Runt's Rant Page

Half-Life 2

Copyright 3/30/09

I’ve been playing the game for several years. It is my favorite all time game. The graphics are amazing. Every time I upgrade my graphics board, it visibly improves the images. The game is smooth, seamless, with an easy flow, yet challenging, as well as a lot of fun. A lot of new computers were purchased to gear up to play this game. It has good head space, even today. It will take all the computer you have. The artificial intelligence is scary. It will keep the game challenging for years. It’s Hal.

If you haven’t played Half-Life (1); you are some schmuck MIT grad., working at Black Mesa, an experimental laboratory. Your MIT degree got you a job pushing a wheelbarrow of stuff into a reactor that blows up. You survive because of your hazard suit and make your way to the surface, where you are eventually mucked by the monsters you helped release. Life on Earth is changed for ever. The boys were still in a steep learning curve at this point, but 7 years later when they released Half-Life 2 they had improved immensely.

You wake up sometime after the “Residence Cascade” and find yourself on a train. The train stops, and you have to disembark. You are herded away by the “Combine”. When we ripped a hole through space in Half Life, an alien life form got through to our planet. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Well, they knew there was a small chance, but if they knew the reactor was going to blow up, they would have gotten Carlos Mencia to push the cart. Anyway, the Combine take over the Earth in seven hours. They are all suited up in black and make for great targets. The mask keeps the pixel size down on the villains and eliminates any personal reluctance you might have with punching holes in the little black hearted bastards. The ones in White are worse.

You nearly get on the death train, when Barney, an old friend from Black Mesa saves your ass. He’s undercover as a Combine.  He gets you going in the right direction and the game begins. You run around getting beat up for a while. You don’t have any health yet. They can’t hurt you, so screw with them.. Then you meet up with the Dr. Kliner and the sweet bitch, Alex. Alex Vance is the best and worst thing that happens to you in this game. She gets you through the game but she is usually the reason you’re in so much trouble. Barney shows up, and the group comes up with a plan to get you to Eli Vance, an old friend and scientist from Black Mesa. Alex is Eli’s daughter and was born at Black Mesa. Armed with a crow bar you start the journey.

You use the crowbar to get a pistol. Then the pistol is use to get a machine gun. The crowbar is used throughout the game to open boxes and break things. It saves on ammo. The pistol should be used at every opportunity. Aim for the head. The pistol is very accurate but the 9mm. rounds have little knock down power and require several good hits to get the job done. The machine gun is good when speed is more important than accuracy. Armed with a grenade launcher, this weapon will save your ass when nothing else will. It uses a lot of ammo, so use it sparingly. The Combine and Man Hacks are best disabled with the pistol. When the pistol is too slow to prevent personal injury, use the machine gun. This works well on several head humpers also. There is nothing like a grenade launcher to take the vinegar out of a zombie.

Throughout the game you will get ammo and med packs. You will also find 55 gallon drums of gasoline. Use these every chance you get. I never leave one unexploded. They are life savers in several places in the game. A couple of rounds with the pistol will get them burning and still allow you to get out of the way before they explode. Several quick rounds will explode the drum instantly. You don’t want to be too close when that happens.

When you get to the air boat, you will have the basic weapons. The crowbar, 9mm pistol, machine gun with grenade launcher, and hand grenades are in your arsenal.  These are all you need for most of this game. Apply these weapons when you can. You’ll pick up a .357 magnum revolver along the way. Once you get your ass shot off in the boat, you will get a chain gun mounted to the boat to fight back. You’ll need it. The boat is a lot of fun. Enjoy the ride and catch some air. Take out the Hunter Choppers.

Your Environmental Hazard Suit will need recharging. It’s best to save these charges for after a fight. There are usually enough Med-packs around to get you through most fire fights. If you charge up your suit afterwards, you’re ready for the next fight. There’s a couple of places this won’t work because of the severity of the ass whipping you are about to receive. Just reload to an earlier spot in the game and load your suit up. There are usually plenty of supplies around after a tough fight.

Having survived the Hunter Chopper’s and other pitfalls, you will be reunited with Eli Vance and his daughter, Alex. You will also meet Dr. Judith Mossman. You beat her out of a job pushing that wheelbarrow in the first version. Then Alex helps you to get acquainted with the gravity gun or the “Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator.” This is the most versatile weapon you will receive. Learn to use it, well. Later in the game, it will be all you have.

Raven Home will be the first test of your abilities with the gravity gun. Raven Home requires that you destroy more things than you have bullets for, so be sure to have all the ammo you can carry. Refill supplies and ammo are scarce, so fill the gap with the anti-gravity gun. Pitch some 55 gal. Drums of gasoline and a saw blade or two, every chance you get, to save on ammo. Here is where you get a shotgun from the good old pastor, Father Grigorri, who is scarier than his congregation. They don’t give you anything before you need it in this game. Keep using saw blades, gasoline drums and bottled gas when you have them available. Almost everything that is organic will burn. A saw blade works as effectively as a well placed shotgun slug. You should have 5 grenades. Use them on Head Humpers.

The mines are next. This will use the rest of your ammo. Once out of the mines, you will get a pulse rifle and some plasma grenades. It is fairly accurate but an extremely powerful weapon. It is the most powerful rifle you will receive. It’s automatic and uses ammo quickly. Use it only when you have to. What weapon to use and when, is what gives this game its replay value. It’s kept me coming back for years. I’ll put it away for a while, and then come back when I’m less familiar with it.

You now get to meet the Ant Lions. Outfitted with a machine gun mounted dune buggy, you head out along the coast on you way to Nova Prospect, an old maximum security prison. Use the machine gun on everything you can, its ammo is renewable. In spite of the Ant Lions, the buggy is a good ride, where you will run into various other perils. Along the road, you will pick up a rocket launcher and a high-tech crossbow. Use the bow like a sniper rifle and the rocket launcher to destroy large metal objects like Gun Ships If there are plenty of rockets around, just have fun tearing things up.

Once out of road, you have to go on foot. Without the buggy for protection from the Ant Lions, you have to carefully cross the sand by walking on palettes and such. You finally make your way through this tedious portion of the game, then drop into one of the worse fights you’re going to have. You cross paths with the Queen Ant Lion. These bitches are tough and can conjure up four Ant Lions at will. Just before you dropped into the Valley of Death there was an area infested with Ant Lions and a thumper. It also had four, 55 gal. Gasoline drums. Go back in the game and get them. Then drop them into the area where the Queen is before you jump in. I don’t want to give too many hints, but this one is useful. Use the Gravity Gun to throw as many gasoline drums as you can at the Queen Ant Lion. This will hurt her and kill off her army. Then run past her towards the other end of the valley, picking up gasoline drums and pitching them at her as you run, backwards if necessary. At the other end of this small valley there is a guy with a machine gun that will give you a hand.

You might not believe this, but it is possible to kill her with out firing a shot or getting injured at all. It will save your rockets for your next encounter with the Gun Ships. This is important.  Your next meeting will be with 2 Gun Ships. One wasn't enough? Killing the Queen will yield you the Vermidance Aromatic Pheropods, or “bug bait”. These allow you to command the Ant Lions. What were once your enemy, are now your army. Send them in first, to soften things up a bit and to save wear and tear on you.

You now have collected all 11 weapons. The crowbar, the gravity gun, the 9mm pistol, the .357 magnum revolver, the machine gun and grenade launcher, the pulse rifle and plasma grenades, the shotgun, the crossbow, 5 hand grenades, the rocket launcher, and the bug bait. You’ll meet back up with Alex and have to use all of them in one big battle. Alex eventually gets captured by the Combine and you spend most of the game finding her and her father. The Combine takes all your weapons, except the gravity gun which gets one big inadvertent software upgrade by their scanning machine. This will get you through the rest of the game easily.

Have Fun,

The Runt