MIT graduates nowadays learn science, technology, weapons training and anti-alien, anti-terrorist techniques :)
Since talking only about Half Life 2 Ep 2 I will center my views on this game only.
The story is extremely compelling, I simply found it very hard to pull away from the computer to do anything else, even sleep because I wanted to see what happened next, watching in the distance several enemies moving quickly in a glimpse makes you either hurry up or try to stop and reverse the ambush on the combine soldiers. Its extremely engaging, as events take you deeper inside the personality of the npc's. You get hooked to them and care for them in a way few games have managed to do so plus the voice acting is excellent.
The game play is also noted for its excellent graphics, motions and the smoothness of every single moving part of the game, being either a rock or your guns as you run-hide-crawl-sneak in any possible way to gain advantage over the enemy, 1st person shooters usually give me a headache after a while, specially indoors with low-lit rooms and hallways, I end cranking up the gamma or brightness, fortunately Ep2 gives you enough light and gloom everywhere (even indoors) to avoid this issue, and better now since you are outdoors you get to explore much more.
Many changes on the overhauled HL2 engine being used on Ep 2 make great visual improvements (Yes people its not just the Half life 2 engine, its also overhauled based on it) alien splatters and affects are a great welcome making it more 'real' plus now weapon hits get to 'blind' you a second and its very hard to hide from an enemy that saw you entering a building since now they will follow you or pummel the building you are hiding in.
My only 3 complaints that prevent the game from reaching a 10 are:
1.- Game tends to crash for no reason, it suddenly freezes in a loop and only way to exit is to reset the computer (for anyone asking: Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 on intel mobo, 2GbDDR2, evga8800gts) and not even task manager saves me since Ep2 remains on top of desktop.
2.- Game was too short, longer than Ep 1 yes but still too short, spent more time playing HL 2 game than the Ep 1 and 2,
3.- All HL2 games kind of 'expect' for the player to already know what happened in black meza but I have no idea yet, a little background or cinematics of the original HL that got to the events in HL2 and afterwards would be welcome.
All in all, I can barely wait for Ep 3 and the HL2 conclusion.
LH.