I've been wasting time again as usual. My work ethic is not exactly conducive towards my schedule, or vice versa, and I think it might hit me sooner rather than later. I downloaded Half Life 2: episode 2 and have been playing it since thursday night. Though really, I've only been playing it today properly. It's a fairly short game and Iam about 80% through the game, and thus far, it is considerably better than episode 1. Episode 1 was really a bit of a drag and wasn't all that great. It got an 8.7/10 on gamespot and other reviews only vindicated that rating, but in all honesty, it really wasn't anything special. I gave it an 8.1/10 on gamespot originally, but now that I think about it, it was more like a 7.5, and that too only because of the engines and trilogy-aspect of things. Otherwise, It would have gotten even lower, personally. The reason being I guess because it didn't really go anywhere within the game, except for the ending, naturally. I guess the story line dictated that the first episode suck to allow subsequent episodes to thrive. Episode 2, however, is spot on par with the HL2 original. It's brief, naturally, but that is hardly a deterrent. The gameplay is tight and it still runs well on my shitty computer on medium graphics, so I have no complaints. Will rate it officially when I beat it.