Because I have already done a write-up on Half-Life 2, I won’t repeat those points here unless they seem particularly salient or unless Episode One has built upon or amended those points. Episode One preserves many of the finer points of Half-Life 2. And that puts it in danger of becoming irrelevant, but it also means that it could just turn out to be the equal of Half-Life 2. I found that Half-Life 2 holds up well today but I had a concern with Episode One, because Episode One is a very short game, it’s a very simple game, and it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and, if anything, it’s essentially a patched version of Half-Life 2 with new goals but the same environments: literally a lateral shift, then, as opposed to a shift up or down. Because I just cleared Half-Life 2, it seemed to me that the logical thing to do was to steamroll on through to the episodic content. It’s good - it’s entertaining and it’s well designed and it improves over its predecessor in several important ways - but that doesn’t stop it from being hard to place. I don’t know quite where it’s meant to fit. Episode One is in a very strange realm for me.
After playing through it once more I feel justified in holding that view. That’s not to say that it’s bad and that’s not to say that it’s good rather, instead of a shift up or a shift down, it’s a shift sideways. When playing through Half-Life 2: Episode One in the past I had always perceived it as a game that is mostly an extension of Half-Life 2. HL2 Episode One - better than the original, or a lateral shift?
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