Another strong episode in the Half Life story line that really only stumbles at it's end.
For most the game, all is great. You start up where you left off, trapped in some train wreckage out in the country side. With a bit of help from Alex, you escape quickly and start on your way through the outdoors to meet up with the rest of the resistance. Along the way, you get side tracked and end up fighting it out in some tunnels against those ever so annoy bugs. Finishing up there, you complete your journey to tie up with the resistance and end up in one final messy dual to save their hide out.
Now, compared to episode 1, 2 seems a bit more polished, and I really enjoyed getting back outside. Outdoor levels were really my favorite part of the original, and having them return for episode 2 was nice, but all too brief. The story is also more coherent this time round, giving you some interesting insights into the ongoing tale, without most of the 'beat around the bush' type story telling of the original.
Now, Half life is starting to show it's age now. It's still a looker, but you take a look at games like bioshock and even more so Crysis, you can see HL2 is not the amazing technical title it used to be. Still, it's not past it's prime quite yet, and is still holding in there. Technical stuff aside, my real complaint with episode 2 comes down to 1 thing, the final battle. After about 6 attempts, and getting not even close, the frustration set in. I did get through it finally, cheating, but it does stand out as a rather misplaced level of difficulty. Up till that point, my skills had seen me through to the end with maybe 6 deaths total, most of those due to stupid mistakes. The final battle racked up that much itself, and I wasn't even coming close. Having read strategies on it, most are of the form save and reload ALOT. That's poor game design in my mind, and I just can't let it pass. However, it is just that one section, and it is the climax so I'm not docking too much for it, but it does hurt the score.
In the end, it is still a very enjoyable title, and if you don't have the original 2 games, and are getting this one via orange box, it is also a great value. Independent of the orange box though, not so much.