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camwyn....yeah, count the number of memetic references in that mish-mosh.
It took me several tries to get down the pipe yesterday. After the first one I realized there was a platform around the pipe that I should drop to if I didn't want Gordon to get shot up with more opiates than Rush Limbaugh. Of course, realizing this and actually being able to land on it were two different things, and more than once I was reminded of an old mental conceit of mine: the idea that somewhere in video game world there lay a place known as the Valley of the Dead Marios. Every time one of my characters fell to his doom in some vast echoing endless pit, their corpse landed there; it was like an elephant graveyard of squat Italian plumbers and Persian princes, all bones and turtle shells. Well, trying to creep around on the ledges yesterday, I figured that the Valley of the Dead Marios was probably in New Mexico. Lord knows the potential for plummety horrible death from a minuscule slip of the foot was high enough.
Funny. Even though I knew perfectly well that I could change Gordon's focus and look down or left or right without moving his position, I didn't dare look down, nine moments out of ten. I was just sure that it would be enough to make him slip and fall. I'd never pictured him having a breakdown in the game before then, but more than once as I inched him along the path and stopped to assess which key to press next, I pictured him plastering himself against the cliff and muttering, "No. No. No. No. No," and refusing to move a millimeter one way or the other.
He, um, wasn't in the best mental place when I finally got him to the supply cave. We're talking 'had to lean back against one of the cave walls and have a hysterical giggling fit' bad mental place, because when you have an RPG launcher and there is a helicopter outside and you've been running and fighting and running and crouching and beating horrors to death with a crowbar and almost but never quite dying and creepity creep creep creeping along mountain paths and jumping over gappy bridges, twice, and feeling them come apart under you as you leap, and you haven't eaten since morning, the thought 'I'm the Taliban! I'm the !*(&)&! Taliban!' is going to seem very, very funny whether it ought to or not. I don't know how it really is for people in combat, but I know what it feels like to be dehydrated and nearly out of glycogen. It does things to your head. I think that's about the point where ol' Gord lost it for a while. He got himself back together, of course, and the helicopter went down like a battle station with a torpedo down the exhaust port, but the cave was where things went to pieces for a while.
After that, the hoppity-jump to the ladder and the ledge and the pipe was... well, I won't say a cakewalk, but it wasn't nearly as scary as it might've been. On the other hand, Gordon had a lot of adrenaline to spare at that point. He left a pile of headcrab Rangoon at the mouth to the pipe- it just seemed natural to beat the corpse into pulp with the crowbar, after everything he'd been through to get there. Silly little space chicken, you were born to die.
Pipe crawl: not a problem. Maze full of soldiers on the other side: problem. Thank the little grey gods for the crossbow. There is something very satisfying about using sniper mode to put a trank dart capable of taking down the GIANT FISH OF DOOM in a Marine's ear (if all you can get is a headshot) or bum (if he's facing away from you). The part where they grab themselves and look pathetic before falling over is an added bonus. So that was fun. And then.
TANK.
THEY HAVE A TANK.
WHAT THE HELL.
Cue mad zigzag running and leaping into watery areas and praying the pipes lead somewhere viable, because: TANK. It was slow to change directions, yes, but still! TANK! Do I look like a Chinese student? NO. Run, little physicist! Run like a scared little newborn pony for the nearest Helm's Deep! Try the rocket laun- oh poo that doesn't work. KEEP RUNNING! Get to the door! Get through the door! Get to- oooh. Splodey boxes. That's not good.
... and there's another tank.
That sound you hear there is the sound of Gordon Freeman, yet again, wondering why the !&)*(! he didn't take the job at Aperture Science instead.
The blue laser things were a pain in the tuchus when I got to them, and the minefield was REALLY annoying, but by that point Gordon was in Angry Exhausted Nerd mode rather than Breakdown Nerd Mode, so there was a lot of excessive shooting to detonate objects from afar. It also meant that when he finally got into the building and looked around, his initial response was, "Oh !*(&)& me. There's enough blue lasers in here to choke a Ghostbuster." Okay, that was his second response. His initial response was "AUGH," because, um, the first time I got to that room? I shot one of the laser emitters.
The chain reaction made the entire screen go white. I'm kind of impressed.
I won't tell you how many times I set off the BOOM in that room, because if you know me at all, you know that I lost count early on. I don't think I've ever been happier to poke at a sparking, fizzing, angry-sounding elevator control than I was when I got Gordon onto the lift down. No more big booms! Just crates, innocent harmless non-explodey crates that could be MERCILESSLY BEATEN INTO PILES OF MICROSCOPIC SPLINTERS BECAUSE THEY HAPPENED TO EXIST, DIE DIE DIE DIE... um... yeah. (You'd do the same if you'd come from a situation as frustrating as I'd just been through.) Eventually he picked up the Creepy Alien Boogy Gun Thing and started easing his way down the hallway. Cue running footfalls and the sound of monstrous things; Gordon flattened himself against the wall, and the guard who pelted by, running for his life, cheerfully called out, "Hey there, Mr. Freeman" before the firefight started. (I like to think Gordon gets along well with the security people at Black Mesa because, as a very junior scientist, the senior scientists treat him like a pathetic lab monkey and he turns to people who won't be condescending. I mean, seriously, there hasn't been a single hostile security guard yet.)
The Prison Yard Maze (oh, come on, you can't tell me that part with the platforms and slanty bits and soldiers on the ground wasn't meant to resemble some kind of demented prison yard) was more entertaining than I'd expected. inching about and jumping from platform to platform? Not so big a thing when you're no longer overlooking the OH DEAR GOD HOW FAR DOWN IS THE GROUND drop. And if it means you get to hit a couple of Marines in the butt with tranquilizer crossbow shots along the way? So much the better. Look, I like the crossbow- it's clean, it's quiet, it's precise. And I wish I could've used it when I finally got to the far side, because... well. There was a hole in the floor of the building I emerged from, and I could see two Marines in hiding, waiting for the next alien to come around the corner. I could probably have pegged one with the crossbow before the other turned around and shot me, but I needed those guys out of the way. Now. The crossbow wasn't fast enough. The grenade capability on the M5 was.
That may have been the only real crisis of Personal Survival Conscience that Gordon's had so far. The guy who was muttering about 'I didn't sign up to kill civilians' back at the satellite launch facility almost triggered one, but all the marines started shooting at Gordon when he crept into sight, and that was pure survival. Cacking those two before they had the chance to shoot at me... that felt like murder even though I knew they'd never hesitate to blow Gordon off the map. I did drop the one on the opposite roof with the crossbow, though. At least then I could pretend I hadn't just slaughtered them all.
The thing in the garage was kind of a letdown after that, mostly because it suddenly went from sniper-themed tension to very bad physical comedy. You have to run onto this organic-looking trampoline thingy to get over the wall and away from the monster, and I couldn't always trigger the trampoline, so Gordon had to run back and forth across it a couple of times. And then usually wound up with crunched shins on the other side of the wall, 'cos I kept missing the tower and the cistern... eventually I got a case of AIEEEEEEEEEEE*SPLASH* instead of AIEEEEE*CRUNCH*ow, and managed to call in the military to blow the monster up for me. Dealing with the things in the next building was nearly a piece of cake by comparison; I'd sooner face a room full of Vortigaunts than half their number of Marines any day. Grenades are fun. The gauss gun is more fun- especially when you use it on those pod things, because that means you can zorch them out of existence neatly and efficiently, and with enough of a headstart to run like hell from the eek! squeek! squeek! of the Tiny Little Time Bomb Aliens. It must've looked like a Looney Tunes episode, with Gordon running like a mad thing from hordes of five or six little squeaking red and green hoppy aliens before they could bite him and explode.
I wound up saving the game and going to bed after the Marines and the aliens cleared each other out in the room with the unmanned tank. Or, rather, I played through that room and up to the doors of Lambda Complex several times and was unsatisfied with how close to death Gordon was when he got to the yellow button, so I opted to play it over another time, when I'd had some more sleep. I'll write about that part next time, I think.
It took me several tries to get down the pipe yesterday. After the first one I realized there was a platform around the pipe that I should drop to if I didn't want Gordon to get shot up with more opiates than Rush Limbaugh. Of course, realizing this and actually being able to land on it were two different things, and more than once I was reminded of an old mental conceit of mine: the idea that somewhere in video game world there lay a place known as the Valley of the Dead Marios. Every time one of my characters fell to his doom in some vast echoing endless pit, their corpse landed there; it was like an elephant graveyard of squat Italian plumbers and Persian princes, all bones and turtle shells. Well, trying to creep around on the ledges yesterday, I figured that the Valley of the Dead Marios was probably in New Mexico. Lord knows the potential for plummety horrible death from a minuscule slip of the foot was high enough.
Funny. Even though I knew perfectly well that I could change Gordon's focus and look down or left or right without moving his position, I didn't dare look down, nine moments out of ten. I was just sure that it would be enough to make him slip and fall. I'd never pictured him having a breakdown in the game before then, but more than once as I inched him along the path and stopped to assess which key to press next, I pictured him plastering himself against the cliff and muttering, "No. No. No. No. No," and refusing to move a millimeter one way or the other.
He, um, wasn't in the best mental place when I finally got him to the supply cave. We're talking 'had to lean back against one of the cave walls and have a hysterical giggling fit' bad mental place, because when you have an RPG launcher and there is a helicopter outside and you've been running and fighting and running and crouching and beating horrors to death with a crowbar and almost but never quite dying and creepity creep creep creeping along mountain paths and jumping over gappy bridges, twice, and feeling them come apart under you as you leap, and you haven't eaten since morning, the thought 'I'm the Taliban! I'm the !*(&)&! Taliban!' is going to seem very, very funny whether it ought to or not. I don't know how it really is for people in combat, but I know what it feels like to be dehydrated and nearly out of glycogen. It does things to your head. I think that's about the point where ol' Gord lost it for a while. He got himself back together, of course, and the helicopter went down like a battle station with a torpedo down the exhaust port, but the cave was where things went to pieces for a while.
After that, the hoppity-jump to the ladder and the ledge and the pipe was... well, I won't say a cakewalk, but it wasn't nearly as scary as it might've been. On the other hand, Gordon had a lot of adrenaline to spare at that point. He left a pile of headcrab Rangoon at the mouth to the pipe- it just seemed natural to beat the corpse into pulp with the crowbar, after everything he'd been through to get there. Silly little space chicken, you were born to die.
Pipe crawl: not a problem. Maze full of soldiers on the other side: problem. Thank the little grey gods for the crossbow. There is something very satisfying about using sniper mode to put a trank dart capable of taking down the GIANT FISH OF DOOM in a Marine's ear (if all you can get is a headshot) or bum (if he's facing away from you). The part where they grab themselves and look pathetic before falling over is an added bonus. So that was fun. And then.
TANK.
THEY HAVE A TANK.
WHAT THE HELL.
Cue mad zigzag running and leaping into watery areas and praying the pipes lead somewhere viable, because: TANK. It was slow to change directions, yes, but still! TANK! Do I look like a Chinese student? NO. Run, little physicist! Run like a scared little newborn pony for the nearest Helm's Deep! Try the rocket laun- oh poo that doesn't work. KEEP RUNNING! Get to the door! Get through the door! Get to- oooh. Splodey boxes. That's not good.
... and there's another tank.
That sound you hear there is the sound of Gordon Freeman, yet again, wondering why the !&)*(! he didn't take the job at Aperture Science instead.
The blue laser things were a pain in the tuchus when I got to them, and the minefield was REALLY annoying, but by that point Gordon was in Angry Exhausted Nerd mode rather than Breakdown Nerd Mode, so there was a lot of excessive shooting to detonate objects from afar. It also meant that when he finally got into the building and looked around, his initial response was, "Oh !*(&)& me. There's enough blue lasers in here to choke a Ghostbuster." Okay, that was his second response. His initial response was "AUGH," because, um, the first time I got to that room? I shot one of the laser emitters.
The chain reaction made the entire screen go white. I'm kind of impressed.
I won't tell you how many times I set off the BOOM in that room, because if you know me at all, you know that I lost count early on. I don't think I've ever been happier to poke at a sparking, fizzing, angry-sounding elevator control than I was when I got Gordon onto the lift down. No more big booms! Just crates, innocent harmless non-explodey crates that could be MERCILESSLY BEATEN INTO PILES OF MICROSCOPIC SPLINTERS BECAUSE THEY HAPPENED TO EXIST, DIE DIE DIE DIE... um... yeah. (You'd do the same if you'd come from a situation as frustrating as I'd just been through.) Eventually he picked up the Creepy Alien Boogy Gun Thing and started easing his way down the hallway. Cue running footfalls and the sound of monstrous things; Gordon flattened himself against the wall, and the guard who pelted by, running for his life, cheerfully called out, "Hey there, Mr. Freeman" before the firefight started. (I like to think Gordon gets along well with the security people at Black Mesa because, as a very junior scientist, the senior scientists treat him like a pathetic lab monkey and he turns to people who won't be condescending. I mean, seriously, there hasn't been a single hostile security guard yet.)
The Prison Yard Maze (oh, come on, you can't tell me that part with the platforms and slanty bits and soldiers on the ground wasn't meant to resemble some kind of demented prison yard) was more entertaining than I'd expected. inching about and jumping from platform to platform? Not so big a thing when you're no longer overlooking the OH DEAR GOD HOW FAR DOWN IS THE GROUND drop. And if it means you get to hit a couple of Marines in the butt with tranquilizer crossbow shots along the way? So much the better. Look, I like the crossbow- it's clean, it's quiet, it's precise. And I wish I could've used it when I finally got to the far side, because... well. There was a hole in the floor of the building I emerged from, and I could see two Marines in hiding, waiting for the next alien to come around the corner. I could probably have pegged one with the crossbow before the other turned around and shot me, but I needed those guys out of the way. Now. The crossbow wasn't fast enough. The grenade capability on the M5 was.
That may have been the only real crisis of Personal Survival Conscience that Gordon's had so far. The guy who was muttering about 'I didn't sign up to kill civilians' back at the satellite launch facility almost triggered one, but all the marines started shooting at Gordon when he crept into sight, and that was pure survival. Cacking those two before they had the chance to shoot at me... that felt like murder even though I knew they'd never hesitate to blow Gordon off the map. I did drop the one on the opposite roof with the crossbow, though. At least then I could pretend I hadn't just slaughtered them all.
The thing in the garage was kind of a letdown after that, mostly because it suddenly went from sniper-themed tension to very bad physical comedy. You have to run onto this organic-looking trampoline thingy to get over the wall and away from the monster, and I couldn't always trigger the trampoline, so Gordon had to run back and forth across it a couple of times. And then usually wound up with crunched shins on the other side of the wall, 'cos I kept missing the tower and the cistern... eventually I got a case of AIEEEEEEEEEEE*SPLASH* instead of AIEEEEE*CRUNCH*ow, and managed to call in the military to blow the monster up for me. Dealing with the things in the next building was nearly a piece of cake by comparison; I'd sooner face a room full of Vortigaunts than half their number of Marines any day. Grenades are fun. The gauss gun is more fun- especially when you use it on those pod things, because that means you can zorch them out of existence neatly and efficiently, and with enough of a headstart to run like hell from the eek! squeek! squeek! of the Tiny Little Time Bomb Aliens. It must've looked like a Looney Tunes episode, with Gordon running like a mad thing from hordes of five or six little squeaking red and green hoppy aliens before they could bite him and explode.
I wound up saving the game and going to bed after the Marines and the aliens cleared each other out in the room with the unmanned tank. Or, rather, I played through that room and up to the doors of Lambda Complex several times and was unsatisfied with how close to death Gordon was when he got to the yellow button, so I opted to play it over another time, when I'd had some more sleep. I'll write about that part next time, I think.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 12:22 pm (UTC)Ho Ho Ho, Now I Has A Rocket Launcher
Date: 2008-04-01 04:50 am (UTC)THEY HAVE A TANK.
What? You'd have preferred a cave troll?
Your HL posts have been the funniest thing on my FList this weekend, for which I am grateful. Thank you.
Re: Ho Ho Ho, Now I Has A Rocket Launcher
Date: 2008-04-01 05:00 am (UTC)Glad to be of service!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 05:28 am (UTC)... with that line, you almost killed me.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 06:07 am (UTC)...I think that my favorite weapon is the Tiny Little Time Bomb Aliens. Because, y'know, comedy.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 05:35 pm (UTC)My typical approach is to lob them into a crowded room from just out of sight.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 01:01 pm (UTC)I personally like the mental image of Gordon clinging to the cliff and channeling Jack Ryan by muttering to himself, "Next time, Gordon, just write a goddamned memo."
'I'm the Taliban! I'm the !*(&)&! Taliban!'
Alternately, channeling Captain Nemo from "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (the first volume of the comic, particularly), with, "Come forward, men of Delta Force! And tell your God that Freeman sent you!!"
Also, the rocket launcher does work on the tanks; it just takes two or three to do the job.
And yes, ohgod, Madman Omar's House of Tripmines. Watch your step, or you set off the nuke! Even having played through the game a couple of times, that part remains kind of tricky.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 01:31 pm (UTC)It's been so long since I read the comic that I'd forgotten that line.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 11:34 pm (UTC)More then once I have pumped a few more clips into them.
Gordon gets along with the security guards because he is intelligent and intelligent people befriend the security guards and janitors and lunch ladies and secretaries. For those who control the keys control EVERYTHING.
Running from explosions is fun. I can't count the number of times I launched a high explosive into a room of enemies, ran and giggled silently as they boomed and died.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 01:27 pm (UTC)When I'm playing computer opponents, though, there's a definite tendency to make DAMN sure the corpse is as dead as possible. More than a few headcrabs've been beaten into chunky space chicken pulp long after they were actually killed because they startled me.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 09:56 pm (UTC)The easy way is to come up the manhole BEHIND THE TANK.
Also, the tank can be taken out with the rocket launcher; three or four shots at the joint where the turret meets the hull, and there is an Earth-shattering KABOOM.
The damn Bradley down the hill can be taken out the same way, but it's better to use the laser.