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camwynNo, that's not a typo.
TESTICLE MONSTER.
WTF.
... okay, let's back up a bit first. When last I reported, Gordon had just made it into the Lambda Complex. Oh look! Headcrabs again! Gordon smash! Oh, look, a bullsquid! That's what they made the Manstopper for. One good shot from the Magnum and it's down. YAY. This is great! This is a positive relief! This is a nice buildup to the warehouse room where THERE ARE NINJAS TRYING TO KILL YOU.
No, seriously. Ninjas. The game walkthroughs and stuff call them 'human assassins', but they wear all black, they cover up everything except their eyes, they move in near total silence, and they're too fast to follow. Gordon had to deal with them before, I just didn't bother mentioning them. There's just... you know, four ninjas in the frigging Lambda Complex and the room is full of trailers and crates and barrels that go splody and did I mention the ninjas? Did I mention that they're actually patient enough to wait until you're just starting to think you killed them all before one of them moves, and your only warning is pattapattapat from their feet before they start shooting at you? They die just like anybody else, but they don't have the courtesy to drop ammo that you can use, which annoyed me mightily. Oh well. There's still something to be said for putting a tranquilizer dart in a ninja's soft parts. Too bad there's no ass jig of victory command in the game. I could see Gordon doing one at that point.
From there we had the running around and the killing and the Egon Gun. I'm not sure how I refrained from testing it, because really. Gordon hadn't come through fire and death to bandy words with a cowering hypocrite 'til the lightning falls, buddy. That may have been the closest I ever came to seriously considering violence against one of the NPCs on Gordon's side. I just picked up the gun and left, and fired it on the next alien I saw instead.
soooooooooooooooooooo pretty. SWIRLY PURPLE-WHITE FIERY NUCLEAR DEATH. Buddy, those uranium slugs died in a blaze of glory that would've done Papa Teller proud. Went back to regular guns after that, though. No sense using the firehose when you've got to- oh, great, you've got to swim to do half the reactor stuff. Great. Just great. WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THIS PLACE ANYWAY. That Knight of the First Crusade must've put some serious investments down before he left for the Holy Land and recouped them ALL when Black Mesa was built, because he had to pay off the NRC and OSHA with some of the designs that got implemented...
It is my private contention that most of the scientists at Black Mesa actually get around the place on modified Segways. It explains some of the size issues, and possibly the lack of handrails in places. Improve the Segway balance system a little and there's no longer a worry about falling off! Of course, that doesn't explain certain other aspects of the place, like oh, the staggered platform design for whatever poor SOB might find himself inside the reactor once it's activated. Getting straight up on a single ladder would be too EASY. Nope. Up one floor, run like hell to the right, up another floor, run like hell again... what did they pay the NRC inspectors off in, anyway? Freshly teleported-in space alien heroin? In what world did that design make sense? Other than the one where the rotating floaty platforms of AUGH DUCK made sense, I mean, because after getting out of the reactor (Gordon was probably running a mental tally of his remaining un-mutated germ cells at that point) there was the Room of Teleporty Things. Oh, God, that was a nightmare. It probably looked very good when it was an executive desk toy for somebody, but the idea of having to hop onto the rotating platform and go through the right opening to get into the teleportation sphere and land on the next rotating platform up without going crunch...
I take it back. Not space alien heroin. The NRC inspectors were paid off in Black Mesa brand hyper-stimulants, because whoever used that thing would've had to have had the reflexes of the Flash to get it right more than once. Of course, that wasn't nearly as bad as the room that followed it, which involved rotating platforms AND radioactive goo AND a rising and falling bit for no reason AND a ceiling that would mash your skull in if you stood in the wrong place AND buttons that had to be pressed AND- guuuuh. The only way that room made any sense is if the radioactive goo isn't normally radioactive. If it's normally some kind of coolant or fire retardant gel and the dimensional hoo-ha contaminated it with radioactivity, that could be sort of understood. But only sort of, because by then we were back in "WHOEVER WROTE THIS EPISODE SHOULD DIE!!!!" territory. I managed to get through it eventually, though.
And finally...
"Gordon Freeman, you've finally found us."
One scientist. One security guard (who, until I get hold of Blue Shift and it proves me wrong, is going to be Barney Calhoun in my mind). Piles and piles of equipment. And for the first time, after hours and hours of running and fighting and killing and hiding and God only knows how many strains and stresses and orders and demands... for the first time, somebody finally asks Gordon to do something instead of just telling him to do it. Oh, there's no question to the scientist's tone, and you can't finish the game unless you do, but "you owe us nothing" and "if you're willing"... Nobody's asked him to do anything before. They've just said 'go do this' or said 'somebody has to'. Granted, the guard's speech makes it pretty clear that if you don't do this the world's doomed, but the choice to say 'fuck the world, I can't do this any more' is still a choice. That felt good.
So did blowing the !*&()& out of those flying things with the opening heads and the zap hands as I waited for the scientist in the next room to get the portal open, for that matter. I used up all the Egon Gun's ammo there, I'm afraid. It was worth it, though. I think Gordon really needed to see that kind of power and carnage before running into the teleporter and OH HOLY !@*& WHERE IS THE GROUND????
... yeah, Xen is... Xen was special. Xen is where I finally broke down and activated a cheat code, because honestly, otherwise it would've been a case of me reloading the game for three hours straight. I cannot do the jumpity-skip thing. I got Gordon to one of the floating platforms and tried, I tried so hard, but... I'm not playing this game for the sake of PLUMMETY DEATH. After the fourth or fifth horrible death/reload repetition, I turned on no_clipping and steered Gordon over to the big rock, then turned no_clipping off and got back to work. I'm not ashamed of it. I would've gotten too frustrated to go any further if I hadn't done it that way.
And then I never would have met the TESTICLE MONSTER OMG WTF NKVD.
It's called the Gonarch. It's twenty feet tall. Technically that's an egg sac and it releases baby headcrabs, which are faster and nastier than their chicken-looking adult forms, but the thing jiggles and dangles and swings around and the designers admitted that they stuck a GIANT TESTICLE ON A TWENTY FOOT SPIDER, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING. And it had to be fought by shooting rockets at the testicle! That just- it- that- TESTICLE MONSTER. Oh, sure, venomous painful spit and fleets of horrible little OH DEAR GOD THEY MOVE LIKE THE CLOVERFIELD MONSTER'S PARASITES, THEY'RE TOTALLY THE DOGSPIDERS *twitch* *twitch* *CROWBAR OF DOOM*
[remainder of scene excised for berserker crowbar violence]
Erm. Sorry. But when the Gonarch drops out of its web and you shoot it in the Testicle of Doom several more times and it runs away and vanishes, it leaves behind a small fleet of baby headcrabs, and those things are more dangerous than the ones I'm used to. They're faster. They bite harder. They leap. It was EXACTLY like the parasitic dog-sized crab spider things that fell off the Cloverfield monster. And the glowing things that light the caverns in Xen go out when you get too close, so there was just a lot of ka-screekit! noise and the red flashes and the occasional movement in the dark to go by. You'd start whamming everything within reach with a crowbar, too. By the time the lights came back on there was ichor everywhere.
It was totally worth it.
As of tonight, Gordon's just in front of the pillar on the interloper level. I understand there is more jumpity-splat ahead; we'll see how frustrated I get with that tomorrow.
TESTICLE MONSTER.
WTF.
... okay, let's back up a bit first. When last I reported, Gordon had just made it into the Lambda Complex. Oh look! Headcrabs again! Gordon smash! Oh, look, a bullsquid! That's what they made the Manstopper for. One good shot from the Magnum and it's down. YAY. This is great! This is a positive relief! This is a nice buildup to the warehouse room where THERE ARE NINJAS TRYING TO KILL YOU.
No, seriously. Ninjas. The game walkthroughs and stuff call them 'human assassins', but they wear all black, they cover up everything except their eyes, they move in near total silence, and they're too fast to follow. Gordon had to deal with them before, I just didn't bother mentioning them. There's just... you know, four ninjas in the frigging Lambda Complex and the room is full of trailers and crates and barrels that go splody and did I mention the ninjas? Did I mention that they're actually patient enough to wait until you're just starting to think you killed them all before one of them moves, and your only warning is pattapattapat from their feet before they start shooting at you? They die just like anybody else, but they don't have the courtesy to drop ammo that you can use, which annoyed me mightily. Oh well. There's still something to be said for putting a tranquilizer dart in a ninja's soft parts. Too bad there's no ass jig of victory command in the game. I could see Gordon doing one at that point.
From there we had the running around and the killing and the Egon Gun. I'm not sure how I refrained from testing it, because really. Gordon hadn't come through fire and death to bandy words with a cowering hypocrite 'til the lightning falls, buddy. That may have been the closest I ever came to seriously considering violence against one of the NPCs on Gordon's side. I just picked up the gun and left, and fired it on the next alien I saw instead.
soooooooooooooooooooo pretty. SWIRLY PURPLE-WHITE FIERY NUCLEAR DEATH. Buddy, those uranium slugs died in a blaze of glory that would've done Papa Teller proud. Went back to regular guns after that, though. No sense using the firehose when you've got to- oh, great, you've got to swim to do half the reactor stuff. Great. Just great. WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THIS PLACE ANYWAY. That Knight of the First Crusade must've put some serious investments down before he left for the Holy Land and recouped them ALL when Black Mesa was built, because he had to pay off the NRC and OSHA with some of the designs that got implemented...
It is my private contention that most of the scientists at Black Mesa actually get around the place on modified Segways. It explains some of the size issues, and possibly the lack of handrails in places. Improve the Segway balance system a little and there's no longer a worry about falling off! Of course, that doesn't explain certain other aspects of the place, like oh, the staggered platform design for whatever poor SOB might find himself inside the reactor once it's activated. Getting straight up on a single ladder would be too EASY. Nope. Up one floor, run like hell to the right, up another floor, run like hell again... what did they pay the NRC inspectors off in, anyway? Freshly teleported-in space alien heroin? In what world did that design make sense? Other than the one where the rotating floaty platforms of AUGH DUCK made sense, I mean, because after getting out of the reactor (Gordon was probably running a mental tally of his remaining un-mutated germ cells at that point) there was the Room of Teleporty Things. Oh, God, that was a nightmare. It probably looked very good when it was an executive desk toy for somebody, but the idea of having to hop onto the rotating platform and go through the right opening to get into the teleportation sphere and land on the next rotating platform up without going crunch...
I take it back. Not space alien heroin. The NRC inspectors were paid off in Black Mesa brand hyper-stimulants, because whoever used that thing would've had to have had the reflexes of the Flash to get it right more than once. Of course, that wasn't nearly as bad as the room that followed it, which involved rotating platforms AND radioactive goo AND a rising and falling bit for no reason AND a ceiling that would mash your skull in if you stood in the wrong place AND buttons that had to be pressed AND- guuuuh. The only way that room made any sense is if the radioactive goo isn't normally radioactive. If it's normally some kind of coolant or fire retardant gel and the dimensional hoo-ha contaminated it with radioactivity, that could be sort of understood. But only sort of, because by then we were back in "WHOEVER WROTE THIS EPISODE SHOULD DIE!!!!" territory. I managed to get through it eventually, though.
And finally...
"Gordon Freeman, you've finally found us."
One scientist. One security guard (who, until I get hold of Blue Shift and it proves me wrong, is going to be Barney Calhoun in my mind). Piles and piles of equipment. And for the first time, after hours and hours of running and fighting and killing and hiding and God only knows how many strains and stresses and orders and demands... for the first time, somebody finally asks Gordon to do something instead of just telling him to do it. Oh, there's no question to the scientist's tone, and you can't finish the game unless you do, but "you owe us nothing" and "if you're willing"... Nobody's asked him to do anything before. They've just said 'go do this' or said 'somebody has to'. Granted, the guard's speech makes it pretty clear that if you don't do this the world's doomed, but the choice to say 'fuck the world, I can't do this any more' is still a choice. That felt good.
So did blowing the !*&()& out of those flying things with the opening heads and the zap hands as I waited for the scientist in the next room to get the portal open, for that matter. I used up all the Egon Gun's ammo there, I'm afraid. It was worth it, though. I think Gordon really needed to see that kind of power and carnage before running into the teleporter and OH HOLY !@*& WHERE IS THE GROUND????
... yeah, Xen is... Xen was special. Xen is where I finally broke down and activated a cheat code, because honestly, otherwise it would've been a case of me reloading the game for three hours straight. I cannot do the jumpity-skip thing. I got Gordon to one of the floating platforms and tried, I tried so hard, but... I'm not playing this game for the sake of PLUMMETY DEATH. After the fourth or fifth horrible death/reload repetition, I turned on no_clipping and steered Gordon over to the big rock, then turned no_clipping off and got back to work. I'm not ashamed of it. I would've gotten too frustrated to go any further if I hadn't done it that way.
And then I never would have met the TESTICLE MONSTER OMG WTF NKVD.
It's called the Gonarch. It's twenty feet tall. Technically that's an egg sac and it releases baby headcrabs, which are faster and nastier than their chicken-looking adult forms, but the thing jiggles and dangles and swings around and the designers admitted that they stuck a GIANT TESTICLE ON A TWENTY FOOT SPIDER, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING. And it had to be fought by shooting rockets at the testicle! That just- it- that- TESTICLE MONSTER. Oh, sure, venomous painful spit and fleets of horrible little OH DEAR GOD THEY MOVE LIKE THE CLOVERFIELD MONSTER'S PARASITES, THEY'RE TOTALLY THE DOGSPIDERS *twitch* *twitch* *CROWBAR OF DOOM*
[remainder of scene excised for berserker crowbar violence]
Erm. Sorry. But when the Gonarch drops out of its web and you shoot it in the Testicle of Doom several more times and it runs away and vanishes, it leaves behind a small fleet of baby headcrabs, and those things are more dangerous than the ones I'm used to. They're faster. They bite harder. They leap. It was EXACTLY like the parasitic dog-sized crab spider things that fell off the Cloverfield monster. And the glowing things that light the caverns in Xen go out when you get too close, so there was just a lot of ka-screekit! noise and the red flashes and the occasional movement in the dark to go by. You'd start whamming everything within reach with a crowbar, too. By the time the lights came back on there was ichor everywhere.
It was totally worth it.
As of tonight, Gordon's just in front of the pillar on the interloper level. I understand there is more jumpity-splat ahead; we'll see how frustrated I get with that tomorrow.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 04:59 am (UTC)I think my Gordon may be just shy of a psychotic break and a morphine addiction at this point. Hard to say. However, he does really, really, really want a nap more than anything else in the world. Somewhere quiet, where there are no PAs spouting modulated voices, scary MIBs, or squawking headcrabs (squawking anything really; a visit to a Tyson chicken farm would send him right over the edge, Gluon Gun blazing at anything that moved).
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 05:12 am (UTC)Mine wants a sandwich first, and then the nap. I'm reasonably sure that he packs Powerbar brand energy gel packs along on any of the days when he has to wear the suit, since it's not likely that he'll get to the cafeteria at a reasonable hour, but those aren't always enough. Sooner or later you really need to eat something and then put a sign on the door that says 'wake me up on Judgment Day'. But I also have this image of him acquiring one of the deep fat fryers they use for frying whole turkeys at once, standing back a good distance, and pitching whole raw chickens into the oil. "HOW D'YA LIKE THEM APPLES?!" figures into the deal somewhere, I'm sure...
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Date: 2008-04-05 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 09:41 am (UTC)I'd run around on Perfect Dark, knock the hell out of four or five science guys...then pull out my silencer...
Oh yeah, I'm a sick puppy and not afraid to admit it.
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Date: 2008-04-05 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-04-05 06:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 01:46 pm (UTC)Is this your private name for the thing, or did the game developers actually portmanteau "gonad" and "monarch" for the name of a giant spider with balls?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 02:42 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18tkG1s4wN8
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Date: 2008-04-05 02:45 pm (UTC)...
Excuse me, I have to track down my faith in humanity. I think it just fled, possibly to Nunavut.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 02:48 pm (UTC)At some point I may reload that level in cheat mode and give the Egon Gun as much ammo as Gordon can carry, just to see if I can make the Gonarch explode by zapping it in the dongly bits.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 02:52 pm (UTC)Someday I hope to be a game developer, if only so I can designate certain parts of the games I create as "and this level/monster/area/ally is meant to convince my entire playing audience that I'm into the hardcore hallucinogens".
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Date: 2008-04-05 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-04-05 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 02:07 pm (UTC)*uses the FLYING LEAP OF POINTLESSNESS icon*
Date: 2008-04-05 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 11:22 pm (UTC)I completed HL on the PC without cheat codes or walkthroughs back in 2002, I think? I then gave it a second go a year or so later after I'd been doing the online multi-player scrimmaging for a while, and things went much more smoothly. I can't really remember why (other than I knew where all the things jumped out at you from) but I do seem to recall the Gauss Jump being a possibly valuable asset in the next Xen platform segment.
Not sure the walk-throughs ever allude to it, but this is where you hold the secondary fire button down to charge the Gauss gun up to its max, point it at the ground in front of Gordon and let go. The resulting blast propels you up to ridiculous heights, without health loss, and with the lack of gravity in Xen you can make pretty much any platform you want.
I say this with hesitation because I can't properly remember if this move actually works in the single-player game, or whether it was a multi-player tweak. I think it does, but I await your report.
Either way, there's a kinda steep learning curve to master this jump, and it can obviously cause health loss in non-Xen areas if you don't land on a ledge/platform before returning to ground level. Plus, it does use Gauss ammo. And with the potent punch that weapon has, it can be a bit of a waste if you don't make the jumps. It's hella fun to mess around with though. Oh, and if you ever get jammed somewhere, like a bad corner of gfx, you can use this trick to boost yourself out.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 11:31 pm (UTC)... oooh. I did not know that about the Gauss gun. I might try that at some point, just to see. Given that I'm told the next part I have to deal with involves 'jump onto the platform, then jump onto one of the aliens'... well, you never know, you know?
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Date: 2008-04-06 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 06:56 pm (UTC)I like being able to play through and know just about everything I need to do. It feels like I actually know what I'm doing, and not that I'm a big huge cheater-pants who uses walkthroughs and cheat codes(cause I usually can't get through the first level of a game without a walkthrough).
Seriously, if I hadn't watched you beat the tentacle monster in the rocket silo, I'd have just about given up then.
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Date: 2008-04-06 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-06 08:53 pm (UTC)I'll get this game beat yet!
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Date: 2008-04-07 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 05:53 am (UTC)Xen, and the demon fish, are what kept me from ever re-playing Half Life until now, or any of its expansions. So if you're frustrated, I feel your pain. The only consolation I can offer is that you're virtually done with it. So, there's that.
By the time Half Life 2 came out, I was over the frustration and the visuals I was seeing of the game made me give it a shot, and it is now one of my favorite games ever.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-09 02:02 pm (UTC)I like to think my own inadequacies at the controls- and things like not realizing most of the weapons have a secondary fire mode- make for a fractionally more IC experience in terms of 'this is a person who has never had to survive combat before'. If I didn't realize something could be done more efficiently, neither would Gordon, y'know?