As short as Episode One is, it lives up to its name and manages to surpass its predecessor in several fields.

User Rating: 9 | Half-Life 2: Episode One PC
With each passing game, Half-Life developer Valve seems to have refined its winning formula down to what makes an award winning game. Even more interesting, they manage to do it with each and every title they release. Half-Life 2 Episode One stands as no exception to this rule.

Half-Life 2 Episode One starts the moment after Half-Life 2 ended. Without including any spoilers, it’s safe to say it was an unexpected and epic opening, launching you right back into the Combine Citadel and the most amazing reactor chamber ever seen in a game or movie alike. The entire first chapter of Episode One is essentially an interactive cut-scene that really explains the fallout of the explosion of Breen’s teleporter. Since Gordon Freeman doesn’t utter a single word, it has to be explained through dialogue between Alyx and Dr. Vance or Kleiner.

One thing that was missing in Half-Life 2 that Episode One seems to have done very well, is telling more of the story of City 17 and the fallout of your experiment in Black Mesa. Throughout the entire game Alyx is constantly by your side providing a running commentary and her dialogue back and forth with other characters should provide more insight to everything as you progress through the game. As City 17 is being evacuated Dr. Kleiner has a looping message that explains some of the techniques employed by the Combine to quell human resistance.

Graphically Episode One brings the latest graphical techniques and employs them to create powerful environments. Things like real-time blurring and geometry altering states now appear along with High Dynamic Range Lighting, giving the game a very organic, natural look to it. While it doesn’t run quite as smoothly as Half-Life 2 did, Episode One manages to be very playable even on lower end systems.

The only criticism that can be brought against Half-Life 2 Episode One is the fact that it was a very short game. As an episode you pay for one third of the game at one third of the price to get the segments much faster. PC gaming veterans will only get about 4-5 hours of game play out of it and less experienced gamers might possibly get on the lower end of 6.

While short, the game features an audio commentary system for replay value. It adds a lot of dimension to the game if you are into that sort of thing. If you could care less about early versions of maps you’re playing on or simply don’t care for commentary, you won’t find much replay value in Episode One.

Overall Half-Life 2 Episode One just feels like a better game than Half-Life 2, the A.I. was vastly improved, graphics updated, and the overall feel felt better. Half-Life 2 Episode One feels like it could have been a stand alone game had it been longer, nonetheless it lives up to its name and then some.