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Half-Life 2 Episode Two Stats Now Online
To go along with its recent hardware survey, Valve has released stats from Half-Life 2: Episode Two . The page notes the most common achievements, as well as the deadliest places in the game. Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog spells out a few of the results for us: "The median completion time hits at exactly five hours, with some noteworthy variance between four and seven hours. Average play session time logged was 27 minutes. The average number of deaths spikes significantly at two specific maps during the final two levels with an average of 11 deaths per section, as well; and looking at the topographical maps at some very specific locations on the maps as well. 73.1 percent of users playing were doing so with Direct X 9.0 SM3, and 72.6 percent played the game on medium."
I'm assuming that the 73.1% using directx 9 means that 26.9% were using directx 10. If that's the case, doesn't this mean that vista adoption is higher among gamers, those who are usually more technically adept? IMHO, that's the most interesting tidbit right there.
An alternate interpretation is that a large number of the computer playing HL2:2 were bought from a large retailer rather than built by the owner. I'm seeing a lot of potential with those statistics if combined with more information, like the rate of old OS reuse, etc.
Here's an interesting bit from the achievement stats. Apparently many players didn't actually finish the game. There are numerous achievements that you will get if you get to a certain point in the game. Let's see:
Acid Reflex: 81%. While you *may*, I believe, get through those levels without killing an acid antlion, it's extremely difficult. With 19% of players not getting this achievement, I'd bet that's at least 17% that never got far enough, and that's close to the beginning of the game.
Twofer: 63%, and you'll get this achievement when you progress far enough. Ditto for "Meet the Hunters", 61% - here it looks like a third of players didn't make it this far.
Gunishment and Quiet Mountain Getaway, 59% and 58%. Looks like those who make it past the first third or so of the game mostly continue to go forward. You can complete the game without getting Gunishment but it's tricky and is a glitch.
Finally: Defense of the Armament, at 48%. You get the achievement for winning the game's last (and truly spectacular) battle. So it'd seem like half the players who started the game didn't finish it, interesting.
It's obvious to me why not many have finished this game- the orange box! The first game I played when I got it was Portal, then I played an hour or so of Episode 2. I'm more likely to revisit Portal for the challenge levels then slog through the second two thirds of Episode 2, though I'll probably get around to it in the next few months.
What really sealed the deal against finishing the game was TF2. Every time I think about finishing Episode 2, I think of how much more fun it would be to play a few rounds of TF2 instead. Even though there are only a few maps, the team-based play never gets old. I would really like to see a stat of hours of TF2 played vs. Episode 2, for those players that have both installed.