Homicidal Evil Space Chicken Report Vol. 7: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

[camwyn]

Okay, so.

Before the interlude, I had reached the caverns of Xen. To get to the surfce I had to get on a rising and falling pillar and not die. This is harder than it looks, since not only does the pillar want to kill Gordon in that way that all moving objects in this game (other than the Cart of Adamantium- seriously, the carts in 'On A Rail' have to be made of the stuff, given what they stand up to) seem to want to do, but there is also the little matter of the Flying Guys With The Peel-And-Eat Heads. Okay, not really peel-and-eat, but jeez, that's an unnerving experience. I don't like them. I don't like their spitty balls of gold fire. I don't like the noises they make. I don't like the way their little red loincloths could be mistaken for extremely badly placed secondary mouths, and now you will never be able to un-see that image when playing, will you.

Anyway, they're the reason I spent most of Gordon's time in Xen with the alien gun on his hand, because it spits homing missiles that you don't have to reload or even target very well. It kills those things real good. Takes a while, but it's better than wasting ammo, I figure- and it killed 'em enough that I had the time to caaaaaaaaaaaaaarefully jump from pillar to rock platform to rock platform. It HURT, sure, but hey! I was jumping and not cheating! Go me! It didn't last, of course, because despite half an hour of trying I could not land on one of those dang manta ray things, so I had to enable cheating again. At which point I found out that the Vortigaunts on the ground could still target Gordon anyway, and that they hurt a lot. I wound up with a scene I would've paid to see: Gordon hopping off the last rock and running through the sky several inches above one of the manta rays, allllll the way to the teleporter. I only turned no_clipping off when he got there, because I didn't trust myself to get it right and get him onto the manta before he went splat.

Solid ground on the other side. Great. No testicle spiders. Even better. GIANT PARROT BEAK MONSTER OF THRASHY DEATH, aka pit full of Tentacles? Kind of a problem, but after taunting it enough and shooting it a couple of times it sulked in its pit and I ran like a bunny. Running like a bunny is a good strategy, as far as I'm concerned. (Just so you know, at Danii's place I found out that it works really well when you're in the Freezer of Death- if you just run like hell and keep on course for the far end of the room, the Vortigaunts and the headcrabs can't do more than tag you once or twice. If you hum classical music under your breath as Gordon slides across the ice, it's hilarious.) Too bad bunny running doesn't really do you much good once you're inside the factory. In fact it runs into serious metaphor breakdown, since the Xen masters (the Peel-and-Eat Head Guys) make hawklike noises and they're everywhere. And hawks do what to bunnies?

Yeah.

Anyway. Got through the factory, just barely. Those handrail-less catwalks and the spinny elevators left me wondering if this is what it felt like to be Winnowwill in the early days of Blue Mountain, where everybody in the friggin' place but her could fly. At least there weren't any monsters in the next area, just floaty rocks, AGAIN. But they were just floaty, not spinning or moving or any of those things. Positively restful by comparison.

Which is really really good considering that once I got across them and hopped into the next teleporter I found myself face to face with

A THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN

and it was growling my name. I mean. It. The. The Marines had put up their graffiti and it was kind of cute to see YORE DEAD FREEMAN and DIE FREEMAN and all those other bits of slander on the walls, but hearing the

THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN

rumble out "FRREEEEEMAAAAN", just before you plummet to the water below, is kind of a little bit unnerving! That was a serious moment of AND DATZ WEN I KNEW BEBE JEEZUS DIDNT LOVE ME NO MORE, right there...

(Yes, I knew what it looked like. Yes, I'd read the spoilers. Yes, I had a strategy guide open on my lap. But great googly moogly, none of it was really any kind of preparation whatsoever for that first sight of the Nihilanth. AT ALL.)

I'd've screencapped it if I didn't think taking the moment to do so would've resulted in my horrible and gory death. As it happens, I nearly got horrible gory deathed a couple of times anyway. The crystals were easy to blow up, but I couldn't always stay behind the spikes, and the THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN hit me more than a couple of times with things that made me reload really fast. I used up all my Magnum ammo on it and its head finally opened, but I ran afoul of a horrible, true fact shortly after: I suck at using the trampolines. I couldn't get up to a vantage point without being splattered. So after a lot of saves and falls and loads and saves and zorches and loads and ow, I turned on a cheat again. Not noclip this time, because that was too slow and there was no cover, but notarget. Nothing was going to shoot at me until I got to my destination. (I should mention that the THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN was not alone in the room; Xen masters and vortigaunts kept teleporting in despite my best efforts to the contrary.) It still took me forever to get to the high ledge, because I could never target where I was going to land with that damn trampoline, but eventually- after a LOT of error and trial, because the errors way outweighed the trials- I made it to the high ledge.

I sort of want to know what the suit cuts Gordon's morphine with, because while it keeps him moving when he's got fractures out the yin-yang, it doesn't seem to dope him at all. My guess is the same hyper stimulants that Black Mesa bribes its inspectors with. I mention this because Gordon was sure as hell pumped full of morphine by the time he made it up there. This might explain why he emptied the Egon Gun into the Nihilanth's head to no effect. Only then did I think to turn notarget back off and fire a single rocket grenade. That was a very, very, very satisfactory BZZZAARRHGHGAHHRAHRRHAHHRRARARRHGGAAAAAAAABOOOM!!! sequence on the Nihilanth's part. Truly.

And then...

Well, I figure by the time the G-Man appeared Gordon's stimulants had worn off, and maybe a chunk of the morphine, too. Who knows, maybe the G-Man even chelated the stuff out of his system. All I know is that I'm thinking Gordo was in the same mental place during the G-Man's speech as I was last year at mile forty-seven of a training ride where I'd bonked way back at mile forty, namely: "Sir, as long as there are no more THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURES THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN involved and there's a bed and a sandwich waiting, I will do anything you say- just give me the bed and the sandwich in advance, please." I"m not even sure he realized that they were bouncing through other places in Xen; if he wasn't swaying on his feet with the aftermath of having spent every last point of willpower to keep moving, then I'm a blue-nosed gopher. I sent him through the portal at the end of it and was damned glad of it.

All in all, a fun, fun game. I'll be playing through again at Danii's place, on the PS2, and might well play it again here in the near future now that I have a better idea what I'm doing. And who knows? Someday I might be able to pull it off without cheating. That'll be fun. HL2 and the episodes are going to wait for a bit, probably until I snag a strategy guide and read through it and all, but for now? This was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it.

and dangnabbit, now I want to go to the hardware store and get a crowbar for the apartment. you know. just in case.

Comments

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

Discovered an amusing if highly dangerous thing to do early on in the game.

Gordon can actually try to stop the cascade, right there in the analyzer room, by grabbing the cart and dragging it the hell out of the beam. But not only does this change absolutely nothing about the complex's fate, the one thing it DOES is cause a Vortigaunt to teleport in.

In the analyzer room. At a point where you can't possibly have more than 15% armor and YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE THE CROWBAR of Greyskull YET.

I got out of there with 10% health and decided, to heck with that kind of heroic stunt.

[camwyn]

Didn't know that. Interesting concept...

It's probably lucky that he never struck me as the kind of nerd who watches Hong Kong action movies or he'd be honor bound to try something very stupid against the Vortigaunt, wouldn't he.

[pat-trick.livejournal.com]

yay! i enjoyed reading.

and just in case... (http://www.geekstir.com/pictures/headcrab-infestation/)

[camwyn]

Yeah, that's about right. Especially after the whitetext about headcrabs in the TVTropes entry for Nightmare Fuel Unleaded.

(For the record, I keep a number of weaponish objects in my apartment that mean I score better than I deserve on 'would you survive a zombie attack'-type quizzen. Eight inch chef's knives and Chinese cleavers, hunting weight longbows and arrows, etc. A crowbar would fit right in.)

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Argh. Damn you for linking to TVTropes. I'm going to be clicking all goddamned day. :-)

[camwyn]

Eheh. Whoops? (In my defense, a lot of my initial interest in Gordon came from running across that place's entries about Half-Life and the sequels.)

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

I know a thought, an image, even worse than the memory of fighting the THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN.

And now, in the spirit of true wickedness, I shall share it.

Nihilanth. Cloverfield. Rule 34.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

GGAAAAAH.

[camwyn]

I will let my icon do all the talking for me.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Yay, you finished it! I totally enjoyed reading these recaps, especially now with the "THREE ARMED ALIEN FETUS CREATURE THE SIZE OF THE STAY-PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN" thing. Now that you've finished it (yes, I suppose I could've done this earlier, since you'd seen spoilers already, but whatever), a couple of links:

First, a recap series of my own (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=one_drafted_man&keyword=Grif+Gone+Half-Life&filter=all), based on and partially influenced by RP.

Second, a Let's Play thread of the PS2 port's HL:Decay expansion (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2713217) as done by a couple of guys from Something Awful. They actually recorded video of them playing the game with their commentary over it (as opposed to what I think is the usual LP style of text commentary with static screenshots), and that makes this funny as hell. They only just finally finished getting through the last mission last week, to much swearing. Highly recommended.

[camwyn]

Oh, this should be fun. Esp. since as soon as he's approved I'm gonna be playing Gordon at Milliways. I have to buy that boy paid time, policepenguin's been making him icons...

[slarti.livejournal.com]

The thing I enjoyed, with my iteration of the HL storyline, was considering first how Gordon's reactions to things played into how things canonically go, and then how Grif -- who (despite being from The Future) is not so much with the science, but is both much more physically capable (even despite being out of shape for a SPARTAN) and more outspoken -- would react instead and cause things to go differently.

(If I wanted to be pretentious, I could make comparisons to the two faces of Richard Dean Anderson: MacGyver:Jack O'Neill::Gordon:Grif, only instead of sharing a face, they share the color of their armor and teleportation. Grif only wishes he were that cool, though.)

Anyway, yay! I applaud your picking up Gordon, although I suppose I won't see him since I've never been inclined to try getting into Milliways. d_m has a Gordon (as some of the posts I've linked to show), but his player is rarely inclined to break him out, these days. (The appearance of a GLaDOS, however, is apparently a special occasion.) Someone else plays an Alyx from the second game, who is much more likely to show up to things (as well as playing a Tucker from Red vs. Blue, which is good for giving Grif someone from at least his vague corner of the multiverse to play off of).

[camwyn]

Yeah, I've read several of your posts now- I'm copying a large number of files across several remote servers, I had the time- and I can see what you mean. Grif's responses to several of the scientists are pretty close to things I wound up shouting at the screen, I have to admit...

And if you ever wanted to see anything going on with my Gordon without bothering with M'ways, a friend of mine has an RP community that's just for one-shot no-continuity (unless you really want it for some reason) RP sessions. Most of the people I know use it to test out their Milliways characters or play pups who wouldn't be usable there. I threw Gordon at it a couple of times to get a better idea of his voice, and a different friend put in a pre-canon Barney Calhoun. The no-continuity clause makes it easier for me to use it as a practice ground than the Nexus, at least so far.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Grif wanted the number for that world's OSHA so badly. (Not so much, now that BMRF presumably got nuked at the end, but still. I was totally with you, on complaining about the Room Of Hanging Boxes, for example.)

Oh? Cool. Where is this?

[camwyn]

mixed_muses. My Gordon posts there are here for pre-canon and here for immediately post, although now that I've played through the whole thing I expect any future depictions of Gordon just after the whole mess finishes are going to be somewhat more intense, and probably involve fewer rats. The Barney post is here, and the one time I sent Gordon to tag anybody else and got any kind of decent thread going is here.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

Here's one I made last night, if you want. :)

[camwyn]

I'll grab it next pay period- Gord's currently at the max for Plus accounts.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

I would suggest buying a strategy guide but NOT pre-reading it for HL2-- the objectives are generally more clear (people actually tell you) and the plot is, if anything, more interesting (plot emphasized over atmosphere. Don't worry. There's still plenty of atmosphere).

[camwyn]

Fair enough. When I started with the game I tried talking to all the scientists, but they seemed mostly to be operating on the There Are Many Guards At The Castle theory of NPC speech, so I gave up after a while.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Not so much in HL2. Sure there are "move along" guards (at first) and random "hi there" people, but there's an astounding amount of scripted dialog, scripted BACKGROUND dialog, scripted television, scripted fights off in the distance, etc.