One of the most notable games to break cover at the recent Leipzig Games Convention was Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Developer Valve chose the event to demo the middle chunk of its foray into episodic gaming - by means of a satisfyingly meaty video showing various gameplay aspects of the game.
But before we drill down into the nitty-gritty, let's examine some salient facts. Firstly, Half-Life 2: Episode Two isn't just going to consist of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. As well as the eponymous episode, the bundle (available as boxed copy or a single, presumably massive, Steam download) will also contain the multiplayer-only shooter Team Fortress 2 and the bizarre mini-game Portal, which evolved from a tech-demo into a self-contained entity. The package will arrive in the first quarter of 2007, for Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as PC.
NEW TECHNOLOGY As is its wont, Valve has shoe-horned some new technology into its Source engine especially for Episode Two. Namely, what it calls a "cinematic physics" engine - which it illustrated by showing a huge bridge buckling and collapsing under an explosive assault - a reworked particle system, a new foliage system and uprated shadow-mapping, allowing, for example, a flashlight to cast a more accurate shadow.
STORYLINE When it came to revealing the general thrust of Episode Two's storyline, Valve proved less reticent than expected. In general, according to a spokesman, you are: "Dealing with the consequences of what you did in Episode One - when you destroyed the citadel, you exposed a new hierarchy in the Combine. Also, the G-Man features prominently - he has a relationship with Alex this time, not just Gordon."
Valve head honcho Gabe Newell exposed further details of Episode Two's storyline: "The overall progression of the three episodes is that the G-Man is losing control of you. In Half-Life he made you; in Half-Life 2, he used you for his own purposes, which are still mysterious to you; and now he's starting to lose control.
"At the same point that he's losing control, you've come to the attention of other forces: the Combine hierarchy is now saying: "We thought that Earth was under our thumb, and this one person is being such a pain in the ass for us. So we're going to have to pay more attention to this person." Newell also revealed that Dog plays a much more prominent role in Episode Two than in any previous Half-Life 2 game.
ENVIRONMENT One radical difference between Episode Two and its predecessors is the environment: the game largely takes place in open countryside and forests, in and through which the Combine pursue you, so you spend much of the game in vehicles, although the demo suggested that you will probably make frequent stops at abandoned houses to stock up on health packs and ammo. It's not all outside, though: the demo began in a labyrinthine cave complex, liberally infested with giant spider-webs.
And just because the game takes place in wide-open spaces, don't expect that to equate to a lack of enemies - Valve ramped up the particle and weapons engines to accommodate unprecedented amounts of Striders and their Combine ilk.
WEAPONS The demo didn't go into much detail about new weapons, although it did suggest weapons may often be in short supply, as considerable use was made of the Gravity Gun. However, we did see one new weapon, the Strider Buster: a sort of magnetic mine which you can attach to Striders' backs, and then explode by shooting it.
TEAM FORTRESS 2 If initial impressions are anything to go by, Team Fortress 2 stands a chance of stealing the status as everyone's favourite multiplayer PC game from Counter-Strike. The first thing you notice about it is its outrageous graphical style - sort of 3D meets cel animation in a 1950s, Max Fleischer manner.
Team Fortress 2 is all about how the different character classes play off against each other - thus you get, among others, the Heavy - ponderous, armed with a massive machine-gun; the Spy - who can make himself invisible; the Sniper; the Scout - who moves like a speeded-up film; the Demoman - loaded with explosives; and the Soldier - who can rocket-jump. The overall effect, even though the game has no semblance of a plot, is often laugh-out-loud funny.
PORTAL Portal is an odd one - to be honest, having seen the demo, we're still not sure we can get our heads around it. Apparently, it began as a study for a new weapon that could be inserted in a new iteration of Half-Life 2, and ended up as a full-blown game.
The demo we saw takes place entirely in an interior setting, and features crates which can be used to open doors as long as you can make them fall onto triggers. The only weapon you have is a portal gun, which blows round holes in solid objects, and seems to let you defy gravity, as it looks as though you can define both entries and exits.
The game even has a storyline, of sorts, relayed by a disembodied female voice. Clearly, Valve is keen to get it out as soon as possible, in order to let people see for themselves what it is like. But the company was raving about how it marks "An entirely new form of gaming". We'll have a hands-on report on Portal on these pages shortly.
Portal has been developed from narbacular drop, a student project.
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/
the team behind this where then hired by Valve, and they have created Portal, a version of Drop in the Halflife universe (and using the infinitly better engine)
Dude on the first post spams every thread with his site... Ban?
Anyway, this article offers nothing new... The Leipzig convention has already been covered on CVG hasn't it? Is this an article from PC Zone that got a delayed transfer or something? I don't think it was necessary anyway...
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