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Episode Two: So Close We Can Taste It
Written by John Walker on October 8, 2007 at 7:42 pm.
Wednesday (to be renamed “Orangeboxday”) is approaching with a crazed inevitability, and we’re all out of control. So here’s something to make it worse, whetting your appetite while wetting your pants. Another exclusive screenshot of Episode Two.
Click pic for embiggenment.
Don’t forget that at 8:01am UK time, and 12:01am Pacific time Wednesday, as The Orange Box begins unlocking on your Steam account, Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s verdicts of both Episode Two and Portal go live. You’ll want something to do while Steam awakens and the final blob of downloading completes, so what better than our (completely spoiler-free) detailed opinion on both games.
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34Comment on this story — Share/save/Digg this story
Tags: episode-two, screenshot, The-Orange-Box, Valve
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SteveTheBlack says:
I won’t be able to play until about 9pm, stupid masters course! Well, there goes my evening then :)
October 8th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
John P (Katsumoto) says:
My new pc is coming on wednesday morning! unfortunately this means having to download everything from steam again. Life is?
October 8th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Cigol says:
I believe it is possible to back it all up if you have the means.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
O.G.N says:
I believe you can just copy your steam folder to the new machine and then delete the clientregisrty.blob file.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
John P (Katsumoto) says:
sounds promising! cheers guys!
October 8th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Andrew says:
There’s stuff on the http://www.steampowered.com Support section about transferring installations of Steam and their associated game libraries.
I did that recently so that I had Steam on a hard drive with enough space to actually download Bioshock.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Diogo Ribeiro says:
Lately I’ve been quite the cheap-o, so I probably won’t be getting Episode 2 immediately since I have other things to look out for and haven’t had the chance to play EP1 yet. I’ll probably wait around until the inevitability of demand produces some crazed pack that combines all these episodes in a neat, tight package that sits stylishly next to my HL2 Collector’s Edition.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
The_B says:
Grr and Arg.
I mean, I’m not waiting quite as long as SteveTheBlack, but I have lectures all morning, and a meeting at 2PM.
However, by 3PM I hope to be playing. But it’s still seven hours! …I think this is where I become incredibly selfish and err… tinker with Valve’s servers again… ¬_¬
October 8th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Seniath says:
I have a really hodge podge day on Wednesday, busy 10-11, 1-2 and 4-5, leaving little time to really sit down and play till later on. Which, I guess, will give me time to play Portal. Tho I really do fear it’s going to be a case of “just one more level”….
October 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Monkfish says:
Mmm. That is a tasty screenshot.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Chis says:
Already preloaded this and Portal, ready to go. Looks just as excellent as Ep. 1, and can’t wait. Will be a nice birthday present. :)
October 8th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
roBurky says:
Fuck. I hated fighting the striders. Not happy to see them return.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Thelps says:
I’m quietly considering playing Episode 2 in a single sitting like I did with Episode 1, to get the full magnitude of the experience. Then again I don’t know how long Episode 2 will be compared to 1. Regardless, if I want to do that I’ll need to put off playing until about 3pm on Wednesday, since before then I have a few things that need doing. I really can’t wait though, from the teaser trailer and these screenshots I’ve been drooling over this game for the best part of a year. Soon all that anticipation will be validated…
October 8th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Ryan says:
Thelps: a couple of places including PC Gamer’s US review have pegged it as around 1-2 hours longer than Episode 1.
and, roBurky: but now you have sticky strider bomb things! Huzzah!
October 8th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
John P (Katsumoto) says:
Here’s a question - Ep 2 has updated the graphics, right? Added a load of fancy shiz? Is HL2 itself updated at all with the orange box, or does that remain the same as it always was?
October 8th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Ryan says:
Far as I know it’s just an incremental upgrade, not a huge leap ahead- just like Ep 1 added HDR and some improvements to facial animation and textures for NPCs, this is just a little bit of spit and polish. I don’t think vanilla Half-Life 2 has been updated (except for including the latest patched version), which is a shame- it’d be wonderful if after the whole episodic release is over they released a version of HL2 with a commentary track at least.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Mario Granger says:
Updates to the Source engine include:
Multicore support for dividing the processing of various subsystems (particle effects, AI processing, etc)
Updated HDR processing
New renderer (this is what allows all of the wide open spaces, as the old renderer simply wasn’t up to task in that regard)
New physics system, allowing large scale physics interactions
New lighting and shadowing system
And depth of field and motion blur effects.
So its actually alot more tech additions than Ep 1, by far.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Frosty840 says:
I do wish Valve had been more explicit about the release date being a worldwide release date.
I’ve been fully expecting yet another three day wait while the European version once again waits until the arse-end of the week to let me into the game.
Not that I’m saying it’s Valve’s fault, you understand, but more that the games that *don’t* make the nature of their release dates are at fault and that Valve should be advertising their worldwide release date as the positive advertising point that it is.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:31 am
John Walker says:
Valve always have though. It’s the loonies like Take 2 who prevented a simultaneous release for BioShock. Valve answers to no publisher.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Thiefsie says:
Well let’s just hope it is a little more engaging than Ep2, and also that Ep 3 won’t take so long to make???
Another 2 years and I wonder how the source engine is holding up. hmmmm
October 9th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Thiefsie says:
That said I haven’t the bandwidth to preload Ep2 until Friday (when it resets) so I’m going to be playing with portal in the meantime and trying to ignore (and of course I’ll fail miserably) what everyone is saying about ep2
October 9th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Thiefsie says:
Is it just me or is that stalker friendly?!?!?!? Doesn’t look like its attacking, and well Gordon isn’t shooting at that present time either?!?!
October 9th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Frosty840 says:
Valve need to not patch things on the 9th that are due to be released on the tenth.
I almost died when I noticed all the new stuff from the Orange Box was due for an update this morning…
October 9th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Martin Coxall says:
Is it just me or is that stalker friendly?!?!?!? Doesn’t look like its attacking, and well Gordon isn’t shooting at that present time either?!?!
I don’t think it’s friendly- I think it’s dead.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:04 am
dwm says:
Cunningness: after the will-it won’t-it unlock stress caused by the TF2 beta, Value have added a countdown timer to the Steam “View Pre-load Info” page..
21hrs, 25mins, and 21secs, and counting..
October 9th, 2007 at 10:35 am
phuzz says:
Is it me, or has the HUD been updated? I’m sure mine (in 4:3 rather than widescreen mind) doesn’t have the word ALT, or the little picture of the grenades next tot the main ammo. Or maybe I’m loosing it a bit.
Anyway, I’ve got to work tomorrow, but right now I’m sat at work coughing and sneezing like a bastard, so if I don’t turn up tomorrow no-one will be surprised….hmmmm
October 9th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Jonathan Burroughs says:
I read somewhere that Gordon Freeman dies in this one.
October 9th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Monkfish says:
“I read somewhere that Gordon Freeman dies in this one.”
Several times, probably.
October 9th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
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Can hardly wait - but that’s precisely what I’m going to have to do. Ho hum.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:56 pm