Half-Life 2, Part 8: YIPE YIPE YIPE YIPE

[camwyn]

When last we saw our hero, Gordon Freeman had just defeated Antoine the OH GOD WHY WON'T IT DIE antlion bull of Nova Prospekt Prison. And made serious usage of his suit's reclamation pads. You can't tell me the HEV suit isn't equipped to filter certain things. If the Fremen can do it I don't see why Black Mesa can't. Besides. How is someone who works in an HEV suit all day supposed to use the toilet? I don't see a potty flap on that prehensile ass.

... what?

Anyway. Antoine's dead. Gordon's plastered against the prison shower wall staring at the bug which has just died two inches from the end of his nose. Yeah, I have a knack for killing mighty enemies in ways that either squash poor Gordon flat or come really close to it. Thankfully, once Antoine was dead I got to whip out the pheropod again. Squeak squeak ka-squeekit, bitches! Come to papa! More accurately, come to where Papa just tossed one of the pheropods and soak up the turret fire and chew up the soldiers for him so that he can concentrate on knocking down those goddamned turrets before they puncture us all! Freakin' turrets, think they're so buff just because they're behind a freakin' force field, EAT RADIATOR, you bastards...

Shortly thereafter I ran across a room with a bog-standard Torture Chair and Puddle of Blood in it. Slight difference: this one had a Vortigaunt in it. Poor bastard was already dead long before Gordon and the posse got there. Do you have any idea how hard it is to mime closing the eyes of something with four human-sized eyes and one eye larger than the Orb of Aldur? The only funerary observance I could give the poor thing at that point was another Grapthar's Hammer speech. From there it was off to more soldiers, some air shaft crawling, a game of Shove The Shovel In The Slaughtery Death Fan, and more Tocklafane. By this time I'm just a little bit punchy, so the fact that the Tocklafane noises change in pitch and speed when you gravgun them away without killing them left me giggling. Because, well...

They sound like kicked puppies. Slashy murdery maimy evil kicked puppies, but kicked puppies nonetheless. *BZZZZZZZZZ* *BZZZZZZZZZZZ* *THOOM!* "YIPE YIPE YIPE YIPE!", etc. You can't help but laugh at this point, at least not if you're me. And then you have to go right back to the killing, because if they're making kicked-puppy noises it means they're still alive, and they'll recover shortly and come to slice your ears off. And you want your ears for the next section. Oh, yes. You want your ears. You want them very much. Because while the Tocklafane might be whimpering like kicked puppies? Dr. Breen is whining like a bitch.

No, really. You finally pissed him off enough for him to start ranting at people about you. And it is fantastic rantery, because he's doing it in this mildly-pissed-off Robert Culp voice the whole time you're hucking grenades at snipers and shoving shotguns into Combine faces and sending your girls to rip the Combine limb from limb. And this is what he's ranting:

"How could one man have slipped through your force's fingers time and time again? How is it possible? This is not some agent provocateur or highly trained assassin we are discussing. Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physicist who had hardly earned the distinction of his Ph.D. at the time of the Black Mesa Incident. I have good reason to believe that in the intervening years, he was in a state that precluded further development of covert skills. The man you have consistently failed to slow, let alone capture, is by all standards simply that--an ordinary man. How can you have failed to apprehend him??"

Don't know. Don't care. Pretty sure I saw the G-Man on a monitor back there somewhere. Cry moar, emo Breen. I gots me a job to do, and if that job includes piloting a fleet of antlions through a big damn laundry room full of Combine in severe need of dyin', then that's what I'm gonna do. Same goes for the Kitchen of No Smoking Dammit, although that's not so much 'piloting the fleet through' as 'casually firing a bullet into the room full of gas and running like a bunny as the flames erupt behind me'.

Pretty soon thereafter the girls stopped responding to Gordon squeezing the bug balls, and I found out why when I got to a well-placed window. Antoine wasn't the only bull in Nova Prospekt. Fortunately there were Combine plenty willing to try and kill him before I got there. I didn't have a whole lot of ammo at that point, so I let the Combine die horribly, then jumped on down and started introducing Antoine Jr. to my old friend Mr. Radiator. Repeatedly. Often. With great enthusiasm and AUGH because if the radiator bounces too far off Antoine Jr.'s head it takes forever to reel it in and that's enough time for Antoine Jr. to headbutt you across the room and into the wall ten feet off the ground. sooo much hurty.... Fortunately Antoine Jr. died a little more easily than the one in the showers did. The only real way out of that room actually went out of the prison, briefly passing through the biggest garbage mashers since the Death Star cleaned out its refrigerators, so I headed on out that way. And hey, would you look at that, it's Alyx. She got here without the shooting and the exploding and the HEADBUTTING BY GIANT CRANKY ANTLIONS. Yeah, she said back when the rebels gave you the adamantium turbo golf cart that she'd be trying to sneak in via train, but it's still kind of a "... you're lucky you're necessary to the plot" moment to see her there ahead of you completely unharmed.

It's probably just as well she showed up then, though. I'd almost forgotten the point of invading the place, which was to break her father out. He's awaiting processing, which is one of the more gruesome euphemisms I've ever seen given what they turn people into at Nova Prospekt- and he's awaiting it in a dangly arrangement straight out of the Matrix. You know. Kind of like the one in that seriously creepy G-Man vision. Fun, ne? Alyx and Dad have a little chat, Dad informs Alyx that Judith Mossman- you remember, Turtleneck Lady? Dr. Suck-Up? Her- she's also being held here somewhere. There's a teleportation room on the premises that they can reprogram to get everybody out of Nova Prospekt without having to take another train or run, so Alyx sends Dad there and it's off to see what you can... what... you..

OH JESUS THE FLOOR
THE FLOOR IS COMPLETELY COVERED IN HEADCRABS
DADDY WANTS SOME NAPALM

guh. Guuuuuuh. After the Ravenholm mines, poking your head out an air duct to see fast headcrabs scuttling around in droves, and the poison ones creeping about, and the bloated tick models... it's just... guuuuuuuuuuh. Hate those things. Hate hate hate.

But not as much as I hate the part that ensued in what had been a control room once. Alyx is trying to get to your position herself, but since she doesn't have spiffy power armor to keep her from dying, she's got to do it the sneaky way. You have to use two reprogrammed Combine turrets to hold your position against wave after wave of Combine soldiers until she arrives. And I do mean wave after wave, because there are approximately a METRIC SQUINTILLION of these guys, showing up in troops of three and four and five, with the SMGs and the shotguns and the completely free rein to shoot at you from across the room that the control room overlooks, and-

Excuse me. psiTunes just started playing "Only The Good Die Young".

-anyway. There's soldiers coming up on the left. And the right. And behind you, although to actually take your position they have to stop shooting at you briefly and come at you up the stairs. If you're lucky, the turrets kill them. If you're me, the turrets do some killing, and then a soldier with a shotgun knocks one of the turrets over, and Alyx yells at you over the suit radio, and you fail to realize that the turrets can be picked up and rendered re-operational, and you throw things at the shotgun soldier until he dies, and you start hearing the WHRRRRRM of Tocklafane, and you find yourself desperately wishing for just one good old fashioned Black Mesa-class satchel charge to take out a whole clump of these guys on the steps...

But you don't have one. It's just you, and the turrets, and a dwindling supply of ammo. And there's hardly anything worth throwing. And the soldiers just keep on coming. If the room with the tank and the dead soldiers and the door to Lambda in HL 1 was Gordon's final apocalyptic battle that wasn't, this room is-

... "Livin' On The Edge", now.

-anyway, if that was the final apocalyptic battle that wasn't, this control room is the charge of the Light Brigade and the war in Vietnam all in one. Congratulations, you've been ordered to do something you don't entirely understand for reasons that weren't adequately explained to you, and you don't get to ask why or how, you just have to hold your position and not die. Somehow. In this horrible little room in this horrible place, in a world you haven't even BEGUN to get an explanation for- oh, and at this point, Gordon's been awake for sixteen hours, maybe more. And the death just keeps on coming.

I don't think I've ever been so glad to hear "Outbreak! Outbreak! Outbreak!" in my life, since that's the signal that means 'one soldier is left alive and reinforcements are not coming'. Gordon had a crossbow bolt left, so he pegged the guy from across the control room, and sat down to bleed in earnest as he had twenty health points left. When Alyx arrived she apologized for having to part and said she wouldn't leave him again; I think if he had any strength left in his arms at all, he'd have waited until her back was turned and given her the finger. Just once, briefly. And maybe felt a little guilty about it- but not much.

'Course, there's bigger stuff to worry about real soon thereafter. Alyx gets the computer equipment working and goes looking for Dr. Mossman on it, and OH LOOK SURPRISE TRAITOR. Yuppers, Dr. Suck-Up's been working for Breen for ages now. Cue the rage, mostly on Alyx's part, especially since Mossman's got a thing for her father. There is a truly epic cat fight waiting to happen at this point, but you have to survive another gun turret standoff first. Fortunately there's more ammo and cover for this one, although by 'more cover' I mean 'places that look suspiciously like closets and only lack a Protective Blanket of Fear to make them perfect places for Gordon to cover his head and whimper like a six-year-old'. I am not ashamed to admit that Gordon did a fair chunk of cowering during this one. It kept him alive. He did come out regularly and do his share of killin', but honestly, if you give me cover I'm going to use it. Also, this time I realized I could pick up the turrets if they got knocked over. Whoops.

The cat fight begins shortly after this. No slapping, alas. Just a lot of yelling and flailing and using the teleporter, which takes forever to warm up, and OH LOOK SOLDIERS and HELP HELP MUST GET MORE TURRETS. The soldiers make a great distraction from the fact that Mossman used the teleporter to run off with Alyx's dad to somewhere Alyx doesn't recognize. Reassuring, isn't it? You don't get long to think about the implications, because, like I said, OH LOOK SOLDIERS. Don't let them kill you (duh), don't let them kill Alyx (unless you WANT to work the teleport machine yourself, which you can't do), and keep the turrets up as long as you can. And then run for the teleporter platform and STAY THERE, because the Storm Troopers have arrived- for real this time, since they're dressed in white armor and white helmets. Except they're more like first generation Clone Troopers, because despite only having one opening in their helmets through which they can see, these guys can actually hurt you. Dirty pool, Dr. Breen! Dirty pool!

The teleport works, fortunately. It just kinda sucks, because it returns you to Dr. Kleiner's lab a week after you left. Nova Prospekt done blowded up when you left, and the Resistance went HOORAY IT'S CHRISTMAS, SANTA FREEMAN GAVE US BOOM THIS YEAR. We now have open warfare in the streets and giant war machines like, oooh, thirty foot daddy longleggers with ovipositors of DOOM roaming around killing anything that moves, and it's time for you to join in.

For me, however, it's time to feed the cats and head to bed. More next time, folken.

Comments

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

Actually, the "hold the fort" parts aren't TOO bad, with proper placement of the turrets. In the first one either at the upper stairwell landing or each one overlooking the tunnels where they pop out from will be good; you can even use physics objects to barricade one of the stairwells so the soldiers can't get to the turret to knock it over. Their AI stinks that bad.

With the teleporter, though, no handy physical objects, but placing them in hard-to-reach areas like behind the control panels helps.

Make sure you've got your send/recall squad key memorised; you'll need it in the chapters to come. Always a great relief to have goons do the fighting for you, even if they tend to take medkits you want.

[camwyn]

Yeah, and like I said, it sort of helps to remember that you can pick the turrets up and restart them once they fall over. I didn't realize that at first. I'm really not used to that kind of thing, and my walkthrough wasn't nearly as helpful as I would've liked.

I'm chalking Gordon's performance up to inexperience with combat-in-place rather than combat-while-running-like-hell, since it's a perfectly IC reason for doing horribly under the circumstances.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

OH JESUS THE FLOOR
THE FLOOR IS COMPLETELY COVERED IN HEADCRABS
DADDY WANTS SOME NAPALM

*just about dies* ♥

[camwyn]

They move like cockroaches. Like hissing, rattling, screeching, cat-noise-making, scuttling cockroaches that can bite your head to pieces and aren't afraid of the light. Something like that wants to be killed with adhesive fire, dammit.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

Definitely.

[camwyn]

Of all the weaponry from the first game, I miss the satchel charges the most. Even the gluon gun, while nice, wouldn't come in as handy as those suckers did.

(Unrelated- I gave Ray an EP today. I indicated that Jhalak is asleep on his shoulder.)

[lienne.livejournal.com]

(Awesome. I believe I'll tag with him/her/it waking up, then. :D *goes to look*)



Tilda says: this is why it's good that she's taught Gordon to make his own! :D

Edit: PS: My GMail is lythiilth, for future reference. *beams*

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

Well, flares in episode one set headcrabs and zombies on fire...just gotta set them alight and run like hell while they burn to death. Plentiful supply of those, too, in the "zombie survival" chapters. XP

[camwyn]

Hm. Didn't know the flares'd work on headcrabs, too. I might have to try that at some point.

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

Actually, there ARE satchel charges/tripmines--but only in the multiplayer deathmatch. Sucks. XD

[camwyn]

AWWWh. I miss those.