Beaten: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (on 6/27/13)

System: PC
Status: Beaten

Unfortunately I don't have a lot to say about Episode 2. Not just because I finished it over a year ago, but because nothing about it really sticks out in the mind, other than the fact that it kept the story going for a bit more than the last episode. If you aren't interested in the continuing adventures of Gordon Freeman, episode 2 is basically the same game as episode 1 and Half-life 2, physics based shooting, aliens, rather smart AI for the human parts, and some decent set pieces that are fun/frustrating depending.

Really, no part of the game sticks out a lot in my memory, other than the last set piece, where you are defending the rocket installation from hordes of giant walkers that you can only destroy with bomb devices you attach to them. I must royally suck at this, or it was insanely hard compared to the rest of the game, because I found this part furiously frustrating, and had to crank the difficulty all the way down due to constantly being torn apart by all the mechs little friends. If I go through the game again, I'll likely need to look up what I was doing wrong, because it shouldn't have been that difficult.

Finished it on the easiest difficulty, so to complete would have to crank it up some, along with completing various achieves and challenges.

Beaten: Half-Life 2: Episode 1

System: PC
Status: Beaten (on 2/11/13)

Now this is more like it. Half-Life Two is a major step up, and the episodes after do so much to improve on what they do with the story telling and action scenes. Half-life is a series that puts a lot of emphasis on set pieces, and this game has plenty of memorable ones. The main issues with the episodes being that they are well, episodic, and thus short. My only complaint with the half-life two line is the rather strange streaming content they do to make it run smoother, which causes my PC all sorts of headaches. I typically have to exit out after an hour or two of playing to let it clean itself out of memory, otherwise I get tons of stuttering. Have yet to find a way to fix the issue.