Half Life Episode 2

Now, I would love to go back and play the entirety of Half-life 2 and Half-life 2 Episode 1, but I haven't got a ps3 with me. I think if I did, I would find that they had stronger premises than Episode 2 does. From the beginning of the game, NPCs are almost constantly conscripting you to do things for them, commonly with lines like, "Oh, sure, Gordon won't mind looking for Antlion babies. That's why he became a nuclear physicist in the first place" or "Ahh...this is the kind of obstacle that could be easily solved with a rocket in the right place that The Freeman is famous for solving in a way that shows off the physics engine." The creators making fun of their own level design over and over again in this manner cheapens the experience. In Half-Life 1, the whole facility was going to shit, so it made sense that you had to do some crazy shit to get by it. In Half-Life 2, you spent most of your time fighting through war-ravaged areas. In Half-Life 2 Episode 2, I feel several parts of the experience have grown old.

1: The Combine never die, or it's just the battles in Episode 2 are the shit where the losers get mopped up by the good guys. Movies and Video Games should focus on the huge battles. As it is, Episode 2 has you fighting in peoples' houses (yeah...they've made a coordinated effort to attack you) or fighting the last-ditch efforts (8 striders is nothing motherfucker, suck it! I rock choppers in a church [<- Episode 1] and tussled more striders in the streets [<- Half-Life 2] of the combine to stop your portal-closing rocket...mmmmmm.

2. Alyx getting stabbed is a horribly frightening scene but for a character who can take rockets to the face while she fight alongside you, this scene doesn't make a lot of sense as time goes on. Kind of like when you know who in that very famous game bites it and for some unknown reason the party doesn't use a revive item. Some kind of explanation why Alyx doesn't need healing, like she's got an HEV suit or her blood resists physical damage unless its robot metal or she's secretly the devil (Ohh..like in that Ninth Gate movie, and then Johnny Depp fucks her! HOT HOT HAWT!) would be nice. I don't know. The other things about playing with a partner like her is the incentive to actually fight for yourself goes way down. Why waste ammo or health on the annoying jumpy spitter antlions when the Vortigaunt can return them to the all being or vortessence with ease?

3. The combat scares me. I never really felt confident like I could take a million hunters and their family's babies. That shit scared me. Albeit I got better by the end, but fighting two Guardians is a scary rather than fun idea. They run fast...

4. I tried to beat this game at various 2 am non-stop gaming sessions. I probably should have taken it more easy, so I could enjoy the game; however...

5. Where's the goddamn story? Most of the game you're just trying to get to this place, then you get there and then you're protecting a rocket and then you're finding a ship that this bitch I thought was dead or deserved to be dead for fucking the human race over is. Well...umm...where's this headed? Tension with the G-man is building, but no real threats or aggravating bits.

6. There's a twist I didn't care about. Well, why should I? It's fucking war, that shit happens. I should have believed it because those two were close based from the dialogue, but...

7. There's no real characters. Alyx is a cute, wise-cracking girl who likes you and gets
embarassed when your baby-making is mentioned (quite explicitly). She cares about her father, but she never really talks to you to give you hints about who she is, so you can really start to like her. Magnuson or the Vortigaunts have the most character. The Vortigaunt's a dick. He thinks he's funny, but I'll kill that motherfucker if he makes one more crack about my bad luck. So does Adam Baldwin's backup character, he developed a character with very little time for dialogue. So maybe the acting needs a little work, but I think it's the writing meself. And dear, God, dear god why...

8. Why is it cool to have a main character who doesn't talk? Gordon signs up for all this stuff because no one lets him talk! That sucks. What are his motivations? They're not mine. I would have expressed some unwillingness to go back to war over and over again, or some kind of guilt over having brought about the enslaving of the human race.
Overall, the Half-Life episodes story is taking too long too tell. It's like when they released the Matrix, and then needed two sequels instead of just the one: it caused a simple story to be stretched too far. Matrix 2 and 3 would have made one great movie without as much talking, fighting, and annoying little boy who has no bearing on the main story. I really think they need to pick the plot the fuck up because

P.S. : The time in between episodes is immense, and I forgot what's going on. Another example: I don't know what's happened in Xenosaga 2, but uhh...I'm not restarting! I actually might...I did with the first game. It really helped. Actually, I won't because there's an annoying beginning sequence. I really like that game. Story is quite neat, hard to understand but neat.

So thanks,

i'M Sa (g)onna B seeing ya, L Bia Johnsy