The good, the bad, and the ugly on Half-Life 2: Episode One for the PC.
1) Graphics, Sound, & Gameplay: I group all of these into one because this is essentially the same game as Half-Life 2. They are all great but I don't feel like spending the time rewriting their reasons for being great. If you want to know them please refer to my review of Half-Life 2.
2) Story: For an expansion/add-on the story works well. The story in Half-Life 2 was a negative in that you have no idea what the h3ll you just did but you know you had a blast doing it. In Episode One you at least have a clear and understandable story line. The missions is simple, get out of Dodge! The building's going to blow and you need to get out along with the remaining few people.
The bad:
1) Game time: I realize this is a simple add-on but for $20 I would have liked to have received more than an hour / hour and a half of gameplay.
2) Challenge: This was not a very challenging group of missions. They also don't throw anything new at you in the way of enemies, traps, gadgets, or puzzles.
The ugly: - Found no bugs my once over.
Overall:
Half-Life 2: Episode One is good but after playing the game it "feels" like they took the last few scenes of the game and hacked them off so that later they can see another wave of money flow in. This is probably not the case but again I said it "feels" like it is. The ultimate way to judge this add-on, expansion, or episode (whatever you want to call it) is to see how it would have changed your opinion of the master game Half-Life 2. Episode One, had it been the ending of Half-Life 2, would have improved the game slightly. The ending would have been better than the abrupt ending to a very "what the heck happened here?" kind of story. I think $9.99 would have made me a lot happier with this release than double that which it is.
Bottom line is this is Half-Life 2 and all of us who love the series will get it. A review on this game is almost pointless!