I’m a huge Half-Life fan. If you’ve listened to our podcasts, I’ve pretty much compared every shooter we’ve ever talked about to either Half-Life or Half-Life 2. I believe that Half-Life 2 is the greatest pc shooter ever. The original Half-Life was great in it’s own right. It spawned Team Fortress, Counterstrike and basically the whole mod movement. Half-Life 2 not only improved on the original in terms of gameplay with the introduction of the gravity gun, which is still copied ad nauseum, but it improved on the narrative as well.  Then came Half-Life 2: Episode 1, which was also great for what it was, but now…

Enter Half-Life2: Episode 2. On the PC, er, I mean the Xbox 360.

 Gordon Freeman, the last time I saw you, well “not saw you,” maybe “saw through you,” We were kicking Combine butt on my PC in Half-Life 2: Episode 1. We were shooting head crabs with the greatest of ease, with my trusty mouse and custom gaming zboard. Ahhh, those were the days…

Now you’re on the console. This may get a little awkward. I haven’t done this before.

Be gentle.

I’ve got to say, I was a bit apprehensive about playing Half Life 2: Episode 2 on a console. I came away extremely surprised, in a good way, not in a, “where am I and why is that guy next to me wearing a Batman costume way.” Don’t ask.

To my surprise, playing on the console didn’t throw me off one bit. I was expecting a little adjustment period, but settling into Episode 2 was like greeting an old friend. You get right back into the swing of things immediately. First with the gravity gun and you just work your way up from there. In fact, I thought that the gravity gun was much easier to use with the Xbox controller, than with the mouse and keyboard.

Rumble? Friggin’ sweet. Gravity gun? Left trigger pull, right trigger shoot…. feels smooth. Alrighty then.

Good times.

For anyone that played the previous games, the highlights are always the defending portions of the game, and Episode 2 does not disappoint. Early in the game, you stumble upon a resistance base that was made at the center of a train station where five tunnels meet. Unfortunately, Antlions attack the base often and to defend it, they have two auto turrets to counter the antlions. The only problem, well, there’s five tunnels and only two turrets. Needless to say, it just escalates from there to a frenetic battle to keep the turrets moving and the antlions at bay. It was friggin’ awesome.

Welcome back old friend… I ain’t talking about the guy in the Batman suit. *shudder*

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