The best Half-Life game on the Source Engine.
The Story obviously moves on from Episode one and even shows you where your going next which i wont spoil for you. I think HL really does have one of the best stories in a FPS and it's told soo well in this games and really makes youc are for the character, for example you still want Alyx and Gordon to kiss lol. Dog is obviously back in this episode and he's great when you see him come back killing a Strider it's fantastic and cinematic. You'll also have the GMAN return and he's a great character you don't know anything about yet.
The level design is fantastic with great pacing from driving to being on foot and then the defensive and offensive missions. The cave levels at the start to the industrial parts and then the open countryside parts all play amazingly and theres not one part you'll hate. I love the new vehicles it's really kool looking and sounding and makes for great drives and soo much better than in previous games.
The weapons are the only part that lets the game down with all of them being soo dated and few of them, most of them still from 1998's HL so you want something new apart from the gravity gun and a revolver. However it doesn't ruin the gameplay but you just want new weapons cause atm they are lame.
This game just offers more gameplay over the previous ones and even adds all the best parts from them and then improves on them with tweaks. How epic it feels aswel is just amazing because they've done soooo well to update source with nice touches like motion blurr.
The graphics still are the best around for FPS games with sooo much detail and fantastic models and just soo many improvements over the previous games. I can't believe how a near 4 year old engine looks sooo good these days and i still have moments when i think "WOW" and that says somethig for the engine.
The sounds are my fave with great voice overs and sound effects. It's all acted perfectly and no voices become annoying apart from Alyx sometimes when you get out of the car and she keeps telling you to get in. I love all the sound effects that come with the game too and the sirens are my personal fave.
So Episode 2 really suprised me to actually being fantastic after the letdown that was Episode 1. It's the best HL game on source by far and some people may say it's too short but it's about 6 hours long and thats the same as Bioshock lol.