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camwynWhen last we saw our heroes, they were escaping from the Hudson County Correctional Facility (c'mon, Nova Prospekt is too far away to be Essex County) by means of a Combine teleporter rigged to act like it was a human design. Slight problem: Dr. Mossman, Wearer of Turtlenecks, used the teleporter first and went somewhere Alyx didn't recognize. With, I might add, Alyx's father. Here's a tip, kids: in the future, turtlenecks are evil. Dr. Breen? Wears a Steve Jobs black turtleneck. Dr. Mossman? Wears a white turtleneck. Other people? Do not wear turtlenecks. Trust no one who is wearing a turtleneck.
Anyway, turtlenecks aside, Gordon and Alyx made it out of Nova Prospekt. Yay. They landed in Dr. Kleiner's lab without incident. Double yay. Except, well, the lab's quiet and dark, which: not a good sign. Not grounds for panic, at least for me, if only because I figured that this was Half-Life and the Combine would've gutted the place of everything useful if they'd paid a visit to Dr. Kleiner's, but still, not good. Dr. Kleiner then showed up with a shotgun and there was a brief flare of amateur on Gordon's part, as far as I'm concerned. Mind you, he suppressed it quickly, since this is Dr. Kleiner we're talking about and my Gordon considers him a father figure, but still. Turns out that the reason he's all spazzed out is because it's been a week since anybody last heard from you. And by 'last heard from you' I mean 'there was a big damn kaboom at Nova Prospekt that took out the teleporter and a good chunk of the associated building'. Which, naturally, is cause for celebration, but when you're living in a dark and horrible dystopian future ruled over by unseen alien overlords and enforced by guys with more chips in their heads than a Pringles factory (thank you, Concerned), celebration means something a little different. That whole 'if $person_you_slavishly_imitate_as_a_susceptible_teenager jumped off a bridge, would you?' thing apparently didn't register with the generation that grew up in Gordon's absence. Gordon Freeman blew up Nova Prospekt? Great! Let's ALL blow up Combine stuff! Viva la Revolucion!
So, there's been seven days of war in the streets. A good chunk of it's been aiming for the Citadel, since Eli Vance's been hauled off to there for purposes of information extraction, probably by means developed at the Darth Vader School of Diplomatic Interrogation. Okay, that part's never actually said, but you gotta admit, it'd fit right in with everything else so far. At least Barney's still okay- he's leading the fight and needs some assistance- and hey, Dog the Combat Droid is still around and happy to see Alyx. Too bad she sends you and Dog off to go meet up with Barney while she gets Dr. Kleiner somewhere safe, huh? Oh, well. At least it means you don't have to stick around while Dr. Kleiner looks for his pet headcrab. Honestly, it's enough to make a guy worry about his mentor sometimes...
To the streets! Through the burning cars! Past the HOLY CRAP DOG CAN DO WHAT. Ooh. Sucks to be the Combine soldiers, plural, who just got hit with that van. Dog's got him a couple of pitchin' arms, all right. Good thing, too, because there's an armored personnel carrier that tries to give you a hard time DOG HATE ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER. DOG SMASH. NO, WAIT. DOG HATE COMBINE SOLDIERS, TOO. DOG SMASH COMBINE SOLDIERS WITH ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER. DOG VERY EFFICIENT THAT WAY.
Dog also very efficient about opening doors. The Combine have a barricade up and he rips it open for yiou. Which is great, except for one thing: INCOMING GUNDAM OF EVIL. Yep. Dropship overhead. DOG HATE GUNDAM OF EVIL. DOG NOT HAVE ENOUGH LEVERAGE. DOG STILL HOLDING ONTO GUNDAM OF EVIL WHEN GUNDAM OF EVIL FLY AWAY.
WELL, CRAP.
In the words of Liz Sherman, you should be running.
... well, okay, maybe not, it's not that bad just yet. Still, run anyway, because you don't want to miss the show in the plaza as everybody pulls down the Big Damn Telescreen rather than listen to Breen one moment longer. I could be wrong, but I think I saw the G-Man's image flicker on the screen right before they pulled it down. Charming to know he's still looking out for you, isn't it? Oh, well. There's more important stuff to worry about. For instance, the people who just pulled down the telescreen want to follow you-
*sigh* psiTunes just started playing "A Matter Of Trust". Why am I not surprised.
Anyway. You have command of a squad now. This is the point where I had a moment of 'oh gods' and my Gordon had a moment of 'give me ONE GOOD REASON why I should not hyperventilate on the spot'. There's a world of difference between 'good at killing stuff' and 'good at command'. For one thing, command carries a whole bucket of implications, chiefest among which is that you are supposed to look after your people and keep them alive. Yes, yes, generals spend lives like water when it's necessary and all that, but we're talking about Gordon Freeman here, not a seasoned soldier. As of this point in the game, he has lived through slightly less than fifty-six hours of warfare, if that, and he has spent virtually all of it alone. Gordon's idea of making sure other people don't die consists primarily of killing the things that are trying to make them die. The life of a research physicist does not leave a lot of room for learning how to use troops wisely and well, unless you count teaching assistants as troops, and I'm pretty sure Gordon doesn't. If people want to idolize him, fine, whatever, he thinks they're crazy but he knows you can't stop people once they get certain ideas into their heads. Falling in behind him because they think he's capable of being a commander? NO NO NO NO NO. You want a commander, you get your ass over to the Overwatch Nexus. His name's Barney freaking Calhoun and he's done more commanding than Gordon ever will.
Unfortunately this approach is not available to you, and there are no paper bags among the available physics objects, so Gordon doesn’t get to hyperventilate either. He’s got to wear the commander hat after all. Fortunately he’s only got four people to look after and one of them is the medic, but still. Don’t get the civilians killed, Gordon. Look out for the hopping proximity mines of painful maiming, Gordon. Don’t even think of fighting the Striders yet, Gordon. Try not to let the civilians know you just made use of the waste reclamation system in the suit at the thought of having to fight the Striders, Gordon. Etc. etc.
Eventually the civilians and my Gordon wound up under a building and in an automobile tunnel. You’d think this was a great way not to get cacked by the squintillion cops, soldiers, and GIANT DADDY LONGLEGS OF OVIPOSITOR DOOM up above, but let’s be honest here. If you are playing one of the Half-Life games, and you find yourself in a tunnel where you can actually see the walls, you’re screwed. That tunnel is out to kill you. Always. No exceptions. If it isn’t full of zombies, it’s full of radioactive crap, and if it isn’t full of radioactive crap, it’s full of freaking Tocklafane. Like this one! The instant you get within view of the sky at the end of the tunnel, the Tocklafane start coming and coming and coming and coming and oh, God, if you’re using the gravity gun enough you’re going to start giggling because there’s so damn many of them that you’re just sure to bounce one out of every three or four off a wall without quite killing it, and this means the air is filled with the sound of yelping kicked puppies. Only the kicked puppies are trying to SLICE YOUR FACE OFF so the sympathy gets piled together with the anger and the adrenaline and it’s just *punt* YELP YELP YELP* *grab* *punt* *zorp* *punt* YELP YELP YELP *zorp* over and over again, while your comrades are yelling and shooting. If you can manage not to laugh while you’re doing this… well, you’re obviously not me.
You eventually make it out of Bowling for Tocklafane only to find that you have to unlock a door for your civilians. Which, fine, you’re willing to do, but there are two slight problems:
1. The place you unlock the door from is in a tunnel section filled with HELL SLIME AND ZOMBIES (I told you this was Newark), and
2. Great God Almighty, man, we’ve got HOW many explosives among the lot of us? It’s a DOOR. It should be PUNISHED for being impertinent enough to get in our way.
I’m sorry. The locked door gambit is just stupid. If Gordon had to go around because the door was blocked by something that had to be gravgunned from the other side I could almost buy it, but simple locked doors that make you risk your shiny orange prehensile ass in a river of corrosive radioactive death and zombies because you can’t open them with Splodey-Go-Boom? That’s stupid enough to set off Gordon Frohman’s sense of the inappropriate. Sorry. Ain’t buying it.
Yadda yadda fight, yadda yadda zombies, yadda yadda okay we’re unlocked and out now, time to beat the snot out of every Combine mofo and zombie, fast zombie, or half zombie in the building upstairs. You meet up with Alyx once you’ve finally slugged your way out of the building, and then you’ve got a generator that has to get turned off so that the Combine can make adorable squeaky noises of dismay as they realize that the rebels have
Um. Sorry. I needed a break from calling them the Gundams of Evil. At any rate you now have to learn to be a commander in the Harry Wells sense of the word, namely, ‘sometimes the people you kill are your own men’. There are only two people who have to make it out of this area alive, and they’re Gordon and Alyx. Not that keeping your squad alive isn’t a good thing, but it’s going to be all but impossible to do that even if you’re a much better gamer than me. (If you did manage it, tell me how. I know the civilians are supposed to be meatshields and cannon fodder but I have a hell of a time thinking of them that way.) You’re gonna have lots of soldiers, plus you’re gonna have sto-
Hn.
It’s just occurred to me that with one glowy red eye in the middle of their face area, the Combine Elites are basically Cylon Stormtroopers. Great, just freakin’ great.
Anyway. Kill ‘em. A lot. And when Alyx finally yells that she’s done her work, your friend and mine, Mr. Gravity Gun, is on hand to zorp the shiny energy ball out of the shield generator and make the Combine very unhappy indeed. Get used to this, because you’ll be playing with the Combine’s balls a lot from now on.
Oh, hush. It’s been twenty years since the last human child was born in this world, and if Breen is to be believed, the Combine turned off the reproductive urge when they turned off reproductive ability, too. The Combine didn’t need those balls.
Yes, it’s out of my system now.
Anyway. You’re supposed to meet Barney now, so off you go with Alyx. Whoop, he’s not there. Whoops again, there’s no bridge to where he probably is. Fortunately, Gordon Freeman does not let little things like a lack of bridge stop him! Gordon Freeman is perfectly happy to muck around in horrible nasty environments like the Newark city sewers so long as the stuff lapping at his ankles isn’t actively trying to devour him one molecular layer at a time! Yay for the sewers! Yay for the-
Crap, zombies.
Crap, Combine soldiers.
Crap. MORE zombies.
OH FRIGGING HELL POISON HEADCRAB KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT.
Okay. Out of the sewers now and up into a room full of pipes and soldiers. Kill the soldiers, climb on the pipes, do not mix up the two, kthx. You don’t have a whole lot farther to go from here before you meet Barney, except for things like, oh, snipers and more snipers and a flooded basement full of zombies and even more snipers and the Gundams of Evil are carrying STRIDERS now oh GOD no. Fortunately you get to work out your urge to spaz by chucking grenades at the snipers, since you’ve got grenades in fairly unlimited quantities by this point. The limiter is how much hurting you can take, not how much you can dish out.
Eventually, assuming you don’t die (very eventually, if you’re me; my Gordon does not throw like Nolan Ryan, he throws like a theoretical physicist, so I did a LOT of saving and reloading at this point), you cack all the snipers and meet up with Barney again. YAY. I like Barney. He’s funny. Especially when he talks about the cat.
At this point, Barney started talking about having to get into an ex-museum and shut off a major antipersonnel device that CHRIST ALMIGHTY IT VAPORIZED HALF THE STREET, DID YOU SEE THAT, WHAT THE HELL, WHERE DID THEY GET DEATH STAR JR., so I figured I should probably tackle that section the next time I was actually awake. I saved the game and went home.
Next time, we’ll meet the medic who has the power to leave Gordon seriously disturbed with a single throwaway sentence!
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 03:19 am (UTC)<3333
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Date: 2008-07-09 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 04:02 am (UTC)As the blustery, bluff guy in charge of briefing everybody about how critical it is to win the upcoming Big Damn Battle.
My braaaaaaaaaaain.
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Date: 2008-07-09 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 04:34 am (UTC)So you don't have to feel so bad, the game MEANT for them to die. >.>
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Date: 2008-07-09 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 01:42 pm (UTC)Now I'm picturing random (human) rebel people talking about how they "remember the Freeman" and "are coterminous" and such.
.........That level would've been so much more awesome if your squad was made up of Vortigaunts.
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Date: 2008-07-09 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 01:03 pm (UTC)Like I said last night. The G-Man is Gordon's own personal Jesus.
He could also be the Half-Life universe's Watcher. Because everyone knows how hands-off the Watcher turns out to be whenever some really scary big bad shows up in the Marvel-verse ...but that would make Gordon the Half-Life equivalent of the Fantastic Four, since they were always getting tossed around as the Watcher's personal army of
bitchesguardians.no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:26 pm (UTC)And he could have a shiny silver head crab that flies around on a frisbee. Because they're far too pudgy to fit on a surfboard.