Half-Life 2, Part 2: WHOA WHOA WHOA NOT THE BATMAN

[camwyn]

Okay, so, when I left off, I'd gotten about as far as being reminded that Turtleneck Boy used to be the capo di tutti capi at Black Mesa. Propaganda posters make that kind of identification easy, since the guy's face is on most of them. His name, now, that's on all the Dasani vending machines... no, seriously, there's vending machines all over town that say Dr. Breen's Private Reserve, but they use the same image of a drop of falling water that shows up on Dasani machines. One of them happens to be the way into Dr. Kleiner's lab. It's a nice little setup for a guy who's doing something TOTALLY ILLEGAL AND LIKELY TO CAUSE HIM TO DIE. I honestly wonder how he manages to hide all that equipment in there, and where he got it from. You'd think the Combine would check the electrical consumption or something and say 'hmm, that's awfully high' or 'wow, that's really low considering how much is going on in there'. If state cops can do it to check up on marijuana growers...

Well, anyway, once I got out of that frame of mind it was time to poke things, because boy howdy Kleiner's got all kinds of stuff in his lab. Mini teleporter! Windows screensaver! Crummy dot matrix printer! Notes on the wall to buy watermelon for Lamarr! Drawings and notes and a photograph of everybody from the old science team including Gordon except for one guy who got his face eraOH MY GOD MY SUIT YAY YOU HAVE THE SUIT HOORAY GORDON HAS HANDS AGAIN *ass dance of joy*

... no, seriously, until Barney (who came in a little after you) opens the door to the storage room, you don't see any sign that Gordon has any kind of anatomy whatsoever, but once you step into the suit, you see Gordon flexing his hands and checking out the gloves. YAY.

At this point I have to note that it has been determined, in the course of play in daniidebrabant's and sylveraven's presence, that Gordon Freeman has the following anatomical features:

1. Absurdly tiny feet, since he can walk along very very small ledges and edges
2. The studliest knees in the world, because he can stop on a vertical ladder and shoot at something over his head with a gun that requires both hands to remain visible at all times, and yet not fall over backwards
3. A prehensile ass, because occasionally I can't tell what he's standing on, but he is balanced against a wall or rock ledge or ladder, which leaves me to assume that his suit's bottom is capable of grasping things on its own.

Anyway, Gordon gets his suit and Dr. Kleiner reports on his teleportation progress and places a video phone call to Benson. Alyx's father's voice actor is Robert Guillaume, therefore, Alyx's father is Benson. Simple as that. There's another round of 'eee! Gordon Freeman!' from the other end of the videophone, which is sort of understandable, since Alyx's father = Eli Vance = the black scientist from game 1 who asked you to go get help right after the residence cascade started. he's supposed to be an old friend of Gordon's. And I do mean old, 'cos he's, like, grey and stuff...

Oh, did I mention Dr. Kleiner has a pet headcrab? Yeah. Lamarr. As in Hedy Lamarr. No I am not kidding. Lamarr has been debeaked and won't actually bite down if she gets up on your head somehow, but Barney refers to her as 'the head-humper', so you can guess what she'd be trying to do instead. She's cute in a disturbing sort of way, and disobedient as all small annoying companion animals are, and she screws up your teleport. A lot. in that whole OH MY GOD GIANT BITEY FISH kind of way.

Yes, I know, it's more important that you get blipped into Turtleneck Boy's office twice while he's talking to the Giant Techno-Grub-Slug Thing of Ickiness on his telescreen, but c'mon! I had no weapon! It was a friggin' DINOSHARK! Of course I was more freaked!

Not that the dinoshark got to bite me or anything, because Gordon ended up plopped down outside Dr. Kleiner's lab. Which is a mercy, because they were talking about a cat used in a teleportation experiment earlier and all I could think of was the 'But the animal is inside out. And it exploded!' scene in Galaxy Quest. Fortunately, shortly thereafter Barney points you at the Ominous Tower of Hugeness that took the place of pretty much all of downtown Newark and says he's never seen it lit up like that. It didn't look any different to me until I realized it was shedding bits, at which point I realized the bits were more of the robot paparazzi, and when I say 'more' I mean 'metric squintillions'. Apparently Dr. Breen freaked out when Gordon interrupted his call to the slug people. You have just about enough time to go AUGH when Barney hucks you your crowbar and tells you to make for Dr. Vance's place on foot.

Great.

Well, at least you can hit things now and make them break. Which is cool, because, well, you're hitting things, right? And you're able to give the damn robot paparazzi a hard time, which is also nice. And then the storm trooper cops come after you and you whomp them in the head a couple of times with the crowbar and they fall down flailing. They're really good at that. Flaily falldowns are kind of pretty to watch in this game. So are smashed boxes. They're not all the same box any more. Cardboard boxes fold up like, well, cardboard boxes when you hit them. Wooden boxes take some bashing to splinter. And barrels... oh, yes, the barrels. Only some of them explode. But the fire is really nice to watch. And the explosion makes the storm troopers nearby go flying and land in crumpledy heaps, which tends to make me giggle.

Oh, don't give me that look. You'd laugh, too. Otherwise you wouldn't be the kind of person who reads these write-ups.

You have to get out of a massive railway nexus of some kind. I'm assuming it's Newark Penn Station. Newark Broad Street is too small. The trains are kind of freaky, since they tend to be big and tall and weirdly skinny, but enh, whatever. I think I was more interested in the health dispensers on the walls. The medikits you find are still full of glowing green stuff, but the wall units are full of cloudy greyish material. I think it's Gelfling juice. It works the same as the old green goo, but it looks like it ought to be part of a Skeksis' balanced breakfast.

Eventually the Newark resemblance breaks down, because there aren't canals in, or near, Newark. I mean, yeah, there's the river and all, but we're talking a major canal system inside the city, complete with people manning a refugee 'underground railroad' to get out of the city. Newark doesn't have that kind of infrastructure... oh well. Probably just as well, because the canals are full of really nasty water and the ceiling barnacles with the tongues of adhesive death, and there are cops rappelling in to give you a hard time, and did I mention the helicopter? Yup. You scared the bigwigs enough that they sent a combat helicopter after you and it is SHOOTING at you and TRYING TO MAKE YOU DIE.

And then there are the Tocklafane.

No, really. There are flying whizzy things that have glowy red lights and CHEW YOUR FACE OFF BUT GOOD whirry blades and they swarm and they hate you and they want you to die a whole lot, and the Combine send them in waves to try and eradicate everybody in the canals and pipes, and THEY'RE FREAKING TOCKLAFANE. Or Toclafane. Whatever. They're the flying metal blobs of pure homicidal hostility, which amounts the same thing. Fortunately a good crowbar whomp or two breaks them into pieces, but seriously, I spent a good portion of this part of the game screaming about the Tocklafane. bastards.

There's also Vortigaunts. They're on your side now, though. In the course of running around trying to find where to go next Gordon wound up in a trailer containing a guy in a Jumpsuit of Oppression and his Vortigaunt buddy, who was using his deadly electrical powers to... run the television. No, really. At least until you arrive, at which point he stands up and greets you. And when I say 'greets you' I mean he says "So this is the Freeman. The Combine's reckoning is at hand."

WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA I am not 'the' anything! You know who's a 'the'? BATMAN. Gordon spent the whole time that the Vortigaunt was charging up his suit HYPERVENTILATING because of that definite article, mister. I hope you're happy.

Anyway, somewhere around here you get to meet headcrab zombies again, and they've diversified. Did you know a headcrab could operate half a human body? As in, you can get attacked by a shambling torso that pulls itself along with only its arms? Yeah, fun. Even more fun: they make noise now. That's right, the headcrab zombies groan and wail and cry out in pain, and it sounds suspiciously like "why, God, why?" Oh, and if you're not careful about how you kill them? The headcrab jumps off and comes after you.

it gets worse later, but that's later.

Eventually you wind up in a room chock full of Tocklafane and splodey barrels. Do yourself a favor. Splode the barrels. just shoot one or two barrels, they'll all go boom and most of the Tocklafane will die without ever getting to shred you to bits. (Gordon must have a very interesting scar set by the time he gets tot he end of any given game.) I let Gordon beat up the survivors with the crowbar. Sometimes I figure he just needs to commit some excessively primitive violence. He's probably shouting about how much he hates flying razor blade robots and how he's tired of zombies and how he wants to go back to Boston and WHY OH WHY DIDN'T HE TAKE THE BLUE PILL. Lord knows I'd be in that frame of mind myself, in his situation.

Especially once the Geiger counter in his suit starts going off. Look! Canals full of radioactive water! At least it's multicolored rather than glowing green. I kind of get tired of glowing green radiation, since that's really not what it looks like. It just looks icky and wrong, even if it's only poisonous and not radioactive, so I made sure not to let Gordon step in it. When he finally got to dry land he met some more humans, and this time they recognized him. (Or the suit. I don't know which.) The last couple of humans didn't seem to know who he was, they just waved him through, but... well, ol' Gord started getting the creeps about here. Remember, from his POV, he's been awake for like an hour and a half. How did these total strangers find out who he was, and why do they like him so much? I think he did some serious nervous smiling until he could get out of that area and start doing simpler things, like avoiding swinging electrical cables and radioactive goo of death while trying to get off a few called shots to the heads of headcrab zombies. Oh, did I mention the Combine's managed to weaponize headcrabs? Yup. There are ROCKETS FULL OF HEADCRABS COMING OUT OF THE SKY.

Let me repeat: ROCKETS FULL OF HEADCRABS COMING OUT OF THE SKY.

Gordon wants to go back to MIT now, crawl under a desk in the physics department, and never come out again except maybe to get a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.

Too bad that's not an option. Jump, Gordon! Jump over the radioactive goo! Run for the ledge! Try not to humiliate yourself in front of the lady with the airboat! This is harder than it sounds if you're using the Xbox, especially after you actually get INTO the airboat. Why are you getting into the airboat? Because you have to get to Dr. Vance's place, that's why! And it's across arseloads of water! And radioactive goo! But mostly water. You get to drive a vehicle that wouldn't be out of place in the Everglades across miles and miles of canals, trying not to get shot. I found this insanely difficult with the Xbox controller, because I'm very heavy-handed with the joysticks. Gordon went in circles a lot, overshot his mark a lot, and got stuck in reverse more times than I can count. It's easier on the PC, where all you have to do to avoid screwing yourself up is take your hand off the mouse. God intended Half-Life 2 to be played with a keyboard. listen to God. Take your hand off the mouse. Use the W key to go forward, the A key to turn left, the D key to turn right, and the E key to get out of the boat. You'll be fine, at least until you get a weapon for the boat.

In the meantime, you get to speed around the canals like a mad thing. Here I have to endorse a tactic I first learned from Dune 2, namely: if you are in a vehicle that is reasonably powerful and moves by means other than wheels, and someone on foot gets in your way, RUN THEM DOWN. Run them down like they were a mall display and your name was Elwood Blues! They're Combine, they deserve it! And they go crunch when you do! So do most boxes, and you don't even have to get out of the boat to pick the contents up. Whee!

Somewhere around here- a little after the red barn with the G-Man out front- I saved the game and stopped for the night. More next time!

Comments

[minkhollow]

And all I can think after making a phone call to Benson is "You want me to get that?" XD

[camwyn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aQ1RxCaM7Q - the video phone call to Vance starts at about the 4:40 mark. He still sounds perfectly Benson.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I've un-repressed Quake. I was all 'HEY THE JERKS KIDNAPPED SOME MARINES!'

I charge in and pump stabbity nail death into all the bad guys. Semper Fi, motherfuckers!

I run up the ramp to where the Marines are and OH SHITZ. They're half-dead zombies pleading for death.

With a lump in my throat, I send the cage into the lava. It comes back up with armor me to wear.

DEAD MAN'S ARMOR.

[camwyn]

Yeeeeeah. Hearing the zombies scream when they get set on fire is... well, I know it's a waste of ammo since they're going to die anyway, but honestly, more often than not Gordon shoots them while they're burning just to put them out of their misery.

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

*nods* Same goes for my Gordon. I just can't bear to listen to the agonized wailing.

[camwyn]

I made the mistake of listening to a cleaned-up version of the audio for the zombies- someone had it on Youtube. They are screaming 'oh God help me' and 'why God why' and things of that nature; they're just slowed down, and I think some of the phrases are being played backwards.

I got really good at headshots after that. And at keeping track of where sawblades, cinderblocks, and radiators went when fired from the gravity gun, because they're all insta-kills for pretty much anything with a headcrab. (Although I think you have to hit a poison zombie twice with a cinderblock, but then, they don't wail so much as gorble.)

[slarti.livejournal.com]

Hopefully, Gordon'll get used to the "the Freeman" thing eventually, 'cause everyone's a "the" to the Vorts.

Also, ugggh, the airboat. Yes, I was playing on the Xbox; I don't have a Windows setup anywhere. In any case, I never expected I'd find a game whose vehicle operation was so atrociously much worse that I'd swear off complaining about the Warthog in Halo ever again.

[camwyn]

That'll go a long way, yeah. If they do it to everybody, then he doesn't have to hear it as being 'the Batman'.

[slarti.livejournal.com]

I'm just a bit sad that this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stained_glass_Gordon_AYool.jpg) isn't actually visible anywhere in the actual HL2 game. Now that's something to bake Gordon's noodle.

[camwyn]

Oh God. I know his exact reaction to that. It involves running for the nearest available door, slamming it hard behind him, and bracing the door with his back like there was a Gargantua on the other side coming to chow down on the first human baby born in twenty years. Also, probably the OMGWTFNKVD face from the last HL 2 post.

... which isn't to say I won't find a way to use it in my RP when I put him through game 2, it's just that the mere prospect puts him into "NOBODY MUST EVER SEE THAT" mode.


ETA:

"I'm a reasonable man, Father Grigori, so I know I'm not seeing this window."
"A reasonable man, perhaps! But these have not been reasonable times for many, many years, brother."
"... oy."

[slarti.livejournal.com]

hahahaaha Excellent.

I also expect that the nickname Gordon gets, later in the game, will wig him out some in similarly "The Batman" ish fashion.

[camwyn]

Oh, I've gotten farther than I've been able to write up. I can tell you this much: when the telescreen in the canal door control facility goes off, there isn't a big enough font in the WORLD to express his level of "!!!" spaz-out.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry, Excellency. It never sticks."

[camwyn]

Uncle Duke FTW.