Brilliant but short, the puzzles are excellent, the action is improved, the graphics are tweaked, but its to damn short.
The story continuation is more focused on the escape of city 17 and rising two new questions, which i wont post here (buy and play the damn thing fool) as well as being the starting point of the continuation of the new story.
The gameplay is improved aswell, the enemys A.I has been tweaked, for example they make more use of grenades, the weapons secondry fire and cover more this time around. The puzzles are extremerly satisfying and more complex than before, and the way the two are combined (hahahaha get it?) makes for spectacular gameplay. If you enjoyed the Ravenholm level in HL2 you will love the new zombie orientated level in Episode 1, and with the introduction of the zombie combine it makes for brilliant gameplay, i just hope you aint afraid of the dark.
If you live in the U.K then the value is brilliant if you buy off steam thanks to the exchange rate, its only around £10 which means the entire series will cost £30, hey thats how much i paid for HL2 when it was released =)
Theres only 3 points i found with Episode 1 that i found were a bit of a let down, ***MINOR SPOILERS***
1. you only see G-man once
2. to many antlions
3. far far to short which i think everyone can agree on, i was hoping for more like 6 - 7 hours of gameplay (for hardened gamers).
So is Episode 1 worth your money???????? In my humble opinion HELL YES, BUY IT NOW ITS HALF LIFE 2 IMPROVED, THE START OF BIGGER THINGS TO COME.