Half-Life2: Episode Two

i think im waiting on this one. i thought EP1, though good to very good in spots (throwing around those energy balls in puzzles), it was too short (i think WITH my normal screwing around, there were only 4-5 hours gameplay). I can usually stretch a great game (previous halflifes) WAY beyond it's normal game duration. there just wasn't much to screw around with (eg throwing everything into the sea on the beachroad section of HL2 (cars, trash, furniture). got the feeling it was a $20 attempt to LOWER expectations masked as 'episodic' game....which 2? years later, doesn't really seem to be so quick to the shelf as they suggested.

had infinite NME respawn area(s). i HATE that. a cheap trick.

i just detected corner cutting. a slide towards money grab. EP1 definately didn't live up to HL1, or HL2 standard in my estimation.

 

There was lots more of thart in the originbal (ahem) HL2. All those ant lions that just kept coming and coming and coming. I truly despised that.

There's even some infinite respawning in HL. Headcrabs early on, and soldiers in a couple places. Maybe a level with infinite vortagaunts too towards the end I can't remember it was too long since I played through the whole thing.

Well..the antlion thing did improve once you picked up the pheropods. But up until then, gaahhh NNOOO...!

It's rated lower even in Valve's own steam browser thingy.

I find it funny hearing Gabe gush on about how much quicker episodic gaming development is in the introduction to Ep1. It's been like 4 years now since HL2 and unless Ep2 is seriously longer than Ep1 one can't really say it's quicker.

Moneygrab. Definitely. You end up paying more after a series of long waits for the same or less amount of stuff.

The massive delays in getting Ep2 done was extra annoying because of the cliffhanger style ending. Damn that's frustrating!

Peace.

 

Just checking, but you do know your supposed to plug the ant lion holes with cars don't you? At least in EP1 anyway.

 

Yes of course, but we're not discussing Ep1 now.

Btw, I find it pretty funny that every level where you gotta plug up antlion holes in Ep1 there's always the exact number of cars provided to plug all of the holes..
Peace.

 

Hey guys. I just started a give/get thread for excess copies of HL2 & EP1 from orange box. This would be a cool thing to do for other Beyond3D members. If you have these and don't know what to do with them, please consider it.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=44792

 

Hooray. Fired up Steam earlier and magically Ep2 has dropped back down to 80% completion. But because of this degenerate "Too busy to do anything you actually want to do" message that Steam constantly spits out, I still can't preload whatever it's supposedly got left to do.

So now I have to go back over to my friends house (who can STILL magically preload everything that I STILL can't) and get whatever new content its decided to piss out, then HOPE that come midnight or whenever this is unlocked, that Valve don't throw another curveball and shit on my fun with more updates that I can't download.

AAARRGHHH.

 

I think if you're having problems with downloads, you're supposed to delete one of the .dll's in the Steam program folder. At least, that was what one of the customer support people told me when I bitched to them about the Bioshock pre-load.

 

Tomorrows schedule:

8:00 AM - wake up to the sound of my lovely alarm clock.
8:10 - Breakfast
8:30 - A quick shower
9:01 - Unlock Ep2!

Play all day long.

I never thought I'd be happy to get the flu. Perfect timing.

 

i sincerely hope, you can play it all day long. not sure that's gonna be possible though.

im taking thursday off (not for this).

 

Well, I'm gonna play through it very slowly...

Ep1 was like 5 or 6 "chapters", I hope Ep2 is longer.

 

Looks like they changed when they're unlocking it. If you click the preload info on the my games list it shows it being unlocked at midnight PST tonight.

 

Ooh... You must find out what that was! I grabbed ALL of my friends GCF files last night and transplanted those onto mine, and everything was happily preloaded and good to go. I log in today, and suddenly there's another 2% to download, but I still can't do it. All this to-and-fro'ing just to LOAD a game that i've payed for is ridiculous. At least when you pay for a CD or DVD, you get the game and not some lousy message supposedly saying you do

 

i thought i did that for EP1. and only got to 5 hours. and if there is something to screw around with I WILL find it. unless I don't. i just got a LOT more out of HL1&2 in that regard than EP1.

a constant for me, in a great game, is i can play to exhaustion and not be finished.

 

Always has been midnight PST as far as I'm aware - the references to 8AM are probably from people like me in the UK or Europe.

I think "clientregistry.blob" is the file you are meant to delete , when you re-connect you should hopefully change which content server you get put on - although with your history of bad luck I wouldn't bet on it

 

Sadly, you're absolutely right about that luck. I've basically been deleting that clientregistry.blob every few times I login to Steam while at work here... It never helps. I was hoping the DLL thing might've been a saving grace. Thanks for helping though!

 

I believe we left off debating whether or not EP2 advanced the Story toward a conclusion in any significant way....


I say no!

 

Hmmmmm...
More significant than EP1, and quite a bit for a third of a game's length I think.

 

I absolutely applaud the shadowing from the flashlight.

Dunno how I feel about the episodic model. On the other hand, had they waited and tried to put out all the episodes at once as one game, it probably would've taken ~10 years... =)

 

With how EP2 ended and what they hinted at being objectives for the next one i seriously doubt EP3 will be a conclusion. If it is then its going to be rather lengthy since it has to conclude quite a bit, and that means a few more years dev time? If that happens i'd become a firm believer that episodic distribution was a total failure for HL.

 

In agreement.