Episode Two was the pinnacle of the Half-Life series as far as I am concerned. It combined all the best aspects of the previous games as well as had the best story. It sadly ended on a cliffhanger that never may be resolved but at could have been worse as at least it left us wanting more as opposed to wishing for it to end. There isn’t much to speak of in the innovation department as it only introduced one new game play mechanic which was the sticky bombs for the final mission and a new enemy in the hunters. The graphics, voice acting and physics were all as good as before. The driving segments are back and brought back some variation. If I could make one complaint it would be that I felt the final mission lacked enough rockets. There were only maybe a half dozen I found in it’s duration so to deal with the hunters I resulted to running them with the car or throwing tree trunks at them. I would also say that having to keep an eye on Alyx more than previous games once again exposed some poor AI. It would have been nice if she sought cover more often.
I played Episode Two on Linux. It never crashed on me. 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: 2.96GB (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: 20-88 %
VRAM Usage: 1054-1633 MB
CPU Usage: 5-21 %
RAM Usage: 2.8-3.5 GB
Frame Rate: 99-144 FPS
Little gripes aside Episode Two was by far the most enjoyable game of the series for me and that’s saying something given my praise of previous games. Hopefully one day it gets the sequel it deserves but in the mean time enjoy what it does give you. I finished the game in 5 hours and 18 minutes on the hardest difficulty. It’s current price of $8.99 CAD is a steal.
My Score: 9.5/10
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 21.2rc | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.15.6-2-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz