It's striders, striders everywhere in the latest iteration of the Half-Life franchise, Valve's much-delayed Episode Two.

Part of the Orange Box mega-collection, I'd wager that most players will get around to Episode Two after playing their hearts out in Portal and Team Fortress 2.  And it wouldn't be surprising, either, since the other additions to the Orange Box represent significant new play opportunities while Episode Two is a solid game built with an aging game engine.

I was surprised to learn that I was one of the few people who liked Episode One better than Episode Two.  Both games have shortcomings, the most obvious of which is that it's a bit ridiculous to wait a full development cycle to play a game that lasts a handful of hours.  But while Episode Two is slightly longer than the first episode, it tends to drag on in points and in general feels more "videogamey" than the rest of the Half-Life 2 franchise, adding, among other things, an Achievements system inspired no doubt by XBox games.  Moreover, it doesn't significantly advance gameplay like Episode One's co-op modes.

Driving sequences, which I disliked in the original Half-Life 2, abound in this game.  At their best, such as in the final Strider battle, the car adds to the frantic pace of the mission.  But in other parts of the game it just seems an excuse to show off the Central European vistas painstakingly crafted by the level designers.  Unfortunately, while nice, the outdoor environments can't compare with the scale of Crytek's Far Cry and Crysis offerings.

The supposed "new weapons" are in fact a little boring.  The so-called "strider buster," which the player tosses through the air with his trusty gravity gun, seems cool on paper, but Valve undercuts the idea by having the player use another weapon in exactly the same way earlier in the game.  To add insult to injury, the enemies in these two sequences are invulnerable to damage coming from the rest of Gordon Freeman's weapons, despite the fact they could be destroyed easily with RPGs and the like in the rest of the franchise.

The strongest part of the game may be the storyline, which moves the series towards the ultimate conclusion in Episode Three.  We learn more about the Combine's activities on earth as well as see what becomes of the portal opened at the close of Half-Life 2.  Along the way, the slug-like Combine advisors make an appearance, as do the "mini-striders"--the deadly hunters.

The game is good while it lasts, but Valve probably made a good decision by bundling Episode Two in the Orange Box.  If a hardcore gamer was given the choice between playing Episode Two and the likes of Bioshock, Halo 3, or even Gears of War on the 360, I'm afraid Gordon Freeman would be in the loser's column.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Sometimes, the hype is real.

Gears of War has been heralded as the greatest game available for the X-Box 360, if not one of the best games of all time.  Of the games I've played on the 360, only Gears of War fully pushes the console to its potential and leaves me coming back for more.

While on its face Gears is yet another first-person shooter pitting the player against a monstrous alien menace (ala Quake II & IV), the game adds a welcome strategic dimension in its use of cover.  To play through the game one absolutely must hide behind walls, barricades, and other battlefield obstructions.  Coupled with fierce AI, Gears' gameplay mechanics add an intensity to the firefights few games can match.

Aside from the use of cover, Gears is not a terribly original game, and instead borrows the best design elements of several other first person shooters.  Like other recent games (e.g. Rainbow Six:  Vegas), the characters in Gears lack a life meter but instead can endure a certain amount of damage before dying.  However, if the player can get into cover after taking heavy fire, he heals quickly.  In co-op mode, moreover, a player becomes stunned after passing a certain damage threshold, and must wait for an ally to come and revive him.

Another touch familiar to most shooter fans is a Halo-style restriction on the number of weapons each "Gear" (as the soldiers in the game are called) may carry.  Like the use of cover, this encourages strategic thinking.  Thankfully, when ammo is low or enemies are too close, one of the weapons doubles as a "combat chainsaw" -- complete with gory special effects.

Visually, Gears is amazing, and accomplishes in real-time what a prior generation of games could only show in pre-rendered cut-scenes.  Character design and the environments are equally excellent, and give Gear a feel that is equal parts war movie, horror movie, and sci-fi action movie.  The Unreal Engine has always been excellent, but it's never looked better than this.  If there's any complaint to be made, it's that the game is far too dark, and many players will turn up the brightness just to navigate their surroundings.

For all its gaming glory, Gears falls short from perfect in a couple respects.  First, it is over far too quickly, even on higher difficulty settings.  A dedicated pair of players in co-op mode can tear through the game in a single day, while casual gamers will see the game completed in a single week or less.  Second, the storyline and character development are next to nonexistent.  Most gamers have come to expect this, but it's a pity that despite huge advances in sight and sound, the story in first person shooters remains stuck in the past.

Play through the campaign just once and you will see why Gears of War has rightly earned its place as the king of the 360 for the past eight months.  Gamers will have to wait until September to see if Halo 3 can dethrone Gears, but with news of a sequel, it's same to assume that the Gears franchise will be a force to be reckoned with.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5 stars

Besides giving some older DirectX 9 games a whirl after getting my new Inspiron, I also revisited Doom 3, which I had previously criticized during a review of Half-Life 2. Having the hardware to run Doom 3 the way it was meant to be played, I've decided that the game is a lot more fun, though it still takes second place to Half-Life 2. Character design, game maps, textures, and lighting are all wonderful. But the main reason Doom 3 loses to the competition is in the scripting of the game events. Playing back through Doom 3 again, I was bored by the sameness of the monster-in-a-box way of presenting the player with things to kill. Also, since the player is always going it alone in the game, it feels less like an "experience" and more like an arcade game. I can understand having to hold off bad guys long enough for my friends to find us a way out of a room -- it's an old conceit, but it works -- but why should doors magically open after I kill three waves of trites? These gripes aside, Doom 3 can really grab the player's attention. Playing it with headphones on and the lights down low can actually make the game too intense! I've just started the expansion pack, and I'm eager to see if it breaks from the shooting gallery dynamic of the original installment.

Far Cry isn't a new game for many gamers, but thanks to a recent laptop upgrade it's new for me, and though it's old, the game still manages to impress with beautiful outdoor vistas that makes the player feel like he or she is taking a trip to the island from "Lost." A pity, then, that the splendid jungle environment is the best thing Far Cry has to offer, because the rest of the game -- from the story, to the AI, to the character models -- falls far short of expectations.

Whether stalking through the bush with a sniper rifle or taking a Hummer for a ride cross-country, Far Cry's "outside world" is as good as everyone says it is -- and then some. The spartan wilderness scenes of Half-Life 2 and desolate landscape of Quake IV just can't compare. The Halo games come close at points, but they lack the vegetation that makes Far Cry so damn believable. A riverboat sequence later in the game was tailor-made for your Apocalypse Now fantasies, and the island-hopping maps are similarly a delight. Little touches are added to increase verisimilitude, from the scopes that reflect the environment to the tree frogs and birds you run into in the jungle. On the other hand, the interior environments -- maps, textures, the whole shebang -- fall short of the graphical goodness offered by Far Cry's rivals. This, alone, isn't enough to bring the game down a notch, but it's not the only limitation in this iteration of Crytek's game engine.

The next strike against the game: Character models are often fugly, especially the monsters encountered in the second half. Overall, Far Cry's cast of villains and heroes lack both the distinctiveness of Doom 3's characters and the facial animation of Half-Life 2, and instead have a "console" feel ala 2002's Red Faction II. Character animation is likewise limited and choppy, with an exception being the main character's animations, which are more realistic than the animations found in many first person games. Strangely, the unevenness between animations also extends to vehicles, as the player gets the realistic feeling of being bounced around by waves on the water or hills on the ground, while enemies, for their part, seem to "glide" across the landscape in their vehicles. (The patrol boat is a particular offender in this department.)

The AI is also nothing to write home about. Not only are the enemies really dumb, they also cheat. Any guard in the game can usually see Jack Carver (that's you) coming from miles away and start firing at you with deadly accuracy. Sentries with rocket launchers are disgustingly accurate in their shots at a distance, which is sure to annoy many players considering that when Jack wields the rocket launcher he's lucky to hit something 50 meters away. And now the dumb part, there are points where the player can safely snipe from towers or rocky outcroppings while the enemies run around like caffeine-addicted ants. While helicopter gunships did sometimes come by to strafe me, not once did an enemy try to climb up a ladder to get me in a tower, and and in the event that one of them was waiting for me at the base of the ladder, a simple grenade toss took care of him. This is not to say that the game is easy. In typical European fashion, many levels toward the end are monstrously hard, and many players will cheat to get through. (I know I did.)

Music is about average for an action game, but sound effects are hit and miss. Weapons, vehicles, and the jungle all sound great. Fire a gun in an enclosed space and it can actually hurt your ears if the volume is loud enough! Also, in a nod to Saving Private Ryan, a near miss from explosives will knock out the player's hearing for a short time. Voice acting, however, is pretty lame. Jack's sarcastic, often whiny Gen Y voice in no way suggests a special forces soldier, and listening to him speak made me wish Far Cry had offered a silent hero like so many action games. The game's bad guys are also annoying to listen to, and their taunts sometimes reminded me of pro wrestlers rather than mercenaries.

Of course, even good actors have trouble with bad dialogue, so I can't fault the voice actors too much. Bottom line: Far Cry's plot is a turkey. It borrows heavily from movies -- for instance, The Island of Dr. Moreau -- and other games and hopes the player doesn't notice. Except for some dumb, dumb plot developments at the end, most of the game's "twists" can be spotted well in advance. Finally, the ending of the game has earned its rightful place as one of the worst game endings of the decade, at least compared to the difficulty -- insane difficulty -- the player must go through to get there.

Despite my criticisms leveled against the game, I still intend to give the next installments a shot on the X-Box 360. The jungle keeps calling me back.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Half-Life 2: Episode One is more than an expansion pack ... and less than one too. Nonetheless, it's a fun-packed download for anyone who liked the original game and cares to play around in the Half-Life universe for a couple more days.

Allow me to explain: in a typical expansion pack, such as Opposing Force for the original Half-Life, new weapons and enemies are introduced to the player during the course of a self-contained storyline. Episode One differs from this formula in a number of ways. There are no new weapons in Episode One, and the new villains are few, but extremely memorable. The Stalkers were just plain creepy, while the Zombine -- a grenade-wielding Combine soldier overcome by a headcrab -- offers both a formidible foe and comic relief. Lastly, in contrast to other expansion packs, Episode One is first and foremost an episodic affair, so one shouldn't play the game hoping for understanding and resolution after the last headcrab is splattered against a wall.

In terms of gameplay, Episode One can be likened to a smorgasboard of the best Half-Life 2 action, starting in the Citadel with the "super gravity gun" and continuing through the ruins of City 17. The episode thus wisely inverts the action of the original game, which became somewhat boring in the Citadel after the frenetic pace of the city sequences.

There are also new gameplay elements, such as single-player co-op play between Gordon and Alyx. At points, the co-op really shines. For example, one sequence features Alyx wielding one of the Combine sniper rifles that proved to be a pain in the ass in the original game. On the other hand, the appeal of the co-op is diminished when one realizes that Alyx simply cannot be killed (save for a few catastrophic events that also kill the player) -- there's no sense of urgency when Alyx informs the player that she's being hurt.

No one plays through Episode One expecting the game to last forever. Some may play expecting Episode Two to be shortly forthcoming, however, and Valve has let the fans down a little in this regard, as the next installment has been pushed back repeatedly. On the bright side, Valve is promising more than just another episode when Episode Two emerges -- players will be getting a whole new puzzle-based game, Portal, along with an upgrade to the classic multiplayer modification Team Fortress.

Since it seems Episode Two will be the episode to get, consider Episode One a small snack to whet your appetite.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I was always a big fan of first person shooter (FPS) games with interesting gimmicks, and the Red Faction series has a good one: "Geo Mod" deformable terrain, or, in layman's terms, the ability to blow up walls, floors, and the like. In theory, this meant the player could do things like stage break-through-the-wall ambushes, knock the floor out from under a sniper, or make a foxhole for battlefield cover.

The original Red Faction, released in 2001, uses this gimmick to great effect by putting the player on Mars during an uprising among tunnel workers (think Total Recall). 2003's Red Faction II, conversely, eschews the Martian setting and places the player on earth as part of a team of GI Joe-esque nanotechnology-enhanced super soldiers. While a good game, the sequel was only a sequel in terms of the underlying game technology -- it might as well have been a separate game.

Although I played it on the PC, in contrast to the first game, I'd classify Red Faction II as a videogame FPS. The visual detail is more befitting a game that the PS2 could run, which is not altogether bad, since the game ran at a steady clip on my laptop, even during scenes with lots of pyrotechnics. The cheesy dialogue of the game is crafted for the 15-year-old videogame market, as opposed to Half-Life 2, which was both cool and "mature" at the same time. A more damning nod to videogame roots is Red Faction II's savegame system, or rather, the lack thereof. But this is a minor gripe since the levels are short and once a level is completed you can always start at the beginning of the next level.

In fact, it's not only the levels which are short -- the entire game can be played through in a couple of days by an experienced FPS player. This makes the game more attractive as a bargain-bin offering, since I would've felt cheated if I had payed $50 for a game that would be over in a handful of hours.

While the Geo Mod technology adds some flavor to the experience, the game often recalls Halo, but without that game's humor and visual splendor in the outdoor settings. (Indoors, however, Red Faction II looks better than Halo!) Like the Master Chief's energy shield, your character in Red Faction II has the ability to regenerate health, making combat a duck-and-heal-and-fire again affair. Unfortunately, the game designers decided to throw in endlessly spawning enemies -- another videogame cliche -- meaning you can't simply wait out a firefight -- generally, you must blast through the opposition and keep moving.

Vehicles add to the fun, though most of the time you're in a turret, turning the game into a rail shooter. Interestingly, these sequences have an almost cell-shaded look, and play out very fast. If you are looking to complete all of the bonus objectives, you need to shoot just about everything you can in the vehicle sections. That said, the bonuses, which influence the ending of the game, weren't that interesting, since the endings weren't that interesting.

On the whole, Red Faction II is a fun game, and worth the price in case you want to put your old PC/XBOX/PS2 through the paces for a few hours.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.