accessible.

I think a price of $15 would have lead to a major success. With a $20 entry instead people think more about their purchase.

[txa1265]

Originally Posted by HRose

People, stop dividing price for hours played. It's so utterly retarded.

Or, remember that the 60 hours / $40 for Dungeon Lords makes it a better value than HL2. That should take care of that.

Mike

[Quitch]

Originally Posted by HRose

People, stop dividing price for hours played. It's so utterly retarded.

Plus, as I said, this is more an expansion pack than a total new game you buy in a shop. It's more content on top of HL2.

When you buy a brand new game you don't just buy "x" gaming hours. But you also buy all the technology that was developed to support a whole new experience.

In fact people buy games more because they are diverse than because they are longer. This is why they could prefer Prey or Bioshock to HL2 ep1.

When you paid for HL2 you bought years of development to support what was possible in the game. This is just a new episode with minor tweaks.

The point is: if the production costs have been MUCH lower for this episode compared to the original HL2, then also the price to the public should have been more accessible.

I think a price of $15 would have lead to a major success. With a $20 entry instead people think more about their purchase.

I think it will be an unqualified success, and I was happy to pay for it. The technology costs weren't there, but the levels themselves were simply much more detailed than HL2 levels. There were constant set pieces, the technology had been advanced so we now had combat animations in particular places. We've had the development of HDR. We have a fluid dialogue system which is different to the one used by HL2. I suspect the VO costs were, for the size of the product, greater than HL2...

More importantly, we got something that was bloody good fun to play.

[Jason Becker]

Originally Posted by HRose

I think a price of $15 would have lead to a major success. With a $20 entry instead people think more about their purchase.

Wow what psychic abilities you have to already know wether or not its a major success or not after only a few days...

[jeffd]

Just finished this. Well worth the 20 bucks. Honestly some of the most fun FPS gaming I've had in ages.

Does anyone have a problem with the "Coming soon" trailer? Whenever I play it my copy of HL2 just restarts (presuming its crashing and Steam is restarting it).

[Rob_Merritt]

Originally Posted by jeffd

Just finished this. Well worth the 20 bucks. Honestly some of the most fun FPS gaming I've had in ages.

Does anyone have a problem with the "Coming soon" trailer? Whenever I play it my copy of HL2 just restarts (presuming its crashing and Steam is restarting it).

I finished Episode 1 and I can't find where. the trailer is located.

[Balasarius]

Originally Posted by jeffd

Just finished this. Well worth the 20 bucks. Honestly some of the most fun FPS gaming I've had in ages.

Does anyone have a problem with the "Coming soon" trailer? Whenever I play it my copy of HL2 just restarts (presuming its crashing and Steam is restarting it).

Yeah, when I finished Ep2, it dropped me to Windows. I had flashbacks of Eye of the Beholder. But my hard drive was grinding away like mad. Just as I was about the kill the HL2 process, the Ep2 trailer started up. Very inelegant.

[Quitch]

Yep, to play the trailer it drops you out of episode one, plays the trailer and then fires up the episode again, all with long crash like pauses.

Still playing through the commentary mode. Having great fun, even more this time around as I'm appreciating the combat more (in part due to playing through Half-Life Source too). Also love seeing some Alyx animations and lines I didn't before, like drilling the Ant Lions through the head, or her expressing concern when my health is low.

Itching to get my hands on episode two.

[jeffd]

Huh for me it just drops me out of the game and never launches the trailer. :(

[HRose]

The trailer is in the episodic/media directory.

[jeffd]

Awesome, thanks HRose

Has Valve indicated when Ep2 will be available? That trailer has me terribly stoked.

[chet]

End of this year.

[HRose]

Originally Posted by chet

End of this year.

And what are the probabilities that it won't get delayed? ;p

[Balasarius]

Good as long as someone doesn't "steal the source-code" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

[Hump]

Chet speaks!

Just playing through the 2nd time for the commentary system and lo and behold, chets voice explains....something. I forgot what is was but hey.......Chet!

Great stuff. The only beef I have is I really do wish there was a way to pause the action while listening to the commentary.

[Drastic]

The action sort of...quasi-pauses when the commentary bits are running. Plugging up the antlion entry points in the parking garage was ridiculously easy, for instance--they largely just sort of froze when the audio bits were running. Also of course you're invulnerable during them.

The commentary's well-done in general so far. It never occurred to me before that you can use the gravity gun to yank a grenade right out of a zombine's hand until a commentary bit mentioned it, for instance.

[MikeP]

One of the first things I noticed about Episode One was how realistic the facial expressions are. In the first few moments, Alyx, her father, and Kleiner are disussing what I should do, and their faces express concern, reassurance, and thought. Throughout the game, Alyx's face reflects her concern, fear, and happiness in turn, and I found myself zooming in on Alyx's face just to see how well it was modeled. I realize that Valve was pushing the facial expression tech in HL2, but I didn't really notice it until now, and the commentary track mentions that they tried to improve the expressions for Ep1. Valve has mentioned that it's trying to make games cinematic, with the HDR, facial expressions, and sepia tones, and Ep1 clearly conveys that.

My only quibble is one I had for HL2: the guns aren't powerful or accurate. It takes most of a full clip of submachine gun fire to down one soldier or zombie, and I can only do that if I'm standing next to them. The shotgun has effectively 3 shots since I need to use the double shot to do any damage. And if enemies are more than ten feet away, I have to either pull out the revolver, or close on them until I can Cheney them in the face. I guess I'm used to CS where you can actually get decent accuracy by burst firing.

[Fussbett]

My only quibble is one I had for HL2: the guns aren't powerful or accurate. It takes most of a full clip of submachine gun fire to down one soldier or zombie, and I can only do that if I'm standing next to them. The shotgun has effectively 3 shots since I need to use the double shot to do any damage. And if enemies are more than ten feet away, I have to either pull out the revolver, or close on them until I can Cheney them in the face. I guess I'm used to CS where you can actually get decent accuracy by burst firing.

Have you considered that you might suck?

[Moggraider]

He's right about the SMG, though. That thing blows. The SMG and pistol got completely nerfed for HL2, and multiplayer hasn't been as fun since.

[Hump]

Originally Posted by Moggraider

He's right about the SMG, though. That thing blows. The SMG and pistol got completely nerfed for HL2, and multiplayer hasn't been as fun since.

The 100+ hours of HL2 DM I have in must've been a bad dream then. I could've sworn there was some entertainment value there.

[tim edwards]

This is excellent. Loads of fun.

I especially like what Valve have done with Alyx. The scene in the Stalker train is clever (I was genuinely concerned for her safety). Her zombie impression when the lights go out made me /really/ giggle, and the Zombine reveal was perfect. I think the real success of this isn't the Episodic thing... it's the fact that they've made an in-game character I really want to be around.

[jeffd]

tim: I think you're 100% correct. Alyx was just awesome in HL2E1

Some thoughts now that I've had time to digest (spoilars!)

- it's been said by others but kudos for the flashlight in the dark sequence. Nice to see that there's still some twists you can do on typical FPS gameplay
- valve really does need to adjust the accuracy of their weapons. During the squence where you are escorting survivors across the area full of wrecked cars when guys were in the distance I just ignored them and ran with my followers. Just wasn't worth fighting them until they got up close.
- in line with that: having to shoot a bad guy 3-4 times IN THE HEAD to kill him really breaks immersion. Badly. I mean these guys must be wearing SUPAR ARMORED HELMETS; if that's the case why the hell can't I get one?
- fun set piece battles; the gunship was a great way to shake things up and so was the strider. Especially awesome was how the metal stuff you could cower behind during the strider fight got knocked away - though this didn't happen very fast; I barely had to move to the second area of cover before I dropped him.
- ignore the haters, having Gordon silent is awesome.

[Guido Jones]

Originally Posted by jeffd

- valve really does need to adjust the accuracy of their weapons. During the squence where you are escorting survivors across the area full of wrecked cars when guys were in the distance I just ignored them and ran with my followers. Just wasn't worth fighting them until they got up close.

You should have had 3 different long range accurate weapons at this point in the game - Rocket Launcher, .357, and the Crossbow. Two of those are insta kills, and the third is at most 2 shots to kill.

Really, the weapons aren't that different from Half Life 1 - it took nearly a full mag from the SMG to kill one of the Spec Ops guys. I wish the Pistol and SMG were a bit more realistic, but shrug, that's what the design was and it works out pretty well.

- in line with that: having to shoot a bad guy 3-4 times IN THE HEAD to kill him really breaks immersion. Badly. I mean these guys must be wearing SUPAR ARMORED HELMETS; if that's the case why the hell can't I get one?

Gordon has one, except his recharges from a wall plug :P