Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Half Life 2: Aftermath coming soon

An add-on expansion for the greatest video game in the western world; Valve's Half-Life 2 entitled Aftermath will be available in late April it was announced today.

Unlike the original Half-Life's expansions; Opposing Force and Blue Shift where you took control of US Marine Corporal Shepard and the Black Mesa Security Officer Barney respectively, this expansion for Half-Life 2 will actually continue on the game's story from where you were left hanging in the explosive and spectacular ending to the greatest piece of interactive entertainment ever conceived.

Valve seem keen to outdo themselves with the add-on and they've revealed a little of what's going on:

"You've done critical damage to the Citadel. The whole place is going to go up, taking out City 17 and what's in its immediate radius. You and Alyx are leading the flight from the city getting up close and personal with some of the creatures and sights from the end of the game," a Valve representative said.

It was also noted that a good portion of the characters from the sequel will be present in the new episode and that Alyx and other allies, learn new abilities to help you that have interesting gameplay repercussions. Your enemies, both old and new, haven't been resting either."

And of course the characters, especially Alyx, will be playing a more significant role this time: "The biggest regret we had about Half-Life 2 was that you didn't spend enough time with the major characters. Players spent small sections of the game with allies, and interactions with them were fairly constrained. As a result, this is the first challenge we set out to tackle in Aftermath,”

As Aftermath plays out, expect a few questions to the secrets of the Half-Life universe to be answered, although hurting our brain matter new questions and mysteries are to be raised.

I hope they include those cool High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting effects they released with Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast in October, those where certainly some of the best effects work I've ever seen in a game. Valve affirmed that because it's an episode "it's intentionally shorter than Half-Life 2" and will be delivered through Steam (and after the split from Vivendi, EA Games have taken up the duties to sell the DVD's to the boggers without broadband) from April 24th.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I DO NOT CARE! Thanks to the greed of valve and the idiocy of steam I cannot play half life without updating it every bloody time because of security precautions from a company that makes millions anyway, its fine if you have broadband but if you don't you can spend up to half an hour waiting for security updates to play a bloody game you bought anyway, I actually took Half life off my laptop in disgust and hell even when i finally get broadband in my area I may not bother to reinstall it , I get the feeling i'm not the only dial up customer who feels this way, its a disgrace that we have to suffer for valves security failings and had to buy the game before learning what a stupid flaw this was!

Anonymous said...

If the Aftermath levels are as half as good as The Lost Coast then we're sorted!

Major General Creedon said...

Steam upset a lot of people at the start, but most of them have broadband now and they changet their tune once they discovered that they didn't have to go looking for new content and patches- it automatically updates! You WILL reinstall HL2 when broadband goes out the country as far as you and you WILL love it.

Anonymous said...

I've heard that the Sin Episodes are going to be delivered to Steam too!

Major General Creedon said...

I think you're right. I'll post when it's official.