Half Life 2, like the original Half Life that preceded it, did a lot to change the face of gaming as we know it.  It made things like ragdoll physics absolutely mandatory for any game that deemed itself “cutting edge”.  It was arguably the first major release for the Steam content delivery service, which overcame several hurdles to become the success story it is today.  Half Life 2 set new standards in how you tell a story through a game, and now Valve hopes to change things up in the gaming world once again, by releasing episodic add-ons to what some believe to be the best game of this decade.

Half Life: Episode 1 begins exactly where Half Life 2 ended, Alyx Vance is mysteriously rescued by Vortigaunts, and Gordon Freeman is even more mysteriously delivered from the clutches of the ever elusive G-Man.  The protagonists find themselves outside the Citadel building of City 17; a structure which is in it’s death throes.  All of these story elements are revealed to the character from the perspective of Gordon.  It is this type of story telling that the Half Life series has popularized, and it continues to work well; Valve has become a master of their art over the years, providing increasingly stunning set pieces and scripted elements that still feel spontaneous, even on repeated play-throughs.

For the most part, Episode 1 provides little in the means of new weapons or environments like your average expansion might, but what it does provide are a series of exciting battles and encounters, and some level of resolution to the frustratingly obscure cliff hanger that was seen in the final moments of Half Life 2.  Throughout this very brief episode you’ll fight zombies underground, battle Ant Lions in an abandoned parking lot, take part in numerous skirmishes with the remaining Combine of City 17, lead stragglers to victory through enemy fire in a train yard, and even take down a few Striders in some wonderfully paced set pieces near the episodes close.

Some may find the brevity of the episode displeasing, but it manages to pack in so many adrenaline fueled escapades, and most importantly, so much fun that it is hard to feel disappointed, especially considering the price point.  Whether you are downloading the episode on Steam or playing it as part of the Orange Box on consoles, you’ll easily be getting your money’s worth.

Episode 1 manages to make quite a few subtle graphical improvements to Half Life 2, and they are a nice addition to a game that already looked pretty phenomenal.  Lighting is more realistic, and is showcased well in the episode’s underground sections. The animation has also been tweaked a little, a welcome change considering the stiffness of certain movements in Half Life 2.  The improvements are most noticeable on Alyx, which is good because there are very few moments where she won’t be by your side killing zombies and Combine soldiers, occasionally even a Zombine or two.

Alyx is an exercise in friendly AI done correctly.  She never becomes a burden, and more often than not will be an important ally, killing zombies that pounce from behind that you had no idea where there, and provides witty banter throughout the ordeal.  It’s a shame that more games can’t spend time cultivating their AI’s behavior, if more companies spent as much time as Valve we might not have such dreadful computer controlled friends in video games, who often send themselves careening off cliffs, into enemy fire, or both on a really bad day.

With Episode 1, Valve has demonstrated a new standard of constructing entertainment.  Because the ride is short, it is filled to the brim with exciting moments from start to finish.  The lack of down time immerses you in a feeling of immediacy and urgency, heightened by the almost constant presence of the Citadel in the distance as it prepares to implode.

All in all, Episode 1 is a great experience at a reasonable price.  It’s perfect for a saturday afternoon when you have a few hours to kill, and although around the length of an epic film at 2 to 3 hours, you’ll find your self infinitely more entertained than if you were simply watching events unfold on a screen.  Valve has demonstrated that episodic gaming may very well be the future, as digital distribution seems nearly ready to overtake the hard media format.  Episode 1 is a shining example of what is possible when a development team puts their heart into their work, and although not as revolutionary as the game from which it is based, it’s indeed an experience worth having.

Our hero trots carefully through the dense fog on a skeleton horse.  His armor is a mismatched patchwork quilt of boots, chest plates, and helmets made of every material known to man.  He is a fashion disaster.  His mighty weapon is simply 42 Katanas duct taped together, enchanted with various stones forged by tossing random items into a boiling pot.  In the distance he spies a massive black bear, and charges towards it declaring “Aah, Bandits”.

The hero dismounts his horse and in one fell swoop crushes the skull of the creature with one strike of his 42 Katanas.  These are the wild realms of Two Worlds, developed by Reality Pump studios.

Two Worlds is a difficult game to evaluate; for everything it does incredibly right, it does something else so terribly wrong.  It is one of the foremost examples of the B-Game concept.  Like a B-Movie, a B-Game is low budget and rife with technical issues, but at it’s very heart an entertaining and often hilarious experience.  If one can see through the myriad of issues plaguing Two Worlds, there is a good, and sometimes wonderful game at it’s core.

The game begins by introducing our main character; a mercenary whose sister is kidnapped by mysterious forces.  The voice acting in this scene is atrocious, and it doesn’t get any better.  Most of the characters are voiced with acting skills somewhere between awful and unnerving, with certain strange enunciation’s making you wonder whether or not the actors spoke English as a first language at all.

After this brief cut scene you are asked to create a character.  The options are limited, but in strange ways.  Little can be done to change the shape of your avatar’s body, but you can easily give him incredibly long arms to fashion him into some sort of medieval Donkey Kong, and strangest of all it seems that no matter how you adjust your character’s face he will come out cross eyed, providing a good deal of hilarity until you find a helmet that thankfully shields the world of Antaloor from your miserable face.

Two Worlds will be unfairly judged by many expecting an Oblivion or Morrowind clone, and while they share similarities in appearance they are vastly different in nearly all respects.  For one, Two Worlds‘ setting of Antaloor is home to several different types of environments from desert wastes to lush forests, while Oblivion, save a few areas of snow, is for the the most part a romp through the forest.  Two Worlds is highly populated with tens of cities big and small to explore and pillage, with no load times upon entering or exiting, which is a welcome change from many open world RPGs.

Even robots are no match for our cross eyed hero of Anataloor

This lack of prominent load times may hurt the game more than help it though, as the frame rate is usually terrible, even going so far as to cause motion sickness in this reviewer.  Installing the game to the hard drive does little to curb the issue.  Out of all the negative aspects of Two Worlds, the frame rate is by and large the most noticeable issue.  Sadly this has been a problem for games for over a decade now, which leads one to wonder why it hasn’t been solved yet.

Sometime around level 30, which takes only a few hours if you’re dedicated, your character effectively becomes a god.  It is possible to wipe out entire cities at this point, looting and pillaging them for all their worth.  The lack of respawn in the game can be detrimental if you’re looking for someone to sell to, but it certainly makes you feel powerful when it’s possible to slaughter every living creature that resides within the game.

This level of power is achieved primarily by Two Worlds stacking system, which allows you to stack any two identical items together, combining both their powers to create an even more powerful weapon.  Weapons can be stacked almost indefinitely, providing you easily with a sword that does thousands of damage points per second, making you a destructive force the likes of which has never been witnessed.

Some may feel that stacking breaks the game, but Two Worlds is not for these people.  I feel that the game begs you to break it, to discover the most powerful combination of items that will allow you to decimate the population.  The story becomes inconsequential as you find yourself often murdering quest givers with little regret, although many of the missions are varied and well done.  The fun of the game simply becomes advancing your powers and destroying foes, both good and evil.

Or, you can be a mellow adventurer; that’s the beauty of Two Worlds.  Your are blessed with unparalleled freedom to do whatever you like, and simply roaming the countryside discovering strange caves and ruins can be as fun if not more so than leveling a city block with your broadsword.  Two Worlds is truly an open world game, where the only thing keeping you from exploring is the fear of the high level monsters that roam certain zones, but if you are vigilant you can travel there too. Maybe with enough dedication you can take down a Dragon, or a hulking Golem.

Two Worlds is an adventure.  From start to finish you decide where you’re going, what you will do there, and when you will do it.  The graphics are sub par, and it doesn’t always run smoothly, but these flaws are meager in comparison to the amount of choices you have, and the amount of fun you can have making them.  With so many thousands of different weapons and armor, and hundreds of spells to find populating the seemingly infinite dungeons, cities, and caves of Antaloor,Two Worlds will provide you with hours of pure escapism, and that’s all a great game, or even a B-Game can really hope to provide in the end.

Reviewer’s note: The Xbox 360 version was tested for this review

An HD update to the 1983 classic platformer Lode Runner will be arriving onto the XBLA service this week for the hefty price of 1200 points ($15.00).  Among the updated visuals the game will receive Live Co-Op treatment for all of the numerous levels, plus competitive multiplayer and the ability to create your own levels.

Gaming history buffs will recognize Lode Runner as the pioneer of user generated content, in 1983 it was one of the first games to feature a level editor.  It also spawned numerous competitions sponsored by the media to see who could make the best level.  For the uninitiated, Lode Runner is similar to both Pac Man and Donkey Kong.  The player escapes enemies whilst grabbing tokens on the map similar to our yellow chomping friend, while he also scales ladders and tightropes to reach the top of the level for the exit ala our mustachioed comrades initial adventures.

What separates Lode Runner from other games that came after it is its unique digging mechanic, which allows you to not only trap enemies, but unearth the tokens you need to exit the large number of levels.  Regardless, the game looks promising, though the merits of it’s level creator will really give the verdict on whether the seemingly high price is warranted.

Source: Destructoid

Police are no match for a VR Trooper!

It is with a heavy heart that I relay this news to you:  Saints Row 2′s Ultor Exposed expansion has been delayed until April 23rd.  Those of you who have been following recent news on my choice for 2008′s Game of The Year know that Ultor Exposed pits our ever sadistic and customizable protagonist against the sinister Ultor Corporation, assisted by none other than Porn starlet Tera Patrick.  Oh, and you can also dress up in an alien costume.

I’m totally serious.  The content pack includes new missions, customization options, and multiplayer modes and retails for the bargain price of 800 Microsoft Points ($10.00), similarly priced on the Playstation Network.

It seems that the rabid fans who have waited so long will have to find some other means to satiate themselves, myself included.

Source: Kotaku

The rise of the internet, and subsequently the rise of online gaming, have seemingly revealed to us the true nature of humanity.  If an outside observer, say an intelligent alien being from another world were to view our internet in a random fashion, he or she would most likely assume that humanity is filled with the most vile and deranged perverts, people who would rather have sex with balloons while dressed as Saturday morning cartoon characters than live a respectable life, but this is the price we pay for anonymity.

The same price is paid continually by those that play competitive video games online, as millions of foul speaking youths and ignorant adults have deemed the realm of online gaming their personal anonymous platform to perform a Don Rickles stand up routine on the world, but why?

What is it about playing an online game that seems to bring out the very worst in people?  No one has ever called me “faggot” while playing monopoly in the living room, and the same people that freely dispense the word “nigger” over microphone chat in Halo are likely to never be so shameless (or so foolish) to say it in front of living, breathing human being.  Is it simply the anonymity that opens the flood gates of their mind, allowing the obscenity and hatred to flow freely?  If this is the case, then why is it that only a few of us are screaming hate speech into microphones across the world, while the rest of us sit bewildered, desperately reaching for the mute button?

The plight of Sony’s online community project Home is a good social study for the state of the online gaming community as a whole.  Since it’s inception Home has been a mess, and Sony quickly discovered that the average gamer’s ethical sense was lacking at best.  Harassment and hate speech became such a problem that voice chat was dropped from the game entirely, and common words like “gay” and “Jew” had to be blocked as well.  One might assume that the ease of availability of Home lead to a large number of uninterested users simply “griefing” the service because it was free to download to any and all PS3 owners with an internet connection, but the same level of hate speech and vitriolic displays of negativity are prevalent of pay-to-play services such as Xbox live.

The Xbox live service has frequently been the poster child for displays of racism and hate in the internet gaming community, and not without good reason.  It is a rare occurrence to find a match in any of the popular Live capable games that won’t be housing various racists and hate-mongers, often the player finds him or herself entering a shouting match that has already begun, making enjoyment of the game impossible.  Thankfully Microsoft, while having one of the most intolerable online communities, also has some of the most effective and well implemented ways to rid yourself of players who continually use hateful communication, and while this effectively shields you from having to deal with the frustrating number of immature and ignorant users, it does nothing to actually solve the attitude problem of the community at whole, but what can be done?

Engaging someone who is yodeling obscenity and hate into your ear is by and large a waste of time, and there is little chance that the person won’t simply turn their ire towards you.  On top of that, it isn’t your job to teach these people how to be civilized beings, and the idea of sensitivity training held in the red base on Valhalla, or in the pre-match lobby of a Call of Duty 4 game is ridiculous at best.  The only viable solution is to simply ignore these people with various muting technology and hope that eventually they’ll either grow up or get bored and retire.  While some might see this as defeatist at heart, it is the only viable way to both protect the normal gamer from constant hate speech, and protect the first amendment rights of idiots and racists.

It could be hypothesized that our online games have become so realistic that they effectively dehumanize the participants, replacing the real image of a living person with that of a digital avatar, who it is much easier to speak to in a way that is hurtful or demeaning, but then the hate speech has only increased with the implementation of microphone chat during games, giving the inhuman representations the voices of real people, while the ignorant chat has grown more frequent and more fiery.

One can only look fearfully into the future and wonder where this sort of online behavior may lead as games become increasingly more realistic and more involved.  Who is to say that in the time of realistic virtual reality gamers won’t be terrorizing others in a frighteningly realistic simulation?  Who can really know what the effect of acting out aggressive behavior in a photo realistic virtual, and lawless reality will be on the human psyche.  It can be reasonably assumed that the anonymous and hate filled sections of the online gaming world are grooming a generation of people who are less empathetic, more aggressive, and more likely to do real world harm to someone than the people of a more simpler, less simulated life.  It is important to remember that regardless of moral, ethical, and religious beliefs, the rule of “do to others as you would have them do to you” should apply to all worlds, both true and created.

Outrun Online Arcade, the visually overhauled version of the classic Sega arcade game, will be hitting the Xbox Live Arcade service this week at 800 Microsoft points ($10.00).

The game is based on the 2006 Ps2, PsP, and Xbox title known as Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast and features 6 player online multiplayer.  The original Outrun was created by esteemed designer Yu Suzuki. The game was highly influential in both the graphical presentation of the “Super Scaler” technology used in Suzuki’s previous game Hang-On, and the physical presentation of it’s car shaped arcade cabinet.

No matter how good this game ends up being, it sure looks pretty!

Source: Major Nelson