As most of the gaming world will have been aware for the 24-48 hours by now, because the majority of them will have released some form of fluid with joy, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, along with Portal and Team Fortress 2 Final version has been released from Steam, with the following things going to start happening:

Someone will race to the finish of HL2: EP2 on the uber hard setting so they can have an erection over how quickly they did it

Other people will attempt to do the exact same thing because they want to feel just as important

Someone will slate the game because it wasn’t worth waiting for and they will carry on playing with their Lego

and all the while, normal life will carry on.

Ah, the endless cycle of release day silliness, will people ever change? The answer is no and well if they did change, I wouldn’t have a rather excellent opener for this post. Now I feel very pleased with myself for exploiting these silly people for a cheap line about an erection, I will continue with the reason why I am posting this:

I have indeed played the first bit of HL2: EP2 along with taking some time playing through the game, Portal (see where the title came in, and you thought it would be a post filled with something that we could all take to our hearts and change the world forever, oh my poor readers, how bad you must feel now! Do you not see? Arrrrrr.) and I must admit, I am rather impressed with what I have seen so far. I must admit, the majority of my brief playing time that I have afforded myself so far has been in Portal and We will start there first.

Portal is where you get to solve puzzles via the gift of using portals to move to places you couldn’t reach or move objects from one point to another with the help of the gravity gun, err I mean the portal gun that in no way resembles the gravity gun from HL2 except maybe they just put in in white plastic or something.

There is something amiss it seems with the computer, as it goes off on one ever so often, talking silly. And there are a couple of secret areas which seem to suggest you are not the first person to go through, and they have been driven quite mad by the computer woman crazed thing or not. I don’t know, maybe if I paid attention to 23472: a MySpace Oddity or whatever that film was called, I could see the signs better.

And also you spend a lot of time going to different puzzles in a lift. Nice lift. It has a floor and a ceiling. Seems to be standard… That’s about as exciting as that gets. But it’s actually quite an enjoyable test, and well, If I can get through a fair number of the puzzles on my first short jaunt on the thing, the rest of you should fly through with ease. Unless you have no hands, in which case, you’re buggered.

Never mind, HL2: EP2 should serve as a diversion from your handless nightmare. You see, as you left Episode 1, the city was blowing up and you were on the back end of a train leaving the place, but a wee bit too late it seems.

Never mind because guess what? You survive!! Well done you! You must feel very good at this news! Well, in a way, of course you do, otherwise what would the game contain, a bit of dark here and there and that’s it. Not exactly keeping the audience in their seats.

So moving on from that slightly silly albeit “actually he has a point there” point, you get a wizzy video showing all the good stuff you did before in Episode 1 and then after you are in the wreckage of the train and Alyx (the woman who they have written into to seemingly go for your character and want to continue the Human race with, but she’s too shy to say) frees you.

And then you carry on as before moving to a different place and finding that you have to get data to Daddy and the scientist guy. And then I was shocked. You got glimpses of the mini-stalker but it’s when you first see one and what it does, it appears it’s brown trousers time. And you have to start fighting against Ant lions in their own home which is nice.

That’s as far as I got really. I will venture forth into the wilderness, dear friends, fight the good fight against evil and chaos and maybe I’ll post a picture or 6. And I don’t think there are that many spoilers in this post for those, but if there are, tough because i said so, for I am great and all knowing (Warning: Believing the previous statement may be hazardous to your health).

So for now dear campers, I leave you with a smile on my face and bits of food on my trousers. Enjoy!