Splended! Balanced. And in companionship with Alyx one don't feel alone anymore in the Half Life (rather dark) universe.
So when I started up Episode 1, 3 minutes after the realise, I was actually happy when seeing Alyx. Happy and relived.
I won't type anymore of my experiences and judgements of the story of episode one, except stating that this is one of the best, if not the best, part of half life 2 so far.
I downloaded episode one trough steam. This went smoothly, and I experienced no troubles. Payment happened via mastercard. I payed 17 USD. The game is worth it, but it's not worth much more when thinking of the time spent playing. One will use between 4 to 6 hours playing trough, depending on how reckless one play.
The graphics is splendid. I had some troubles with the surroundings lighting up like everything was chromed metal when using the flashlight.
Audio is balanced, but it is a bit hard hearing dialogue when using surround. I experienced some scraping noises in the first part of the game, but after a restart of the game this was gone.
My computer is a standard 3000MHz, 2 Gbit RAM, Geforce 7800GT 256 mb. I have experienced little troubles whit this computer, except when playing Fear. In episode one I had everything to the top; AV, details, everything. In some parts rich with action and graphic details, the computer had some troubles. But this was not often, perhaps 3-4 times during the playing time.
Episode One is an amazing game-experience. But I think this game is mainly for those who has played trough Half Life 2, and hopefully the original Half Life with all of it's 'episodes'.
- Be safe -
Vihanva