HL2: Episode 1 Half Life 2: Price: £19.99 Players: 1-online Dolby Digital 5.1: Yes (allegedly) System requirements (mine): Windows 2000/XP/Me/98 (XP) Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz (Pentium D Dual Core 830 3.0Ghz) Hard disk space: 4.5Gb Memory: 256Mb (1Gb) Other: Internet connection, DVD-ROM drive DirectX7 graphics card (nVidia GeForce 6700XL, DirectX 9.0c) So, at the end of Half Life 2, everything froze in time and it made about as much sense as the ending of the first game. Well, as this follow-on begins, the premise is that you have to go back into the reactor in order to escape, the first bit utilising a bit of help from 'Dog', then coming across scores of zombies with headcrabs on, antlions, Combines and a mixture of a zombie and a Combine which Alyx (above in the packshot) refers to as a 'Zombine'. In fact, it was around that time that there was a moment requiring frequent use of the flashlight which, when it ran out, caused Alyx to groan like a zombie just to spook you! She's cute but she needed a telling and she wasn't amused when I pointed my pistol at her forehead and pulled the trigger.

Half Life 2: Episode 1 is the first of three additions to the franchise which Valve are creating instead of making a whole brand new game, which is not the kind of thing usually done by a games company and having played three out of the five relatively short levels so far, the whole thing does feel like rather an afterthought as there's not a great deal of variety here. It was originally intended to be released all in one go as an expansion pack and entitled "Aftermath", but the decision of releasing three separate episodes was done so gamers could get their fix more often and you didn't need the original HL2 game to play, although I was originally going to review this game a week earlier than I did but after installing it, and then being told it was installed, what did it do? Yes, owners of the previous game will know all about this cancer known as 'Steam'. Yes, although it's only just come out it wanted to update itself. Well, surely there can't be much to it, right? Wrong. Oh god, this is so annoying! When I first install something I just want to play it as it stands and leave the updating till later for any additional bits and pieces, but it just won't let you. Grrrrrr! As such, it stayed on the back burner. So far, Valve are the only company to use a system like this and given that it's as irritating as thrush, I can't see many other companies stepping out to try it either.

The problem with this chapter is that it's just a succession of dark corridors, with very little natural light, and it's like the point towards the end of the last game where it started flagging and you just played through it to see what would happen at the end. All you're doing is running around and shooting and there's precious little of the good fun with exploding barrels setting off a chain reaction, plus the driving levels. Alyx is by your side the entire time, but is just there to open gates and do computer hacking to get you along your way. Also, when you do come across any zombies, such as the Zombines who behave like suicide bombers by holding up grenades without letting go, you can let her take care of them and she won't die even if a grenade goes off right in her face. On the plus side, this game uses an enhanced version of the original engine which produces sharp, colourful and very detailed graphics (viewed in 1024*768 on a 32" widescreen TV) with great water effects. However, once again the widescreen option doesn't work when the image is transported over to the TV, and this isn't my PC's fault because it happened on another PC, previously, and the same problem does not occur on Quake 4 16:9 widescreen option. That's such a disappointment as it means I have to select 4:3 and get a stretched image if I want to fill the screen (which itself isn't anywhere near as bad for games as for TV shows, but it's still a pain nonetheless). In addition to that, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound still doesn't work properly so after one attempt with that I gave up.

A couple of other observations and I found that I had crackly sound coming from the game through my amp and speakers when the setting was on high quality, for no apparent eason, so dropped that down to medium. On the keyboard front, the turn left and right keys can be mapped correctly so they're useable from any keys, since Sin Episode 1: Emergence just made them unavailable to the user for no particular reason. However, I couldn't map the 'sprint' key in this game to another as it just wouldn't let me use it there. I had to map back in order to use it, which was a necessity in one level during a segment that you could not get past without that function. Fans of online activity will discover Deathmatch games for Half Life 2 and an enhanced version of the original Half Life. There's also a commentary track from Valve for those who like to indulge in such things. In addition is a separate adventure, "Lost Coast", which is much more like what I'm after: Bright, outdoor locations which use the Source engine to a much greater effect. It's a single level that's much more aesthetically pleasing. It also includes a 'video stress test' which doesn't look like it's putting strain on your PC and takes you up the staircase featured in order to get an idea of the framerate your graphics card allows. Mine, a GeForce nVidia 67700XL, does 67.51fps. As I draw this review to a close, is it worth getting? Well, it doesn't give you any more excitement than the original did so unless you're a die-hard fan you might wait for the eventual release of the complete three episodes. It just depends how long it's going to take until the next one comes out.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ENJOYMENT OVERALL Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.