While remaining true to the franchise, it doesn't transcend much and leaves the gamer slightly disappointed.
Well fact is, after 7 hours of playing (I like to fancy the environment) on hard, I can honestly say that HL2 was a much better game.
First off, the game starts off a bit slow, but picks up the slack right away as we're re-introduced to the super-gravity gun. There were a lot of cool things about the level and the AI seemed genuinely more challenging (though not entirely).
The game picks up and slows down almost consistently (paradox?) through each and every level. By the end of it all, I knew it was about to end shortly, but I dind't get that feeling that I did in HL2.
The problem that I had with the game was that it didn't have the flare of HL2. It had some fun moments, but every time I beat a level, it didn't quite sate my thirst, nor did it leave me in awe. I felt let down on a few occasions and a lot of it seemed very ordinary.
I thought the dialogue was very witty and having alyx fighting side by side was a bit more fun than the solo missions that we were so used to in HL2; however, the puzzles were easy, the gameplay was good, but not thrilling, and I really didn't mind taking a break every now and then to do something else, which was never the case with HL2.
In the end, it's worth the price, but in terms of gameplay, it was a bit of a letdown.