You have just entered, “The Scary Door“…

Since Ryan is planning on playing this, I’ll try not to spoil the ending. Half Life 2 is done and after Winter Games is over, I’ll treat myself to Episode 1.

Everything about the game is a ten except for a couple things. First of all, the squad AI bahlooowwsss. I can’t tell you how many times I yelled “Get the fuck out of my way” at the monitor. If you’re going to have squad missions in tight spaces, you better get top notch AI. Aside from getting in my way, they also had a hard time staying put when I told them to. I’m creeping along a wall trying to sneak up on a sniper when I hear in the distance “I’m coming Freeman!” and my squad runs out in the open and gets gunned down. Awesome. Next time I’ll bring a Dalmation in a flak jacket. Since you don’t really need your teammates, I think having control of them was an unnecessary gameplay addition

Another small complaint is the general flow of the game. While I enjoy the immersing effect of being plopped in a situation and not knowing what’s going on, I wish I had an overall motivation and purpose in the game. Too often it felt like I was being told what to do: “Go here” “Take this boat and go there” “We need to shut this down”, etc without a grand scheme or purpose. This softened the emotional impact when I got to the end of the game.

My last complaint is that the game is very linear. The scripted sequences are very entertaining and you get a lot of choices in how you want to approach the combat, but there is really only one path through the game.

This game has the best atmosphere I have ever experienced. It’s so realistic that I frequently had game flashbacks in real life whenever I heard a helicopter overhead or when a crab jumped on my face.