Anybody played it yet? Just wondering what it's like.

I'm beginning to play the original half life so i can work my way through all of them. Can't wait. In HL 1 i'm up to stage 7!

It's basically more of the same it you've played the original HL2 and Ep1 but with Valves high standards of greatness it's not a problem. Bit longer than Ep1 by an hour or so, more varied in what you can do and has an absolute epic final confrontation. Worst feeling is knowing it'll probably be another 1 1/2 years til Ep3.

1.5 years... ouch

Just to speculate:

Anyone else imagine Episode three will have the portal gun?

My guess is that you find it sometime when you make your way to the Borealis.

And as for location, I'd guess it's to be The Arctic or Antarctica.

I'd think that it's in the Arctic, I'm sure that is was mentioned somewhere but may be wrong about that.

The inclusion of the Portal Gun would be just be brilliant although not too sure how it'll fit in. I'll just be happy having a fully charged Gravity Gun again.

I'm going to guess that there are plenty of people here who have played the whole Half Life series.. how important are the storyline/events of Half Life 1 to understanding Half Life 2, 'cause I have both on my computer but Half Life 1 is kinda annoying me already and I'm barely into the game

(didn't stand a chance against the first non-face-attached headcrab because I was left with about 4 health after getting mauled by the ones that were on faces a couple of times, and the last auto-save was at a point after my heavy damage-taking)

NB It's not annoying on an "I can't do it" basis.. I doubtless wouldn't find it hard to replay the level and kick ass a little more effectively, but damn that felt like too long doing not a lot at the beginning of the game. Like a cutscene where you're required to walk around occasionally (hence precluding the "go make a sandwich" option)

Well HL starts of a bit slow but it really does pick it up pretty quickly, I didn't play it or really remember it for the story (I only really looked into it when The Orange Box came out) but it is one of those must play games if only because Valves game design is second to none.

The only things you'd probably get out of it anyway is how Gordon became involved with the Gman and what exactly happened at Black Mesa in terms of story.

yeah.. might just read the Wikipedia article to get the basics then play HL2.. maybe come back to 1 later.

I'm actually playing through Half Life 1 now. I started HL2 awhile back but though i should play through the first game just to get some back story. Also its considered one of the greatest games of all time, so i wanted to see that for myself. I'm enjoying it though.

I can't wait to get the Orange Box, I decided to get The Witcher instead for Xmas.

8 months later... and I've played through the entire Half-Life series thus far, all in order   Valve rock... so very much. (For the record, that 8 months included very large gaps, it didn't take me anywhere near that long)

Now thinking of going back to do the achievements in Episode 2 - squashing grubs and breaking web caches and sending gnomes into space and such.