Half-Life 2: Episode One is kind of the black sheep of the Half-Life 2 games. It is a good game in it’s own right but it lacks the innovation of Half-Life 2 and it lacks the story of Episode 2 which is by far the best story arc of the whole series in my eyes. So we are left with a good game that is sadly forgotten in the mix by many because it is the middle child. All of the same great game play is back in Episode One. The story in itself is good and enjoyable. City 17 is now a war zone and the game revolves around trying to escape it. The graphics are just as good as Half-Life 2, no better but no worse. The game doesn’t have any of the driving sections of the original. There is however a great level taking place in a hospital which was almost as creepy as Ravenholm.
I played Episode One on Linux. It never crashed on me. There are once again some AI issues. This time what happened to me was on a mission where I have to lead civilians to a departing train some of them got stuck in a wall corner and wouldn’t proceed making me have to reload a previous save. Outside of the AI issue I noticed no other bugs. There were 4 AA settings; 6 AF settings; a V-Sync toggle; 9 other graphics options and an FOV slider that went from 75-90. You could change the difficulty level at any time as well as manually save at any time. Performance was fantastic which wasn’t surprising given the game’s age.
Graphics Engine: Source
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 1.05GB (not counting HL2 base game)
Graphics Settings: All Highest; 8x AA; 16x AF; blur off; V-Sync on; multi core rendering on; HDR full; 90 FOV; 1920x1080
GPU Usage: 16-52 %
VRAM Usage: 1022-1398 MB
CPU Usage: 5-20 %
RAM Usage: 2.7-3.3 GB
Frame Rate: 137-144 FPS
Overall I can’t say too many negative things about Episode One. It does it’s job well which is to further the Half-Life story. It doesn’t innovate but it also doesn’t make anything worse. I finished the game on the hardest difficulty in 3 hours and 48 minutes.
My Score: 8.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.2.5 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.2.0 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.15.2-2-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz