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Published : September 27, 2007 |
Author : James Wallis | |||||||||
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GUIDES: Half Life 2: Episode 2 Walkthrough (Half Life 2: Episode 2 Orange Box STRATEGY GUIDE X360 PS3)
GAMEGUIDEDOG GUIDE LOCATED HERE: http://www.wonderdogsoftware.com/GUIDES_9/HL2OB.htm FULL VIDEO GAME GUIDE COMES TO WDS: OCTOBER 2007 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. 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 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 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 TEAM FORTRESS 2 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 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.
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Visitor's Comments !
 Posted by GameGuideDog.com Member on October 04, 2008 |
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Fleet2 continues on path
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