Episode Two. Epic. New shadow effect. Motion blur is nice. The framerate is better (although I’m on a new card). Overall, too overwhelming to review. Those who would want to hear about it already know about it.

I don’t think I liked the pre-rendered recap at the beginning. It’s a bit of a dated “full motion video thing” but I understand the plot and technical reasons for doing so. If they had a realtime view of the previous chapter, the engine would have to load all the old textures and it would be problematic changing scenes quickly. And changing scenes quickly is very necessary to get through the recap as fast as possible. When I sat down to play, I put my finger to my chin and thought “Hmm where was I? Wasn’t I flying through the air in a train after being blown back by an alien plasma blast thingy?” I wasn’t sure but Valve took care of the continuity. Good job Valve, again you reinforce my faith that you are the premiere video game shops in the world.

If Valve and Blizzard could have a baby, I’d name it ‘Sire’.

I’m impressed with the models. So much so that I had to slow down the game pace a bit to enjoy it more. If you go into Options -> Keyboard -> Enable Developer’s Console, you can hit tilde and type hl2_walkspeed 50 and then ALT will make you walk a bit more realistically. Knowing that Episode 3 could be a year off, I really don’t want to burn through this chapter.

Portal was fun. It was “super mega future hyper face melting” fun. Gabe said that Valve is “just starting out with this kind of gameplay”, I’m happy about that. He left his email for feedback but I’m not the type that jumps up for the BBQ line after the announcement that the burgers are done. I’m sure the world will give him the same feedback that I would.

Tomorrow I’m going Apple picking, it’s perfect fall weather for that. Next weekend is another film festival competition. I think this will be my last one. I had to cancel plans for a C++ class at NoVA and I’d rather get that gamedev goal of mine rolling starting next spring. Our IGDA chapter had a perfect meeting topic (gamedev classes in the area) and somehow I missed it. Instead, I’m working on ideas for a revamped IGDA website which includes working with the San Franscisco chapter since they seem to have the same functional design changes that the DC site sorely needs.