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SiN Episodes - Emergence Review
Along with pale imitations, it seems the destiny of genre-defining games to provoke a reversal in design decisions. The success of 3D platformers has lead to a renaissance in 2D gaming, World of Warcraft has pushed online game designers away from the fantasy genre, and Half-Life 2 has prompted a lot of story-light brainless shooters. It's this last genre that houses SiN Episodes: Emergence. A traditional run and gun First Person Shooter (FPS), SiN is a blood-soaked five hour jaunt you can download from Steam for about twenty bucks. At that price and that length, this Aeon Fluxian gorefest may just be a happy start for the age of episodic content. Read on for my impressions of a good-looking throwback that proves you don't need millions of dollars to make a fun title.
Calling SiN story-light might not be fair. It would be more accurate to say that this first episode of the 'season' isn't heavy on plot elements. Ritual plans on making these 5-8 hour gameplay releases a regular event. A 'season' will be a complete story made up of three episodes: a beginning, a middle, and an end. You're awakened at the start of this episode staring into the um, eyes of an attractive woman and a well-dressed guy. You're strapped onto a table, and have apparently been injected with something. Before you can really understand what's going on, another attractive woman comes to your aid, spiriting you away in her auto.
What follows is a textbook-standard FPS. You make your way through the grubby urban environments, a secret underground lair, and moist crawlspaces, shooting the faceless bad guys that get in your way. Weapons are fairly limited in this first episode; For most of the game you have a pistol, a shotgun, and grenades. Really, though, what else do you need? Enemy models and map creation are fairly generic, though they are competently executed. There's a couple of nice action set-pieces, such as a fight against jet-pack wearing baddies from inside a cargo crate being lifted over a body of water. The few explanatory plot moments are used with the in-game engine, as in cousin Half-Life.
If there is a differentiating element to SiN, it is the adaptive AI and stat-tracking that haunts you throughout the game. Every bullet you fire, which gun you use, whether it hits or not, all are tracked as you move through the title. The enemies will start off fairly dumb, but if you find yourself having an easy time of it you'll start to notice the enemies beginning to adopt new tactics. If you pwn the bad guys hard enough in the first few levels, you may even find yourself outclassed when the action gets fast and furious later in the episode. This intelligent adaptation to your gameplay is a little spooky once you start noticing it. The first time you find yourself in the middle of a well-executed pincer maneuver, with soldiers on all sides closing in, you'll know you've gotten the AI's attention.
Visually, SiN looks a lot like cousin Half-Life, which only makes sense; Emergence was created with Valve's Source engine. All the 'fun with physics' moments you can have in Half-Life 2 are here in SiN, with some extra surprises. Despite what the Mythbusters had to say on the subject, compressed air tanks make surprisingly good weapons here. The polish on the game's look is less pronounced than it was with Half-Life 2, the result of a smaller budget and shorter development time. The audio is run and gun standard, but the weapon sounds are surprisingly satisfying. They have a lot of heft, which partially makes up for the very few weapons you'll have access to in the game.
If Emergence was $15, this would be a sure thing; At $20 I'm not sure this particular ride is worth the price of admission. Just the same, if you've got the money lying around and are a fan of the FPS genre, you're probably going to enjoy SiN There's nothing particularly wrong here, just a general sense of 'been there, done that'. At only five or six hours play time, you probably won't even have time to get bored before the episode is over. Future episodes will elaborate on the plot, give us more enemies to fight, and more weapons to fight with. As such, the pricetag may be more justified for future episodes. For right now, though, here's hoping they drop the price to make this bite-sized FPS morsel taste just right.
- Title: SiN Episodes: Emergence
- Developer: Ritual Entertainment
- Publisher: Valve
- System: PC
Calling SiN story-light might not be fair. It would be more accurate to say that this first episode of the 'season' isn't heavy on plot elements. Ritual plans on making these 5-8 hour gameplay releases a regular event. A 'season' will be a complete story made up of three episodes: a beginning, a middle, and an end. You're awakened at the start of this episode staring into the um, eyes of an attractive woman and a well-dressed guy. You're strapped onto a table, and have apparently been injected with something. Before you can really understand what's going on, another attractive woman comes to your aid, spiriting you away in her auto.
What follows is a textbook-standard FPS. You make your way through the grubby urban environments, a secret underground lair, and moist crawlspaces, shooting the faceless bad guys that get in your way. Weapons are fairly limited in this first episode; For most of the game you have a pistol, a shotgun, and grenades. Really, though, what else do you need? Enemy models and map creation are fairly generic, though they are competently executed. There's a couple of nice action set-pieces, such as a fight against jet-pack wearing baddies from inside a cargo crate being lifted over a body of water. The few explanatory plot moments are used with the in-game engine, as in cousin Half-Life.
If there is a differentiating element to SiN, it is the adaptive AI and stat-tracking that haunts you throughout the game. Every bullet you fire, which gun you use, whether it hits or not, all are tracked as you move through the title. The enemies will start off fairly dumb, but if you find yourself having an easy time of it you'll start to notice the enemies beginning to adopt new tactics. If you pwn the bad guys hard enough in the first few levels, you may even find yourself outclassed when the action gets fast and furious later in the episode. This intelligent adaptation to your gameplay is a little spooky once you start noticing it. The first time you find yourself in the middle of a well-executed pincer maneuver, with soldiers on all sides closing in, you'll know you've gotten the AI's attention.
Visually, SiN looks a lot like cousin Half-Life, which only makes sense; Emergence was created with Valve's Source engine. All the 'fun with physics' moments you can have in Half-Life 2 are here in SiN, with some extra surprises. Despite what the Mythbusters had to say on the subject, compressed air tanks make surprisingly good weapons here. The polish on the game's look is less pronounced than it was with Half-Life 2, the result of a smaller budget and shorter development time. The audio is run and gun standard, but the weapon sounds are surprisingly satisfying. They have a lot of heft, which partially makes up for the very few weapons you'll have access to in the game.
If Emergence was $15, this would be a sure thing; At $20 I'm not sure this particular ride is worth the price of admission. Just the same, if you've got the money lying around and are a fan of the FPS genre, you're probably going to enjoy SiN There's nothing particularly wrong here, just a general sense of 'been there, done that'. At only five or six hours play time, you probably won't even have time to get bored before the episode is over. Future episodes will elaborate on the plot, give us more enemies to fight, and more weapons to fight with. As such, the pricetag may be more justified for future episodes. For right now, though, here's hoping they drop the price to make this bite-sized FPS morsel taste just right.
Ummmm... They didn't say that compressed air tanks don't make good weapons. They said that they don't make good IEDs. They make great missles.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
The success of 3D platformers has lead to a renaissance in 2D gaming,
I guess I don't follow games that closely anymore. What 3d platformers have I missed, and what games defined the 2d renaissance that followed?
Half-Life 2 has prompted a lot of story-light brainless shooters
IMHO, HL2 wasn't about being a immersive story-telling game. It was about showing off the new engine until mods that made the first HL (Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, etc) so popular were released under source.
That being said, I did enjoy HL2, but I didn't buy it for the story line. From what I've seen, most FPS shooters aren't built for the story line. They're built for action. And guess what, we got action with HL2 and the various mods.
For 20 bucks, I could get myself a couple of used GameCube games and have at least 50 hours of fun. Or one new one minus a tenner - Mario Kart Double Dash has dropped in price, and I know I'd spend at least 100 hours playing it with my kids.
Anything above ten is definitely out of range.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
The game doesn't have a flashlight, unlike HL2/DOOM3/QUAKE4. There are some darks aeas where I could've used a flashlight. I think every law enforcement officer should has some kind of flashlight, either the small pen variety or the large billy club type. Not having one is inexcusable. Otherwise, I love the game.
run-n-gun-n-shoot-n-blood-n-boring
wake me when Bioshock releases.
Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
I couldn't help but notice that whenever you're running (which is almost all the time since you run by default), any semblance of control goes out the window. It's like playing on ice half the time - you pretty much have to use "walk" for any kind of controlled navigation or platform jumping, which is annoying as you have to be running to make it across most of the gaps.
It's also pretty buggy, with the game actually stopping at one point because the AI had "forgotten" to blow a wall that I needed to pass - thankfully there was a workaround, but I suspect that the short turnaround planned for this series will result in more bugs that usual.
That said, aside from the length (under 4 hours playtime) it was an enjoyable FPS - although I did find myself getting by almost entirely with my pistol until the ammo started to become scarce in the later levels. One headshot will happily take out 90% of the enemies you face.
I got it, mostly because it came with the first SIN game for free. Anyways, I played through the episode in about 5 hours.
As for the game, it felt like a poor-man's half-life 2, and I can't think of anything remarkable about it.
I definitely won't be buying any future episodes.
I would mod this up. Damn smelly, jobless gamers like these boring games because they are losers.
The best company in the world
... it's $20 for 5-8 hours of gameplay. I often spend $40-50 for a 40 hour game. Through the joys of episodic content, that 40 hours is going to cost me $100-160 based on their estimates. No wonder they like it!
To refer to another /. story from earlier today, this reminds me of the .Hack series of RPGs Bandai put out. You payed the price of an average PS2 game for about 15-20 hours of game content. That means that at 4 games to the series, you got about 65-80 hours of gaming for $120. If SiN really takes only 4-5 hours for an episode, they seriously need to reconsider the price per episode before I start handing moolah over Steam.
First, I just have to write that I really miss good, old fashioned 2D games. Sure, there may be a bit of a rebirth of the genre, but nothing with the shear fun/greatness of those old Konami games (the up, up, down, down crowd) like Contra and Lifeforce. Does anyone else remeber Rush 'n Attack? That game was awesome, and all you did was run and stab. A game company could never make something like that now adays. Gamers everywhere would say "what, only 1 knife? And no camo changes? And what's with all the lineral movement?" But I digress. Part of me actually likes the idea of an episodic game. Not only does it allow a company to develop a game and its story over time. But it also allows the designers to correct gameplay issues or shortcommings as they develop. The Gamer effectively becomes a test market. As much as Blizzard annoys me with their constant server screw-ups often related to patches and tinkering with their systems, I do love the fact that WoW is continually developing. When weaknesses are shown, they can be fixed. At the same time, another part of me I really doesn't like the idea of episodic gaming. Do you have to buy all of the episodes to play one? What if I get to the game late, do I have to start from the beginning? Or what if I just don't want to shell out the $15 some month? My WoW fee annoys me enough, but this seems somehow even more insideous. It could be like those micro-payment systems that are comming around that are designed to get people comfortable with many small payments, rather than just one big initial payment for the game. And in the end you spend more than you ever would have initially. Somehow WoW's subscription fee feels less creapy to me... I guess I just don't know... we shall see...
I played episode 1 and it was not very impressive. For the most part it felt like a 3d version of whack-a-mole with lots of "triggers" that spawned more enemies. It was good for mindless blasting away at enemies, but it lost its fun after a few hours.
I eventually got bored and used god mode to sprint through the last few levels just to see the last cut-scene.
I am not saying it was a bad game; I'm just saying that there is no way in hell i am paying for more episodes (especially not all 9 for $180!).
It looks like episodes might be a successful way to sell many many hours of nothing.
I don't care if Steam's a useful service or not. This whole "We'll package something in a box that you'd expect to be a more-or-less standalone product" - ok, it needs a compatible computer, but that's it - "but then we'll add strings so you can't use it without giving us enough information to sell you more crap" is getting out of control.
No thanks, Ritual. I loved the original SiN, but I don't "subscribe" to games, I buy them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I found this game well worth my money. There are some things you left out on the review. There's 3 weapons each with secondary fire options. Magnum pistol, Shotgun, & Assault Rifle.
Also, you get the original Sin game with multiplayer that was released back in 1998. Later on they're going to release a Arena & Multiplayer mode for Sin Emergence.
HL2 was only the latest in a long line of games to exhibit this behavior, but since it's the one I last played I'm gonna pick on it.
It doesn't matter that the HL2 takes place in a future society where teleportation devices are becoming reality, self guided robots follow you around in order to either take your picture or slice you into ribbons, and we see a variety of directed energy weapons including a "gravity gun" (not to mention personal force fields!). Why? Because apparently, in this reality, nobody can figure out how to build a fucking flashlight with as much candlepower and battery life as the headlamp I bought at EMS in real life for about thirty bucks.
Game designers, get the hint. Limiting the battery life of the flashlight is stupid.
My spirits were dampened when I stormed through it in 5 hours, but I still came away from the game with a feeling of satisfaction. The idea to go with an adjusting AI that tailored itself to your gameplay was GREAT. Too many shooters have an element where you find one good technique and use it on every single enemy: "headshot...headshot...headshot", but in SiN, after a few headshots the enemies come equipped with helmets (the weapons they carry, body armor, and even their numbers differ on how you're playing). I wish more companies would take this approach -- it seems like it makes for a very versatile experience.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
That is, the actress who does the voice for Jessica also does Cortana. Only difference is the swearing in SiN. The review is basically right. $15 is a more reasonable price point. My TTGM (Time-Till-God-Mode) review is pretty good. I got through the game on hardest all the way to the final level before turning on God-mode. More variety in the enemies might have improved that. (For comparison, I've completed HL2 and Halo multiple times without God-mode, and Doom3 was so unengaging that it took less than an hour for God-mode to be switched on.)
Hey, where's the rating!?
I wanted to post some screenshots (see last paragraph), but instead I'll write a few sentences about the game to make this post at least somewhat useful.
Boobies! Here's the attractive woman from the first scene. They have realistic shake physics, that's probably what Zonk meant by "fun with physics". There are some other fun aspects, like the warning signs which say "When all else fails, use crate" or com-stations (basically phone booths) where you can dial a number you see on ads.
Shooting stuff is, I'd say, quite satisfying, although there are only 3 weapons. A very accurate and powerful piston, a shotgun, and an assault rifle. They all have alternative fire which you often have to use to kill off tougher enemies. The ones at the beginning go down with a headshot, or a shotgun blast from a close distance will send body parts flying, so that's always fun to watch. Some heavily armored fuckers at the end require a good portion of the AR mag.
To the whole episodic concept, well I didn't find it too unreasonable. Not unlike HL2, it leaves the story hanging, but it's not much (if at all) shorter than Max Payne. Considering it's not full price, that's not very bad, although of course cheaper would be even better.
I have a screenshot gallery with over 60 shots in it, but I decided not to post it here for two reasons: 1) I host it on my DSL line 2) I wrote the gallery perl script myself, so it's probably quite dangerous. I'll try to get a static version online, though.
I was a huge fan of the original SiN, but I won't even think about picking up SiN episodes until the Multiplayer is up.
I give you the industry shill...
Don't worry, that sentence was awful. Both structurally and contextually. If someone is going to make statements like that they needs to provide some examples.
But on a side note, did you know the success of Pong relates to the success of unicorns in modern games?
Why? Just 'cause.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
World of Warcraft has pushed online game designers away from the fantasy genre.
Can someone with knowledge confirm this? The MMORPG wikipedia entry tells a slightly different story. According to this article, the major non-fantasy MMORPGs were all released after Everquest but before WoW. I have myself played neither of these games, but from what I understand EQ is closer to a genre-defining game. It was followed not only by clones (ultimately including WoW) but by a plethora of non-fantasy games like Anarchy Online, City of Heroes, and Star Wars Galaxies.
How many of you will give out $20 for Half-Life 2 : Episode 1?
In many respects, after all, Half-Life 2 is also just another FPS.
Personally, I will be buying Episode one due to exchange rates, and a love of the Half Life series. Let me explain, the game costs $20, with 10% off special offer means 4-6 hours of game play, which I'll likely replay for:
17.95 USD United States Dollars = 9.53067 GBP United Kingdom Pounds
In the UK, that's very little in comparison to a new game (£40, or £50/60 for newer x360 titles) and I don't know where you get those ultra cheap second hand copies but due to there basically being a lack of any independent stores around here, second hand copies get, at most, 25$ knocked off their price.
£10 sounds good enough to me.
``Ragnarok
Despite the comedy breasts and the paper-thin plot, I found the game an excellent waste of not only the 7 hours at least it took me to first complete it, but the equally enjoyable 4/5 hours I took to play it again. Its not rocket science. Its not hugely original. But it is damn good fun! Yes its priced $5 too high but still- if you are looking for something fun I can heartily recommend it. I also very much enjoyed the sound- all the way through the game the sound production is excellent, and there is even a theme tune which plays on the menu screen which is absolutely fantastic! Anyone know who that is by the way?
kin242.net
Yeah, just paying a team of 10 people for a year is already going to set you back quite a bit. Sure, there's still some impressive two-person teams writing games, but it's becoming increasingly less practical if you want to develop a blockbuster game.
The game is really poor, as another poster said it's buggy and feels like you are walking on ice throughout the game.
The whole episode feels cheap and not put togeather well at all. The levels were badly constructed and of poor design.
A couple of years ago developers would have released this "episode" for free as a demo of the full game, it's a sad state of affairs that we are now reaching a period in gaming we have to pay for the demos. And because of the buggy, poor design i wouldn't even say that's a demo more like a beta.
I've been playing HL since the early days, and I loved HL2 when it came out. But, I have to admit, I've been too bizzy to see any of the other things that's been going on. This is the first I've heard of episodic games. I think the idea rox, even if everyone thinks SiN is week. I'm a filmmaker, and video games are giving the movie industry a run for it's money (It could overpower it with better stories). Man, I'm getting all kinds of bad ass ideas just thinking about the prospect.
Except I understand this game cost a few million to make. All in all, this article is a decent review of a game, but a poor discussion of the "state of games".
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know. I did the side quests and my timer was over 120 hours after beating all four games, and thats without doing the boring collect one of every item quest you unlock at the end of the game. Still I got over 120 hours from just Oblivion by itself though.
The two big ones I can think of offhand are Rachet & Clank & Jax & Dakter (both for PS2).
If you want to confine the choices to PC games, Rayman 3 may have been out for the PC, I forget... but 3D platformers have been very popular on consoles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the .hack series put me off of episodic gaming for good.
Excellent! Just as I want from 3D FPS'es! That's why I still play Doom1/2, after all (think: http://www.3dgamers.com/about/archives.html).
SiN is a blood-soaked five hour jaunt
Almost, but not quite like SiN!
"...I know I'd spend at least 100 hours playing it with my kids."
Yeah, but that's not a fair comparison. You put a $20 limit on the cost of the fun under discussion. Kids cost a whole lot more than $20 -- even if you make them yourself.
What is this, the Dan Brown School of Writing?
Zonk write: "Along with pale imitations, it seems the destiny of genre-defining games to provoke a reversal in design decisions."
This prose contortion reminds me of nothing so much as that most infamous extract from the Da Vinci Code: "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair."
This style is really awful. But the worst of it is that it's still a marked improvement over the barely literate IM-speak while pollutes so much of the internet.
Al Gore, I want my money back!
So I presume you read and agreed to the terms of service for Slashdot? (Which is linked to from the bottom of every Slashdot page).
How is that different?
"If Emergence was $15, this would be a sure thing; At $20 I'm not sure this particular ride is worth the price of admission."
PRE LOAD saved me two or three bucks... it was palatable at $17.95. All the same, I'm not sure it was worth the price.
The adpative AI thing screwed me over. On minute I'm poping off headshots and the next I can't round a corner without someone having a bead on my toe as it crossed the thresehold of view. It got stupid hard _very_ quick and made me get bored of the game in no time.
One more thing... I wasn't expecting a full game, but I was expecting at least four guns and 6-7 hours not 3 guns and 5 hours.
Attention moderators:
What makes this paragraph-less rant "Interesting?"
Not only is it pretty much utterly off-topic, but we've all seen it before here on Slashdot about a billion times. Yes, a lot of Slashdot Games posters have tons of nostalgia for 2D games, we get it already. Stop posting it.
Comment of the year
Half Life 2 has one of the best game plots I've ever seen. The dudes at Valve have redefined what a good FPS can be. What rock did you just crawl out from?
I like toast!
Wow... Just, wow. Where to even begin? Others have address the incorrect sweeping generalizations regarding FPS & 3D/2D platformers (for the record though, Alien Hominid + a half-dozen robotron-style games on xbox live arcade a renaissance does not make); so I'll stick to asking, yet again, that you monkeys stay away from the video game reviews. It would be one thing if you were enthusiasts rather than consumers, but judging by the way you talk about games, your limited knowledge of them, indeed the quality of the reviews themselves, I'm guessing you're just players?
Please stop. It's depressing that an otherwise excellent tech blog would sully itself with game-reviews, and half-assed ones at that...
One thing I enjoyed was the secrets, although most were pretty easy some still have me scratching my head. I will probably play it again just to try and get the ones I couldn't figure out the first time (where you see something you can't access but you know there is a way).
Hey, it's got Dopefish in the very first level! http://www.dopefish.com/fishinfo.html/ Commander Keen's nemesis appears several more times in secret areas.
In the Docks level in a building full of large chemical tanks are many warning signs not to inhale or ingest chemicals. One of them has an urban translation at the bottom, "Do Not Attempt To Get Crunk In This Bee-otch"
There is a secret room in the Highrise level where you can find a sign that says, " OH SNAP - We Beat DNF Out Twice!"
I love games that reward exploration. Sorry folks, but 20 bucks is the price of a nice lunch. If you explore the levels you get a lot more entertainment for your money. I also like Steam - when WinXP becomes unuseable because of the usual bit rot I can easily reload all my Steam games just by logging back in to my account.
-The Mad Duke
The new Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo DS seems to define the "2d renaissance" quite well if you ask me.
br> Same goes for SSB, Viewtiful Joe (as mentioned earlier), and others.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
You, sir, are a complete fool. An idiot, in fact.
Duke Nukem 3D had plenty of story to it. You fought aliens, saved the world and got chick-bellies for pillows. Plus, you were Duke Nukem, which is like a novel on its own. Don't argue, just listen.
Half-Life 2 (and this goes to the other moron you replied to) was so much of a story that Freeman doesn't even talk the whole way. That's freakin awesome, dooode. How could you miss subtle elements of storytelling like that? When he started leading the revolution my GF passed out, and when she woke up I was inside the tower ruining alien shit, so she passed out again. Tip: when your GF passes out during a game, there's a story.
Now Doom 3, that was like the closest you got to not being an idiot..but alas, you still suck: Doom 3 had the same great story as Doom 2, which was the same as the original Doom, and that rocked. Just because it had the SAME story as all the other FPS out there doesn't mean it had NO story. Be specific.
Wolf 3D: You're back to being a complete sod again. No story? There were people being ripped apart and made into fighting machines you insensitive clod! Germans staying Achtueng!!! Will nothing move you? I won't go on. You are hopeless.
P.S: Do you know why Doom 3 and Half-Life were a dissapointment? It's difficult to believe, but it wasn't the story, or the repetition, or the other half-assed reasons people like you give.
It was the physics.
Your game can have amazing gfx, but if the enemies dont feel like they're getting hit...if they just dissappear when you shoot floating cotton-like balls at them..if they look like rag-dolls instead of bad-ass mofos when you gun them down, it just isn't satifying. The theory of fun in games revolves around the satisfaction of killing the turd in front of you, watching the bullet( yes we like bullets, not yummy looking marshmallow balls) lodge into his head, driving it into nearby walls.
They failed in that respect, thus they fail ultimately.
I'm sorry but I just don't get it. What is the appeal of killing AI? Since I have played fast paced shooters like the Battlefield or CS series I have lost all interest in bot killing. It's boring, predictable and totaly joyless. Playing against AI is like sitting in the corner playing patients when there's a 20 chick no guy, ecy rampaged strip poker game going on in the next room. Why?! (Noted if u don't have a net connection but who's reading this without one?)
I wouldn't pay more than $5 for an episode of any game. 5 hours of gameplay is worth about $5 bucks in my opinion. So, in response to your statement that this might be a "happy start for the age of episodic content", i'll have to say no Zonk, no it's not.
If you're willing to explore and interact with the characters enough, the Vortigaunts know and acknowledge that Gordon is under someone else's direct control (aside from the G-Man). The "All-Knowing Vortigaunt" makes a couple of statements to this effect, saying things like "distant eyes look out through yours" and the like. You can find out how to reach him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigaunt
I think that Gordon doesn't speak for two reasons- one plot related and the other game-related. Plot-wise, despite the angel-of-crowbar-death role into which he's been unwillingly thrust, Freeman is at heart a quiet physicist. His willingness to take a job at the reclusive Black Mesa facility implies that he doesn't date much, and he's probably only really comfortable in a lab or research environment. Alyx mentions at one point that he's not the talkative type. Game-wise, I think that having him not speak is a good idea, as it would reduce the level of immersion in the game. What does Gordon's voice sound like? When I'm playing it sounds like me.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I will probably pre-order the first episode of theHalf-Life 2 episodes
:-)
Better hurry. The game comes out tomorrow. I expect that the pre-order download traffic is pretty high right now.
I wonder what time zone they're releasing it from? If it's the one I'm in (EDT), then I could be in for a late night tonight.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I share your love of the Half-Life series. I'd suggest getting Half-Life 2: Episode One instead. (No, I don't work for Valve or any related company.) It's the same price and continues the HL2 story, and initial reviews are positive.
Episode One comes out tomorrow (6/1), but if you pre-load it today it's 10% off.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
This SiN episode was a waste of money. Just was really medicore and I'm a touch bitter that it actually cost me MORE to buy it through STEAM than at the store.
Big PASS from me!
Please don't be greedy, i'd buy the "episode" for 10 bucks, maybe for 15, I won't buy it for 20.
I can go buy a full game for 20 bucks (just got startship troopers which is turning out to be decent but fun) and often wait until they are that price until I do buy a game.
20 x 5 episodes = 100 bucks for the "full" game?!?! um no, i'd rather buy 5 different games, or 2 gotta have games as soon as they are released and enjoy years of mod enjoyment...