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Rebel FM Game Club - Half Life 2+eps - Episode 3
After a week off due to illness, we're back with part 3 of our Game Club series on Half Life 2 and its episodes. We're joined by Area5's Ryan O'Donnell and Matt Chandronait as we talk about Half Life 2: Episode 1. Be sure to finish Episode 2 by next Monday!
[Music] Hello and welcome to uh to the Rebel from Game Club. This is the third episode of our Half-Life 2 series, which covers all of Episode 1 and Half-Life 2. Oh, well Half-Life 2 Part 3, covering Episode 1 and Half-Life 2. This is the uh going back into Citadel Part of the game. Yeah, so you should have played all of uh all of Episode 1 if you are following along correctly and if not what the fuck is wrong with you. Oh god. So uh I'm Anthony Gallegos. No you're not. Of games by in EatSleepGame.com with me is Arthur Geeze. Hello. And Tyler Barber. Hey howdy. Also EatSleepGame.com and joining us as always is Matt Changerine of Area 5.TV as well as uh Rhyanodontal from the same thing. It's a me. Rhyanodontal. Our special guest, Alcohol. They, it's a cheap bottle of wine. It's a little bit high quality or more high quality and two buck check. I wish I was actually feeling the experience, the parts of this wine that make you feel weird and funny because right now it just tastes good. I'm actually just incoherent because I'm actually incoherent. It has nothing to do with it at all. That's fair. So this one starts off with uh I guess it picks up immediately where the game ends. So Gordon has been taken to the nowhere zone. Which is really, I mean the ending of Half-Life 2 is already really confusing. I mean if you're playing it it just kind of stops really suddenly and you're like wow I get no closure. And then the intro is really psychedelic and you know obviously if you've played it enough. You're seeing it psychedelic because the vortigaunts are purple. Well they like kind of they do this thing where they'll show the vortigaunts in the alpha space and then in the beta space in transparency you see like you know whatever the G-Man or something like that getting trapped or or anyway. I love the chanting too. Right. I just think it's really interesting because you never knew that the vortigaunts had the power to do something like stop the G-Man. I guess in bulk they do. Yeah. Yeah. I love the G-Man's line too where it's just like we'll see about that. And it's like it implies so much like the vortigaunts were telling them like yeah we're taking Gordon in the ring. Shit you can do about it. Gordon and Alex. Yeah exactly. Just pulling them all out. Yeah I was going to say I'm kind of wondering if that'll I want to see how they resolve that in the third episode or whatever because yeah because I don't understand if that's the case like right when he reappears why isn't the G-Man like and you're back with me. Yeah. The G-Man be an adversary in episode three I think is a valid question. Yeah. We can talk more about that next time. He's really Gordon's father. So episode two or episode one begins with Gordon in rocks getting pulled out of the rocks by dog. The wind. Which is a great way to start a level because you just didn't get enough of dog in Half-Life 2. I mean they flat out say as much in the commentary like players love dog the most so we wanted the first thing you saw when you started this game to be dog. There's sort of some weird visual effects going on at the beginning of episode one. Like as far as just the way the game looks like it looks like a cutscene like everything's sort of blurry and like does this make any sense? Well I think it's supposed to be atmospheric effects. Yeah there's a lot of particulate matter kind of floating around in the space there's like a bunch of ash and dust. And then beyond that the Citadel as because you guys have just fucked it up is all coming apart and so everything is red and fiery and there's yeah there's bits of debris everywhere. I mean the whole it's a whole thing falling apart. I love that first setup where you see you know you finally get past that first room we're kind of skipping past the first person hug. I was about to ask you how you like that hug a little awkward. It's a little bit delicious. I think it's fairly successful but without being too much because you know they never take the control away from you in Half-Life. Once you're in control of Gordon you're good to go and this is one point where they lock your camera and you can't actually move it around. Yeah so I'm glad it's over quick. I think the kind of weird part is that I don't know when the first it's been a long time but the first time I was playing it I got stuck in that space for a while before I realized I had to grab it. I realized I had to grab it again on those boards off and if you listen to the commentary during this part the commentary by the way this week will be the replacement for the art book from last week. If you listen to the commentary if you've read the art book if you listen to the commentary you'll hear that they say like they weren't really happy with the way that that first room. I didn't even know there was commentary. I love the commentary tracks. You can play the game with commentary on? Yeah well there's basically these little like 3D floating common little nodes in the world and you look at them and you target them and they'll use your developers of Valve. You know whichever person is most responsible for any given part will tell you about some of the thought process going behind it and there are even times when the camera will pan back and like take control of the game and do things like show you different variations of models and all sorts of stuff. If you haven't played through a commentary then I highly recommend it in both episode one, episode two, Portal and both. It's really really really good. As soon as I saw that in Lost Coast I was like man I want this in every game now. I really wish they'd go back and do it in the original Half-Life 2 board and Half-Life 1 would be excellent for them. I'm sure it's really time consuming though. The cool thing I'm not saying they should I'm just saying as a fan you know. Well one of the really cool things about it is like you'll see the nodes they look like little dialog boxes floating in the air like rotating. It's like wow quests. Yeah exactly almost and you can activate them from any distance. So if you see one in the distance you can just like you can just put your cursor over and hit use and it'll activate it. It's not like it's sitting in the environment to give you a sense of its location but it's not necessarily reliant on you standing right next to it. Which is just kind of a nice little touch because it can be like I'm fighting in a combat area. I've had to run away from the dialog box because like most of the time the game doesn't pause after you activate it. So like you know if you have to and Ryan's pouring more wine. Did you finish that? Yeah. No it's still more. Oh no I thought you meant my glass. Oh no. And so the... It would be super fun to edit. That's why you shouldn't. Yeah. And so the cool thing is you know you can be in a battle and you'll have to run away from one of the little dialog things but you can turn around and not have to run back to activate it. The one thing I want to say while we're talking about the commentary here is that I valve if anyone's listening. In the future can you please put a volume slider specifically for commentary? Oh God yes. From what I figured out commentary volume is attached to music and sound effects for the game. If you adjust either of the two sliders the commentary goes volume goes down. So there was you know there were times when I was trying to hear the commentary I couldn't hear it because there was a giant battle going on or whatever. Or there was a background hum in the citadel. Yeah exactly. So I just... you should get people the option to turn the commentary up and everything else down. That's all. Anyway commentary is great doing every game. If you like to come on an episode of Game Club to talk about Half-Life. So anyway. I almost started playing out in commentary mode but then I saw the note that you cannot earn achievements while in the mode. And I had already decided that I was going for the one shot and then all. That's what I'm so proud of you. Did you get it? Hell yeah. I actually did play through the first time on hard and then I played through again on easy with commentary just to get through it. So the first time I played through Orange Boxing 360 I played through it on hard because I had already beaten most of it on normal on PC and Xbox and whatever. So for some reason this time I decided to do it on normal because I didn't want to hate myself in a lot of parts of the game. Right. But I guess episode one remembered that I had set it to hard last time I played and I was playing through the game not knowing that. And thinking I am so much angrier at this game right now than I should be in so many parts. And some of that is some issues with some encounter design but I have to be careful what I say this episode because so much of the rage that I was feeling playing through episode one was born solely from. I feel sorry for anyone and I know a lot of people. This is kind of the redheaded stepchild of the Half-Life episodes because I think it's fairly safe to say because there's not that much new art in this game. You end up going through many of the environments you just went through. If you had just played Half-Life 2 you just went through the Citadel at the last thing you did and the first thing you do in this game is go through the Citadel again. So much better looking Citadel this time at least. I feel like the main key thing about this game is that Alex is with you like 90% of the time. In general a game hadn't really done that before this game. He had an AI character who is someone who you can sort of believe is a real sort of, I don't know, has a motion and character, a real character in terms with you throughout the entire game. Half-Life 2 is awkward adolescents. There's a lot that's cool in this but there's also a lot where it's like well this is them working out the kinks and what they want to do later. This is us experimenting with new zombies and with increased scripting with enemies and this is us experimenting with new weird platforms. Well think about that Alex is with you 90% of the time and she has to be able to go everywhere that you go and not look weird or robotic as doing everything that you do. And that must have been an entirely huge challenge but I think they did a great job with it and even though it starts a little slow there's a lot of exposition at the beginning before it really gets to the action. I think it's really well delivered. I love that first scene that message with Eli and Kleiner telling you how crazy you are for being considered else still even though it's about to explode and the only thing you could possibly do is go back in and you're like fuck yeah let's do it. Nice work there buddy. And I have to say from the moment where you get in the car and dog throws you over into the Citadel it's like a crazy roller coaster ride from that point forward the entire game to me almost and I really appreciate it. To focus specifically on that moment getting in the car being thrown in that's the part in the first in Half Life 2 you know you have all the Stalker rides to the Citadel and they're pretty cool and the second one is better the first one as I think Arthur mentioned like I think partially because you see how high you're getting and how it does go faster than the first one. But in the speed I actually get motion sickness a little bit from the from the drop into the Citadel in the car and I think it's just a really impressive sequence that should be kind of lackluster. I just I don't know what way to say it other than that they really nailed the speed of it in the feel of the camera shake and all that stuff in something that should be boring but I like it every time I do it. And when I love the build up to it too because like dog throws that rock at the Citadel misses and misses and then like you and then like as soon as he did that I was like I was kind of getting what they were getting at and then the van comes in and I'm like fuck. That dog is totally going to throw me throw us into the Citadel and it was it's just one of the it's just one of those moments that I think Valve is really good at you know they do it in their game design too where they teach you what's going to happen and they like foreshadow what's going to happen in safe environments and you have foreshadowed a story element there in that same vein where it's like here's what we're going to do to you in a few minutes here and it really builds that anticipation and then like you said it totally pays off once you're actually there and you're on the roller coaster. I was just saying and also the way that you know this episode in general it's where the Half-Life really starts to trim the fat like we were talking about earlier it is it's almost a metaphor for the whole game where it's like they're sitting around brainstorming like how are we going to start well we want to just throw them through one of our rail segments and wait what if we literally throw them in the rail segment and it's almost like they're throwing you through an entire Half-Life game in itself with this one little episode. I think that I mean in the commentary again that's one of the things they mention is like we you know at first we didn't know how we were going to get the players back in the Citadel and this came up pretty early someone you know said like let's have dog throw throw them in but it just seemed dumb but we kept coming back to it and eventually it seemed like the you know it got I can't remember exactly what they say but it solved like two or three problems at once and we're like fuck it let's do it. It just seems so it's such an elegant solution to the thing because it's not like dog as a rocket scientist. They want a dog to be there at the beginning and then it's gone. It makes sense it's a way for them to get back in the Citadel and for a way that dog can't come with you. I just I really really enjoy it and I don't know it makes me think it's like I've been playing Dead Space Extraction recently which is another kind of first person roller coaster ride great game and you know I think it's this sequence in Half-Life 2 episode one that made me realize that there's a lot of things that you can do with in first person where you're locking the player you know down in a seat you can still take them on a ride as long as the ride is really well thought out. And as long as people know what they're doing with the camera. Yeah so I really really really like that sequence. I mean I think it's that sequence alone that made when when episode one first came out I played through it and then immediately started up again and played. I played through it twice and one day just crazily because I'm a crazy Half-Life fan or whatever but I think it's it was mostly because I wanted to see that that roller coaster ride start again and then I couldn't stop afterwards. And then once you're actually in the Citadel and once you you and Alex climb out of the van it's so clear right away how you're on borrowed time you know shits falling apart stuff explodes around you and it's and it's and it's also and that was like where it first hit me you know that Alex was going to be more than just a ride along bullet sponge because she starts saying things you know she starts with the banter and in that and at the time that episode one came out banter between you and some AI character was rare especially in a first-person shooter and so she's like you know like part of the station's explosion she's all whole that was random. Well banter that was beyond something like fuck yeah she's a constant source of levity throughout the whole thing or sort of like she is the emotional pulse half-life game started. So you Gordon is nothing. I mean Gordon is your whatever you graft onto him. So you enter into the Citadel and Alex again too sorry to go back to the comments. But if you know one of the things they talk about there is that they used to she used to kind of lead you forward she would take take point and kind of anytime you slowed down she would say come on Gordon let's keep going. It's annoying thing that every game does so they you know through numerous play tests which is what Valve does you know they eventually realize like anytime that the player was being pushed forward by Alex it made the player not like Alex as much and so they pulled all that stuff out and so she just kind of sits behind you and does whatever you want and puts has these has a woman should. Is there a site for that that you have to go to? You know originally we had Alex not wear shoes and an apron it's awful. Okay sorry we had dog carry around her oven. Sorry that's why she never knows what time it is. Alright moving on. So so you walk into the Citadel it's there's really cool vistas and moments where you see the whole thing coming apart like that right when you get in there basically there's those the transport things used in the Citadel station in Half-Life 2 and their the track is totally fucked up and they're just like flying off into the abyss and you know all there's debris everywhere and fires erupting and soldiers running to and then explode you know randomly exploding and all these like crazy things are happening and it's really cool as a player to be able to and this is something I've been playing uncharted too recently that it does well to see the aftermath of what you the of this like chaos that you started like this go into this destroyed space that you're responsible for and see what's become of it. So for people that did not play it but are listening which I know there's a fair share the reason you're going back into the Citadel is because it's going to have like some horrible meltdown that's going to explode and basically there's the the the combine is accelerating the the detonation of the Citadel because they're trying to send off like a last burst of information to to the home planet extra dimensionally yeah and doing that is is going to cause some they somehow need to yeah like yeah like their communications work was disrupted when Gordon destroyed the brains portal at the end of half life to and the only way they can get a message back to the empire in the alternate dimension is to rupture the core of the Citadel and use that rupture to send the message through I guess another portal or something like that guy get the impression they're using all their the last bit of energy that this particular structure has to send a message and it's going to involve shutting down the whole thing basically so you you know you run through the space and there's that really cool sequence where a transport the transport ships like crashing into the walls and crashes into the striders that are walking down just to like increase the chaos of stuff and like the very first time I played this game I totally missed that even though Alex like Alex goes like whoa and like I was looking in the wrong soldier up there too firing yeah I know but I was but I like looked in the wrong area and then she said whoa and then I looked back and it had already passed by and then I looked back again after everything had crashed I like totally missed the whole thing that sucks that's that's the great thing about episode one to me and partially again this is because maybe maybe I'm getting more out of it cuz I've listened to the commentary but half the valve I think gets really good about like we were saying trimming the fat but also about like the kind of valve game play design sensibility whatever is starting to get really cemented at this point like it's like all right we're going to introduce a puzzle in the safe environment and you kind of solve the first part of it and then we throw it at you again to make sure that you understand it with a slight variation and then then we throw you at it with you know the chains off and we're going to throw some crazy variation in it and you really this is when it's actually a puzzle and you've got to figure it out they're much more confident in it though because I'm like in Half Life 2 they don't bill labor like the sort of a stab with it. The sort of establishment of that mechanic is like so this is what happens like the the scene with the catwalk where they're sort of running across and they get blown off right it's not like you don't see that two or three times in other areas of the level it's just like you see those dudes and they run across and they die at the specific point so you were told that you were supposed to run across when this isn't happening. They actually there's a commentary section about that too they it was really tricky for them because people thought that the bridge the whole bridge was was kind of not was was in the vortex even though it's just like the vortex area kind of in the center of the bridge. And so they took a lot of art passes until they finally got it to the point where they liked it and they thought okay this puzzle works and in the commentary they actually say we wanted to do a few more of this vortex sort of thing or we probably would have if we had had more time but we didn't and so it's just in here once but yeah so it's kind of surprising that they kind of built that entire mechanic and then don't ever use again but the one that you know I think is a perfect example of their of the way they work is the is the electron the bridges using the energy balls. So they're like the energy bridges the first time you walk up to one you know it works or you have to put both balls in or one balls in and the other ones not and then you go to the next one and it's basically set up the same way one balls in. Story of Arthur's life and then the last one they put a giant like glass panel in front of it and make you means that exactly and make you ricochet the ball off of it to get it in or what's awesome is you can also walk all the way around and try to get a direct shot into it by kind of bypassing the energy thing. So you can shoot it at it and ricochet it off the the energy field in front of it and have it bounce in or you can walk around all the way around to the left and basically get behind it and point a ball. Energy ball straight down at it and hit it directly so basically come around the shield. It feels like a test bed for level design like things that they implemented in portal. It feels more like where they introduced you to that idea specifically because then you have to use it in the elevator over and over again. Ricocheting ricocheting. Here's an easy ricochet now get prepared to do like the way harder ones. And the elevator is an interesting scene too because it's because they changed it. Yes, because they changed after release. Yes, that's exactly right because it was well. Yeah, because like those fucking hard. Yeah, exactly. It was too annoying and but that's the thing is like what's nice about it now is that there's a 100% reliable way to do it. If all if you use the secondary fire and suck in, you're always going to grab the pieces. It's coming down at you and always shoot it away. Someone actually on the area five or Twitter comments or something made specifically asked me to talk about the elevator sequence was like what the fuck that shit is bullshit. It was bullshit when it first came out and it's sort of bullshit if you think you have to use primary fire to shoot the piece of debris away. Yeah, I definitely never did that. I always sucked it in. Yeah, but as long as you can't you can't shoot it away. You can't do it. Is that the way you had to do it originally was you had this primary fire? It didn't work when you tried to suck it. In the current version you can just hold down secondary fire. You like point your cursor up and you hold down secondary fire and it grabs it. In the last one or when it first came out you had to hit secondary fire at the moment that it was like close to the cross area. About to crush you and so now it just works and that's kind of nice. It's the most unforgiving puzzle sequence in all of episode one in that if you miss it you die. Yeah, yeah. I mean not just if you miss one like I think it like five or four or five of them drop down. Yeah, some like that. I mean if you miss any of them you die. Like there's no room for air. Right, but now it's so easy that like I never missed one. Yeah, I never did anymore. In between things look up and you will see it coming. By the way, how cool is it like that they just give you the super gravity gun right off. Instead of going like the typical weapon regression pistol machine gun. Yeah, it just makes it feel more like a puzzle game than that are in a lot of respect. Oh yeah, because enemies are like like not a non threat for the first part. I mean when you have the gravity gun and the ability to walk up to any combatting thing and get health and suit. Two hundred one hundred. I mean well something we skipped over and I don't want to talk about it too much but the Arthur's right. I mean it's set up very early on. The first puzzle is that one where you walk into the room and there's those stalkers behind the glass. Holding up the energy door and you have to like walk and grab those what are they called roller mines. To bring it back so that Alex which is you know training for another section much later in the game. Which is cool. Actually wait hold on one more thing. The thing I really like about that particular section though is I think we talked about when we talked about the Citadel before in the last episode. They have these kind of like platforming sections that aren't very obvious like where the next jump is. And I like in that when you're going to find grab the roller mine. There's like some weird you kind of make a couple jumps that seem weird. You're like really is that the platform I'm supposed to jump through? It's kind of angled at 45 degree angle and it's weird. I actually just shortcut that whole room now when I play. Really? Yeah you can I just drop straight down to the elevator. Your cheater. I don't do all the funky platforming. That's what you get a fucking achievement is if you don't kill any stalkers in that now that I think about it. Oh man that's how that sounds so mad. Because I was so mad because I went through that whole like the whole like core section without killing a single stalker and those things nailed me over and over again and then I didn't get the goddamn achievement. Wait so what's the achievement? Not killing any stalkers. So how do you how do you get through that thing without getting the core or the elevator part? I'm talking about the it's a pretty early on where there's a shield that Alex is trying to get through but the stalkers are keeping it close. No I mean it's training to get it's training. You have a minor trainer that's the only stalker I killed during the entire thing. You would have to I just if there's no way past this stalker. I don't know how you do that unless there's like just some way around it that I don't understand. That's what's my question I was going to ask. How do you get past them without killing them? If there is a way to do it you obviously have to do some sort of trick because it's. I never knew about that. The whole point of that room is to kill the stalker so that it's not holding up the force field so that you can actually get through so I don't know how you do it without killing a stalker. And then you encounter stalkers again later. Yes they're the ones holding up the energy balls and the core and stuff. Yeah I don't know how. Maybe if you maybe the whole trick at that point is if you you know put the energy balls in and you run really really fast. Before they you know shoot their laser at the ball and thus destroy it. Yeah to turn it off you actually can get through it. I mean yeah that part I did without killing any stalker. Oh okay that's really cool I didn't know you can even try to do that. It takes some about 10 seconds to destroy an energy ball which should be enough to get across. That's cool so that's an achievement I kick in. I theoretically I didn't fucking get it. Well look at that first one I don't think so. Yeah that's really weird like I don't even know how you get that one. Honestly in this I think if it maybe if the achievement is don't kill any stalker is in the core. It's all probably in the core. Yeah okay all right yeah that's all right. Weird. This one the first one the one that I was referring to there's no way around it you'd have to kill them. But anyway yeah like might as well talk about the core which is like I love that it's that environment. I mean first you you I mean you get a better idea of the advisors. Yes that's true I forgot about that yeah. Then Mossman is going to a secret location or whatever. Yeah it's pretty cool that they had to like nail down hunters you know the enemy the hunter. And you know a long time before Half-Life episode 2 was released to make sure that it was in Episode 1. I have a sneaking submission it's because originally they intend to do include part of Episode 2 and Episode 1 and decided that they couldn't get it out. You're probably you're probably right. It's entirely possible yeah but I like that I like that sequence with Mossman because one it shows she's back with you she's like on your side. And two the tie-ins to Aperture Science are so fucking cool for like Half-Life you know universe conspiracy theorist nuts like me. But you got to remember Episode 1 was like a long time again like they were probably working on Portal but still like this is like a year before it came out. March of 2006 yeah yeah it's just like well I mean like okay so they tied Portal into Half-Life 2 is what I mean. So like it went that way but I mean the fact that all those things relate together now and like it all comes across in that one little scene. The thing I like about that room is Alex's facial animation it's just like really incredible like she feels like really she she she definitely seems scared in that sequence. And I like again if you listen to the commentary you get to hear about how that wasn't a video that played of Mossman they actually have that set built into the level it's an actual space. Yeah that's the way they do almost all their cuts. Yeah exactly because they that was one of the technologies they showed off when they first showed off the source engine is that they could like put a camera somewhere in a scene and have a record something that's happening live. So that setup is actually that Arctic base is like right down the road you know right around the corner. If you could zoom out from the level you could no clip out of the stage you would see that it's right there. If you fuck around with a console in the beginning like you can definitely find Brin's brain like giving his speeches exactly. Yeah it's really cool. So that's cool once and you know another thing they tell you in the commentary. And then the but yeah then you you go to the advisor section you see what they are and well you don't really see what they are you don't get you kind of get a look at them and you can get a look at them on the view screen. Well doesn't want to open that weird too. It does go up and it's like the back of it. Yeah it's like content I think it's like already getting in its pod or something for evacuation. I think the idea is that they're grubs basically they look like worms giant so this is like the worm in it's like the rocket pod that they have no name for limbs. Yeah in the art book it says they were inspired off the navigators from the Dune series. The idea is that they're they're highly so highly evolved like they don't do any physical anything physical at all but they're highly they have highly highly developed intellects and abilities to reason and that's why they've developed psychic powers and psychic attacks like the one that they use on you in that in that chamber there. But yeah they're basically grubs they're blind there they have no limbs and they live in these kind of weird pods, advisor pods if you will. Yeah that was a cool first exposure to those things and then yeah I mean you've seen their faces on brain screen. Yeah but I mean like it's your first like exposure to them in a live environment. But yeah it instills a sense of menace in you about them that wasn't there before. Definitely and then after that you go down the elevator and then you go into the core. Yeah so let's skip that so I think the core is amazing so mostly because it's it's all it looks so different than the rest of the citadel it's all white you know. It looks like you heard extra extra webs a little bit and this was you know Lost Coast was where they were first showing off their HDR technology so this is the first in-game thing. And when I first got to that core when I first got into the core and you're going in and out of like the core areas and it's like your eyes adjust every time you go into the different rooms and back in the day I was like man they really fucking pulled that off. This core feels like the brightest white most radioactive thing I've ever been in. And when it throbs and it sort of like it contracts and expands and if you're not careful it will expand right into you and kill you. And they do a great job of like throughout the course of that entire section which takes whatever 15-20 minutes depending upon how stuck you get in some of the little puzzles. Like you see it from a whole bunch of different angles you see it from the bottom at first and then you're like you know you walk right by the throbbing core run by it I guess. And then you see it from the top and there's that great shot eventually of you know when you're walking you're like standing on the like braces at the top where Alex is watching you from the window as you're riding by. So you really do get I mean I always wonder what she's thinking because like you're standing on top of this thing that shooting man hacks like she's got to be like God damn he's a bad ass. That dude is fucking insane. Fuck that guy's brains out if I survive this. This is actually where I got the man hack achievement in the game during this sequence but I still part of me just wonders why the man hacks were even there. Just because they couldn't give you another enemy that would they don't have any other enemies to throw at you there and I don't know like I kind of agree with you because like when I'm taking those man hacks I'm just like pulling in and shooting them at my feet so that they explode. They kind of just feel like they're there just to be annoying I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to stand up there and be looking around the core. I mean the platforming is challenging enough without worrying about man hacks although I will say that it is nice that you can grab a man hack with a gravity gun and then saw someone to pieces with it. Yeah that's fun. But the man hacks in that particular section I agree they're kind of unnecessary. I feel like they just threw in enemies because they figured you hadn't fought some in a while. So blah, blah, blah, contain the core, go back to Alex, get in an elevator. I like that they don't make you go all the way back down to where you started after you continued. Yeah you're just like right there when you're done. I mean it's really good level time. It's totally what I expected because I mean elsewhere in Half Life 2 when you do a long ass platforming section like that and you're supposed to go back somewhere you have to fucking reach versus the ground that you covered. Especially the bridge section in particular. I was thinking bridge is like the only time you have to do that. Well I mean that's one of the only times that you have to go back to somewhere. But think about how many times you don't have to like okay so in water hazard there's that there's one sequence where you get the magnum. The magnum is introduced like you get off your water boat you get inside you fight a couple guys you like make your way up. There's a chopper chasing you, you get you there's a bunch of what do you call them like freight containers that are up. There's dudes chasing you you finally make your way up into a tower shooting thing you come back down and then you walk right out to where your air boat was. And that's that's all fine but there's also the park before that in that level where you you go into the area where you're where it's basically teaching you how to use grenades. And you have to get all the way to the other end of the thing where you bring down the giant girder like pendulum thing that destroys the gate. You have to make your way all the way back. Can I tell you though that you can shoot the girder from you can shoot the girder. That's not the way that it's designed that's that's exploiting. You don't have to go that far back though I mean like and they give you an auto gun right there so you can fight the enemies. It's such a it's such a thing in in that series that like if you get somewhere in that to come back you either got to reach verse all the ground to reach verse the ground and fight a bunch of enemies. I would have agreed if you'd said that it was a general thing in games that you have to do but I don't think you have to do that that often in half life relatively speaking. Ordinarily it's like a very much move forward and don't ever look back sort of game. It's like it's a first person shooter thing to clear an area get through activate the button and then have to fight your way back because a bunch of new enemies. I again I agree if you say it's general but ordinarily they don't have you go back through places. Yeah I'm not disagreeing that one spot you do have to do it but I think they're really good in general about not having you go back through the places that you've just been more so than most other developers in fact they specifically tell you not to go back usually. It's like always look forward and we're going to close the door behind you. I also feel like the core area has some kind of cool playground moments with the enemies you know like when you're climbing out of the vent after there's those two sections where you have to dodge energy balls or you can take a vent covering use it as a shield against the energy balls. And there's like one section where you come out and there's like enemies there and you can like just blast the vent out from and blast it into them or you can like again you can use it as a shield while you get out there and then like attack them that way. And it just I just feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of fun with the super gravity gun and when they're throwing all the enemies at you. And they're they're shooting the the the covenant the combines the combine battle rifle energy balls at you and they're throwing grenades but the only weapon you need at this point is the gravity gun. So you're always had you always have a deployed which means you can always pick up the grenades and throw them back which means that you always have a chance of grabbing their energy balls and using it against them. And it makes the combat sequences even when they're coming at you from several directions feel really chaotic but you always feel like you're in control. And it's because like you know when you're in those little areas where you're reactivating the containment beams they can come at you from below or from above they can come at you from like various side doors. And I never felt like overwhelmed I always felt like I'm gonna try to do it this way now and it would always I could always just like explore new ways to. I think it was a great to beat everybody great ending of episode or half-life to to let you have the super gravity gun because I'm sure you know one of the things you think when you get the gravity gun is why can't I use this on dudes. And I think one the thing it teaches you is because this is what the combat would be if you could use it on dudes it would just be you sucking in dudes all the time. And so I'm glad that they gave you that outlet for sucking in dudes story of Arthur's life. I'm glad they give you that out. Every gauge of the good possible people say I people say I'm the crude one this game. I think that's all puns though it's not like dicks. Well China's. I really I really like the ability to have it but I I don't like the I don't like I don't enjoy that gameplay that I really enjoyed it when I first played half-life to but going through episode one especially this time. Like the con that combat is really not that fun to me. It definitely wanted to be like the whole game but I like it for that one section I like the power the brief power trip. I appreciate I just don't think it's it's it's just not as fun for me as the rest of the combat. So I'm glad that you know it gets it's over and done with after a while and I think to me it doesn't hold up as well as the standard combat with the rest of the weapons. I will say this last week I talked about how a lot of times in Half-Life 2 proper when I end up figuring out where I was supposed to go after being stuck or when I end up solving a puzzle I would feel dumb as opposed to feeling smart. That shifts in the beginning of episode one where as I'm going through the core section and solving the different problems. I never felt bogged down in strange design choices or unclear direction like I always felt. I'm supposed to do this because I it showed me this other thing and that worked exactly the way I'm supposed to even the last part where you hit the button and then the little thing that shoots out of beam to contain the core breaks and you have to go down. Even that part like in in it's not totally simple because you fix it and then realize you can't get up so you have to break it again and then go over and fix it from there. I think it's a great puzzle like that all feels so much more intuitive than than any other puzzle and in in Half-Life 2 proper. One I think I think it's because the puzzles aren't you know in Half-Life 2 proper they were so insistent on exploiting the physics for puzzles and so but this time it's just like all right well let's just come up with good puzzles and like the energy ball design as opposed to. Yeah and the energy balls aren't like physics reliant you know like they can just make sense like you know. They go where your pain goes into square hole that kind of thing. So anyway like you get out of that come down the elevator clear the core and we're in the basically head into the stalker trains. Yeah well and like Alex steals the message that the covenant or I keep calling the covenant. I've been playing a lot of my honesty. Yeah that the combine tried it their combine are trying to send out Alex takes a copy of it and basically that's the whole excuse for having the combine on your ass for the whole rest of the game. Right. Is it? Yeah. Not just them trying to kill Gordon? No they're there to get that message. Well they don't even know that you're there for like large part. You know the entire beginning part of the game they're kind of dealing with their own shit and you know I'm skipping head a little bit here basically pass the entire next part of the game where you're learning about at line holes and coming through the ground and shooting with the flashlight and all that but once you finally come out of the ground and see that and see that Kleiner message they don't know you're there until you kind of break through and they introduce the repelling enemies and well there's a couple monitors just before that or whatever they call them. The guys are scanners that come up and take your photo and then right after that there's repelling enemies and they know where you are the entire rest of the time. But I actually okay so let's get on to the train for a sec. So you get on the train and she doesn't actually realize that it's a stalker car until you're moving. Right. And like one of I think it's they're just these dangly sort of black coffins like you see. She turns around and sees one. And one of them like sort of springs open like in the head area and she almost craps herself because she didn't realize that that's kind of car you're on. And it's weird because in Half Life 2 when you see stalkers they're never afraid of them because they never do anything. And even in this even in up until this point like when you see a stalker you're usually put in a position where they're these sort of worker bees that aren't attacking you or they're doing very passive things. Doesn't make them a horror movie monster. It's funny that you mentioned that she it seems like she's afraid of them because in the commentary they actually talk about how they tried really hard. Certainly when she walked into the car she was very afraid of them. But now her emotional tone in that sequence is supposed to be more surprised and anger. Anger at what happened to them. But then like after the after it crashes and she's pinned by a stalker. Oh yeah she's super scared by it. She's super terrified by it. And it's like I almost felt like she was like she's too terrified and she's too shaken up in that particular situation because she never seemed like somebody that would be that freaked. That freaked out by like even if it's screening right in her face. But it's also a train crash that happened right there. Why does the train crash I forget. You just I just get the sense that she's like she's looking at a computer and she goes like what's this. Oh shit Gordon hang on to something I get the sense that like the covenant blocked the train because they wanted to keep the combine blocked the train because they wanted to keep them from escaping with the copy of the message. Everybody be quiet for a second say combine right now. Covenant. Come on right now. Yeah just like throughout the podcast every time it comes up. I don't like the podcast. I guess I'm quiet. I'll just be messing. Combine. Quit fucking it up with that contired shit. Combine. I agree that maybe she's a little too shaken up and there are some moments there. It has like that scene has like the best animation and the worst animation of half-life because there's the scene where she's actually trapped by it. It looks awful and then you suck it suck it away with the gravity gun and she does this like kick like backwards run at the side of the wall which looks outstanding. It's one of the coolest things that she ever. It sort of feels pasted together like the the stalker element and the Alex element. It doesn't seem like they're interacting with each other because they're not. To me the worst part is after so you you jump down out of the out of the car and then she jumps down and there's a moment where she looks fine and then all of a sudden she puts her hands up to her face. So like you just can't you can't help but because you're if you're like me you know you just saved her and she looked really scared and freaked out. So and then you have to do the work of jumping down and so once you're down there you're like waiting for her to come down. She jumps down and she looks all smiles for like a fracture of a second and then her animation blends into her looking like she's freaked out. And I think a big problem right there is that the game loads when you crawl under that that break in the wall under that hole in the wall. That's true. And then she comes through and she's all all right hold up a second Gordon and it's like not only do the stalker sounds completely go away. Even though they were screaming like just a second ago. But like she goes she goes from like standing there calm on the other side of this wall to like coming through. She's not calm on the other side but that's that's what I'm saying she's she's calm for a moment and then she puts her hands up. No I mean like after the game after it loads right like she's just standing there as a model again after it loads and then she crawls under. I guess that's what I guess that there's like three different variations in emotion that happen over the course of this like one minute of game. And the loading between levels actually kind of hurts that whole scene together as well because it other than that like it is really emotionally powerful. And especially when she's when she's leaning up against the wall and in the second room and delivering her lines like it's just great. I mean I still like every time I'm in that sequence I'll like walk around to different you know I'll stand to the right of her stand to the left of her. And it's so believable the way that she delivers her lines with this sort of emotion and then tracks where you're at. So like look at you then look down and be lost in her thoughts again and even if you've walked to the other side of the room when she looks up again she looks she's looking right at you. There's all these kind of like great moments like that in this particular scenario that I really really like. I mean it just shows off how much time and effort they put into these kind of emotional lines. I think it also shows like I said that they're not perfect and everyone wants to get to see the true robot that Alex is when she's can't help but blend from random AI character into this emotional thing. Well then and then you're forced into what really for me at the time felt it was the very first time where I had played a game and even though I wasn't playing with a human I felt like I was with a co-op partner. And that was because you had she was reliant on your flashlight in order to kill things but she did her job really well. Yes. I love at the beginning of it too when you walk into that space for the first time. The turrets are clicking as they're out of ammo. It's like these turrets have been shooting for forever and they just have there's always been ant lines and headcrab zombies for them to shoot. The room is all just like has a bunch of decapity. Well I mean that's all I mean you're the one that turned off every ant line defensive over the prospect. Right and well then it's like you go into that sequence and they're very explicit. I can't see you know without your flashlight Gordon and then but then like this is another instance where she enters in with a really cool banter. Like a couple times after my flashlight switched off because it ran out of battery she's like we really got to talk to Dr. Kleiner about getting you out of battery for that. Or when you turn it off and she makes her like little little joking headcrab zombie sound. Yeah and then you turn it on she's like Gordon just kidding. Oh yeah that's a great one. And if you listen to the commentary this is the moment around this point in the game is where you get the commentary note where they talk about that sort of thing. Like oh we put in the designer or the audio guys had a lot of fun and the writers with this incidental dialogue and there's all sorts of random spots throughout the entire course of the game where Alex will say random stuff if a random thing happens so keep your eye out for it if you do something weird. Yeah so I don't know it's just good stuff in there. So I mean Alex is great. Last time I complained that eventually just got to the point where you're like okay more headcrabs okay more headcrab zombies but they actually managed to make it more interesting at this point. Just because of the position you're in where not only are you theoretically firing unless you're going for the one bullet achievement which makes the game interesting but I would not suggest trying to do it on hard. No it's not just that you're it's not just that I mean the the addition of a of a new zombie does make a really big piece of like difference if you were just fighting the standard zombies that just try and claw at you they're still not that hard. When you have them in conjunction with the guys that'll pull out a grenade is on by yeah I mean is annoying is there that they kill you in one hit like. They are worth they are like really nice because they do run it you faster and and they do that thing where they you know again some stupid commentary. They talk about how you know they'll let you suck their grenades from them the other enemies in the game. Yeah that's the whole point is they'll hold their grenade up in the air and you you can use the gravity gun to suck it away from them and throw toss it back at them or throw it away or do whatever you want to do. And you're right I think and I think it's good they I mean this is exactly what they're talking about like originally we didn't want to let people do it because if you could suck these grenades out of these zombies hands why can't you suck the guns out of the hands of all the other. Combine guys the fight throughout the entire other course of the game at the end of the day they said. You know fun one out to consistency in this case and we just did it because we thought it was fun to be able to do it I mean yeah it just establishes so. So firmly that you cannot pull things away from it yep exactly for thought to to try it it totally works now I am mad at Val forever. At least they acknowledge that they you know did it in the commentary they know they weren't being consistent there. Yeah that was like my ammo for this part. Yeah I was like wait for them to pull up the grenade. I just I I like you know there's not that many other games where you I guess they're kind of were a few games that Quake 4 is one that comes to mind where you were like the. Or was it Doom 3 should I can't remember where you're the flashlight guy and someone else is shooting the guns. I'm pretty sure it was Doom 3 right it is it's an interesting shift if you decide to play it that way to make you an enabler as opposed to the hero right like being a supporting character for Alex. And it's great because you know your flashlight is like the spotlight and so because Alex in the first game didn't have in this game she's got all these melee attacks that she can do she can take down the zombies in a variety of ways which are really really cool looking they're really cool animations and there's one that like I think she's supposed to be like kneeing in the solar plexus or whatever but when you look at it from the right angle it looks like she's kneeing him in the nards and it's like huh I didn't realize that zombies could feel nard pain but I guess so makes sense or something that's right horse anyway anyway the that is such an obscure. If you have if you like this is the goonies go back and watch it monster squad it's like the B version there's a pretty awesome DVD that came out a couple years ago for it yeah that's true. So I mean it just like a lot of the complaints I heard about Ravenholm like as far as it not being interesting like from an action standpoint a lot of the time like this definitely. I just like Ravenholm's feel so contrived to me it's like a bunch of blades like sitting around and random traps and stuff and it's cool and it's good for showing off the physics but in this case like the aesthetic of the world is much more believable for me it's you know whatever you're in these underground tunnels and parking garages and that sort of thing and it just all feels really consistent and I like the combat in those sections and I think Anthony's right the or was a Tyler that said the the Zombine just adds a lot to it it's a great new enemy. We'll say it's both of us. It's not the it's not the episode two it's not the episode two introduces the hunters that I think you know the Half-Life series gets the best enemy that it's probably had yet in terms of fun most fun thing to fight but the Zombine is a good addition to the game. So you're fighting a long way through the dark with Alex and it's it was both scary to me and awesome and then you get to the parking garage sequence with the Antlions and the first time the first time I played this part like I had a lot of trouble with it but now it's like when I play it I'm seriously over and done with this part in like under a minute. If you know the conceit like the key to doing that whole part it's nothing like it's it's super quick to go through it. Well a big thing for me was is that like because I was because I played with commentary before and then I was watching Ryan play with commentary this time and they talk about how people had trouble figuring out when the Antline holes were closed when they were plugged and so they added that particle effect and that's something I never noticed until I played with the commentary track. Like I was always wondering to myself is it actually plugged because like there were sometimes I would think it would but an Antline would still escape and so there were a couple times I ended up like unplugging the holes because I thought the car wasn't covering it. You know now knowing what I know this this whole section is a lot easier but there totally was a time where I was running up there and I was like trying to open that really long slow gate when suddenly an Antline would attack me from behind. I wish I was doing the same thing. I had an interesting experience where when I first played through it this time I played on hard and just knocked it out of the park cleared it totally perfectly and hardly took any damage. And I was playing on easy with commentary while you were watching and I missed every single jump. It was falling down everywhere. I think the thing was a total joke. Am I incorrect in saying that this is the first time that it introduces a really important play mechanic in a non-safe setting? Yeah I mean it does they actually in the commentary say that we're teaching because they teach you in that one room. It's a one room with one hole and it's open and so you have to fill it and so they just had Alex tell you how to solve it basically. So that's the difference between most mechanics is usually they'll do it in a safe place where you can't get hurt. This time they teach it to you in a room where you can get hurt but they just have Alex tell you how to do it. Well and also I think the thing that threw me off playing through this again because it's been so long since I played episode one was when you go when you go into the room and you see like these cars and odd places. There are so many other places in in Half Life 2 proper or even earlier in the section of the game where you see cars that are just set dressing that you can't do anything with. You can still move with your gravity gun. I mean they're a car they're definitely cars like elsewhere in Half Life 2 that you can't move with your gravity. There are a few that you can't move but generally most of the ones in like in this beginning section. If they're covered with rubble or if they're covered with like a giant truck or something like that. I mean I see a car that's through a wall on fire and I expect that I can't move it. Well I can tell you but that's the thing is that you go on the other side and you realize oh she's totally a hole plus you kind of realize that these other holes should get plugged and there isn't enough cars. I think this might be one of those cases where you solve a puzzle and afterward you kind of feel stupid. I mean half the reason I think I mean well and not half most of the reason Arthur had such a tough time with it too was I watched him trying to do without shooting a gun and I was when I played I was like man I'm glad I'm using guns. Using guns it was like cheese. I mean eventually on that playthrough I just said fuck it and started using the gun and then I realized that the difficulty was set to hard which would explain why. It's hard with hard with no guns. I don't think he gave me no problems. Where's my cinder block? So anyway you get through that section which you know has various problems but at the end of the day I also enjoyed it. When I finally solved it the very first time I played this game because I always think about the very first time I played this part and died a couple times but the biggest problems with this section is when Alex gets in your way on your paths. Because you have to walk up these tiny little pieces of geometry. I just circumvented like the most annoying parts of the platforming in that section because like if you go around and hug the wall there's totally enough concrete on the edge to just walk around. Oh that's funny I never knew that. I've always walked across the middle areas. To me it was the one on the one closest to the ground where all the slanted holes are. There's a slanted one that's broken down. She stands like right there and like this was on my easy playthrough with commentary when Matt was watching I fucking fell like 12 times right there. I felt like such a moron especially since the day before I had nailed it on hard but whatever. You can't order Alex around. The other thing is and I was actually thinking of saving this for later but you can at any point go up and use Alex and she will depending upon the sequence have interesting things to say and sometimes depends on how to solve the thing. Like a lot of times this is what they say in the commentary is that they had a lot of hint dialogue that she would just say but players didn't like it when she was giving away the answers to the puzzles while they were still trying to figure them out. So they left the dialogue in but you have to go up and use her to get it. Maybe they just expect that most guys just want to ask a girl for directions. Maybe. Or they expect that most guys are pervs and they walk up to her and they're like "yee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee." So they better make her say something. That was late. So let's see we kind of pushed through most of this underground section. Basically there's not a whole lot of interesting stuff until you get to the elevator. When you go through the sort of wet gated area it's fine and then you get enemy headcrabs on both sides. Basically a bunch of underground stuff where I think the combat and these airline puzzles are what drive it forward. You know and either are going to like it or you're going to be frustrated by it until you get to the crazy dark elevator sequence. There's like a crazy combat. Which every time I play this I always go around I gather up like the gas tank, the explosive tanks. I gather up the explosive barrels, I put them all by. I gather up everything that I can and place it by the elevator and inevitably I think I've only done it once where it was clean. Where like everything that I was attacking I shot it out and I like had plenty of light sources from all the zombies on fire and everything. But like every other time I've played this game something explodes too close to me and everything in that area just explodes all at once and I lose my entire stockpile and have to fight guns in hand to hand. This is the scripting in this part is so sadistic because I mean it is scripted that as soon as you turn off your flashlight is when it will spawn more zombies. There are two doors there's the one that's behind the wooden plank which is the one that really triggers the sequence because the energy box for the elevators back there. But there's another door kind of over to the right that has a zombine in it and a few guys and usually I try to wander over there first gather any resources I need. At that point it will start spawning a couple zombies but it's not really until you get through the main door. It'll spawn zombies even if you take too long to press the elevator button. But yeah you're waiting this entire time for this elevator to slowly come down to you and Alex so that you can get out of there and it's pitch black and there's just zombies attacking you and the only source of light you have is the little pool right next to the elevator doors. There's a lot of flares in this room. Since I was only used in the grab gun I kept going to it and just laying dudes on fire and there was enough light in the room for Alex to go. This is definitely one of those sequences that can either be your best friend or your worst enemy depending upon how it all goes down because I've definitely done the math. I've definitely done the math thing where I stock pile a bunch of explosives and have them all explode on me and kill me and then I'm like what a retard I was. I love this particular section just because it's like one of the times where shit like that can happen like completely go wrong but I still feel like it was totally cool. Sure there's other examples of this specific sort of scenario in a game but I couldn't think of one when it came out so it sort of felt like new and fun to like. I can't think of one word that had like the lighting. Because I mean waiting for something to happen is not that big a deal. I mean you do that in Half-Life 2 but it's in the dark. I like the ambience and the way that you find where you're supposed to turn on the elevator is cool. You're the sparking wire seeing that a lot in other games. I tried it too. Now you see it all the time. I hated this part so much and hard about me because again it was set to hard which means if a grenade explodes you die. Yeah that section on hard is hard because they also throw. You feel like true accomplishment when there was a zombine behind me had crab zombie to my right and one of the zombies. And then Alex was to my left so basically. Were you still trying to not use guns? Well I mean it wouldn't have mattered if I had a gun because I was sandwiched and literally could not. I don't know I use a lot of shotgun ammo. Yeah I mean when I had guns I hardly ever got surrounded just because I was going nuts. I feel like if you weren't using a gun that's why you got surrounded. Basically I would get trapped. Not like oh well I can't move forward because there's someone coming that way but like literally I was boxed in and could not move. Like moving left or right on the stick. I think that is the key is that a lot of times in Half-Life games you know you can get stuck on the geometry when you're trying to run backwards. Which is why I'm left for dead. Like you run through your teammates more often than not. That collision is much more forgiving. Yeah in this game there's a lot especially in this particular room. You know there's columns everywhere they can stop you. There's fenced off areas. Like debris on the floor. Yeah there's just all these places where and there's zombies coming from everyone. It's like walking every day. It's an old palace. You're going to snag yourself on a nail somewhere. Yeah exactly. But that's kind of why I mean the one of the things that episode one does better than Half-Life 2 probably is that it's paced really well. Because a lot of the fudge tripped off so there's a lot of combat leading up to this. There's a few kind of like venty puzzle areas as well. So once you get to this it really is the climax of this you know non super gravity gun combat space. It's pretty much the climax of combat in all of episode one. Nothing else is intense. I think the escort section at the end is. I think that's definitely what they think is supposed to be. I feel like the essence that even one of the first time I played the escort section it was really easy for me. But like this actually this time I was playing on normal and the elevator section I was playing on normal. And my stockpile of stuff exploded around me that took off like half my health. And so at that point I was like running around like crazy just trying to kill everything and like trying to not get boxed into a corner. And like it was this is one of the most hectic playthroughs of the sessions I ever had. I literally got on the elevator with one health. It's happened to me. With one health. And then like it closes and like that's so triumphant. I'm like fuck yes. Because like one of those boundaries he just like jumped at the door and the door closed just in time to keep him out. It's like aliens. It was so cool. So after you you write up the elevator and there's that the cranky Gordon puzzle where you have cranky Gordon crank that thing. Where you have to find the crank that's in the closet. I am not doing a dirty person in this room. I just like to say. No dude that's what she said. She says cranky Gordon crank that thing. I mean she doesn't say thank. She says thank. It's a hilarious line. And yeah anyway. So you come up the stairs and that's where Kleiner is giving his message. You see a Strider walk by and you get this great finally. I love that Vista too. It's like cause all of C-17 is so excited to see C-17. Yeah I know. Even when C-17 is totally destroyed. And Kleiner's face on the message you know like never been so happy to see Dr. Kleiner instead of you know bringing up on that screen. I mean now it's not like we'll now we're revolting but we are still pretty fucked. Yeah. You can help us. It's like we have revolted the the combine in this area is broken. Now we just need to get the fuck out of here. Like there's a sense of there's urgency but there's also like this sort of confidence and triumph in the people that you meet. And I listened to like the first time I played it and I did this time too. I listened to all Kleiner's message till it started to repeat again. And that whole thing is so cool cause it's such a great way to do exposition. Without feeling like somebody is just like hey here's what's happening now. Exactly. You feel like you stumbled in on something instead of somebody like holding your hand. Which is the half-life method of storytelling. Yeah. It's really well done. I mean it's also cool in that section. I love the role reversal. Just how before it was you know the the voice of the oppressor. Yeah, but it's like weird how the tables have turned like now the so-called liberators are. I love it. I love it. Kleiner is the guy on the message. He's the voice of the resistance. I mean really wouldn't you lie up there if you were choosing you'd make Eli deliver the message because Kleiner is really just this clown. But it's so much it's so much. Well no because better. Kleiner do it. I'm ordering all that shit while Eli was still in the clink. So I guess so right. That's at least not the impression that I got. Eli was in the clink. No I mean no Eli's not in the clink in this game. No but he was in the Citadel for like a big part of the revolution until he was sprung by. Yeah but I mean even at the beginning of the game when you're you get that. Eli and Kleiner right there. They're both in the same room together so I always get the impression they recorded it. Yeah I just feel I just think that I just think they chose Dr Kleiner because like that voice in that script was better than like listening. Because Eli would have made this. I think from a narrative perspective if I were choosing the guy who to deliver the message I would have chose the confident guy. Not the silly guy. Yeah. But from a. They made the right decision. Yeah. Well and it's also because like you go out into the city and it's this big triumphant feeling and everything. And the only way that I could picture Eli's character delivering this particular speech would be something really grave and kind of a downer. And Kleiner says those things he's like Kleiner says things like well no but it would be a lot more serious. Kleiner says these things like this situation is temporary. They're going to come back with unimaginable force. We've got to get our shit together now. But having Kleiner deliver those lines I'm like yeah dude this is kind of cool. This is kind of funny. It like lifts the whole your spirit of the scene and Eli might have brought it down and tempered it. People skills like he communicates like a normal human being. Kleiner is never breaks out of scientists. He loves his business but it's always like procreation would be a good thing. And they're like yeah and I love that scene later on where Alex is like did he just really tell everybody to get busy? I love it. At that sequence too when she walks in the room some random guys like hey you're one of the scientists daughters aren't you. And she's like no my father is Odessa Cabbage. Which is just I always thought was funny. I don't know why she would tell anyone that I just didn't hear that part. I feel so deprived. It's when you walk into the room where Kleiner's message is playing on the TV and she delivers the give busy line. Anyway okay so in this Vista area there in order to progress you have to pull some metal planks off of wood. Which is your training that you can do this later. Every single freaking time I get to this place I can't find my way out. Like the first 30 seconds to a minute. That's funny. Every single time like I never remember I don't know what it is. So yeah you pull the metal plates off the thing which is something you'll do later when Alex is sniping for you. In order to reveal like snipers and zombies and stuff. And I feel like that's really cool that they remind you you can't go forward unless you do this. They're reminding you that gravity gun can pull these metal things. And I feel like the next, well the rest of the game pretty much. It has like little memorable sequences here and there but it's not as memorable to me as the first half of the game. Like I can picture it all in my mind. Like you know fighting here, fighting there. But up until like the you know Alex sniping is pretty cool. But like up until you get to like the train station sequence I don't find a whole lot that's like you know. You're missing my favorite part then. We're not there yet. Your favorite part is what I think your favorite part is. I have worked. Well let's move to that. Let's keep going. Okay so you go through the streets. I really like the way they introduced the repelling guys which happens right here. And it's when you finally get in this all rifle. What's a fucking noise? It's classic valve stuff where the sound effect cues you in. I know who it is. You know that enemies approaching. And that's really great. And then you kind of walk out. And there's some more Aunt Mayan holes that need to get filled with car stuff. And then you kind of fight through that piece of street which is a nice really nice piece of street. Until you get into a building where there's some laser traps set up and combine soldiers inside. You throw a chair at their lasers and it tells them all and starts a big fire. And you have to do one of the few physics puzzles in all of episode one. It's like the really easily solvable physics puzzle. The one milk crate puzzle. Yeah you just take a milk crate put it underneath those. Yeah put it underneath the bar. The puzzle feels like it barely works though. Every time I do it it feels like I'm able to find just enough stuff to kind of do it. That's because you're solving it. There's two ways to solve that puzzle and you're solving it the harder of the two ways. He's saying weighing it down. Yeah you put you're putting stuff on top of it. The easy way to solve it is to put a milk crate underneath it. So that like when it tries to bend down it like can't. So you end up making it to the other side. And there's another physics puzzle sorry later with the water. Oh yeah yeah. The platforming section with the like barnacles and the electricity water. Oh I like that one. That one's really simple. Anyway that's that's later too. So you make it through this crazy puzzle go up some stairs. That's where you have there's a sequence with a bunch of zombies. And the roller mines seriously come back at the upper floor of this room. And then you have to deal with a sniper and a grenade guy after. And Alex gets her sniper rifle. And you get to a section of the game that I think is really cool. Which is the sniping. Alex sniping zombies. That is a cool section here. They even they say again in the commentary that one of the reasons they did it was because it was really cool to see zombies get sniped right in front of your face. Yeah. So like you're right in the middle of the action. You'll see like a head grab zombie like fly by you and it's head grab flies off the top of it. And I really like the the combat. Well the non combat there just running around and avoiding enemies so that Alex can take care of them. And again here the role reversal of like Alex is saving you. Instead of you being the badass. And the that's you know you've got options too as you make your way up the stairs in that building. There's that entire hallway where you can either pop all the boards off the windows and have her take care of all the enemies. Or you can fight the enemies yourself if you just didn't even know that it's there. It's pretty. I think the first time I played it I walked right past all that stuff. Not even noticing. And it wasn't until I listened to the commentary or something or watched someone else play it. When I realized oh fuck you can pop all these boards off these windows and have her here these guys. That's awesome. I found that out because I was fighting zombies and I shot a board and it broke. And then like she shot a zombie and I was like oh shit and then I pulled out my gravity gun and was just like. And that's one of those setups where if you don't know that it exists. It's just a habit hallway with zombies and it's a big deal. But if you do know the way to fight it it turns into another one of those tiny little things that Half-Life does that other games don't do that makes it seem really cool. But you would just walk right by and not even notice there. It's just another situation where you're rewarded for being an enabler as opposed to the active. So right now everyone's fighting their way to the train station. Yeah we're getting there. Let's see so we walk through all these zombie areas and then I'm trying to think. Is the barnacle death electricity room before or after the barn of death in rockets? The barn of death in rockets is awesome. That's the part I was talking about was that the part you thought you were going to hate me for? No I just I feel like that's not my favorite part of the game. Which is first the barnacle death room or the barn? The barnacle death room is later it's part of the hospital. So let's you meet up so let's basically meet the resistance Barney find you. He gives you a crowbar and tells you that you need to get the fuck out of here. You also see the couch couple again. Yeah you do. You make an appearance in episode two which is more grim. Yeah. You're looking for it so be looking for it. Yeah. Shit. Yeah they really do. So so you're sensing actually. You've got your crowbar you fuck I feel like like you're you go across the buildings. You go through the hospital. So I really so my one of my favorite. The hospital is great. I love when Alex I think we're missing. I feel like the the airship battle should be before that but I know it's at the end of the hospital. Okay. Like you see the airship sort of tracking right through the hospital. I just love that scene where Alex gets the shotgun and you guys get to run. I mean I think she was all like well so much for medical supplies. I've got a shotgun and I feel like it's part. It's one of my favorite combat areas and maybe all of that so far half-life to whatever that they've done so far. I mean I think that it's cool seeing the combine fighting the horrors that they have unleashed on the world. Right. That is one of the big things in this. Like the reason that the Zombines are cool is because the entire time we're playing through after I do you're thinking why the fuck didn't had crabs ever attack these guys. Yeah. They do. It is a problem. There's only for the ones where blue uniforms though. There's a lot of tools in that section that just make it fun. I mean number one you've got your co-op partner has a shotgun which makes her like actually do something which is rad. You have a shotgun if you want it which means double the shotgun. Oh yeah. This time I just given up on the one. On the one bullet achieving. That's good. But even if you were just using the gravity gun there's fun gravity gun tools to use there. Like you can carry all sorts of random hospital supplies and chairs and a variety of things around. There's always the what you call them radiators from the walls that are great tools. I didn't even know you could rip those off. Yeah. I thought that was too much for the gravity gun. They're like the perfect shield and the perfect weapon. Yeah. And they fit through doorways easily. Perfect. I'm like all their objects. Yeah. So that combat section is really cool. There's you know they have the white combine soldiers in there that fire the energy balls. There's dudes throwing grenades so there's plenty of reasons to use the gravity gun and toss their shit back at them. For me the best parts are when you walk by doors with like headcrabs obvious like quarantine that are putting on them and you're like. And eventually they break through. Yeah. There's that one. There's one door that you open that's right past that one with the zombies like busting to get out which you can either decide to open or just let them bust. I didn't know you could open it for. Yeah. You can open it. I just assumed that it was like a triggered thing like after you reach that point and come back it will bust open. Nope. You can open it. And where you're fighting like for like three or four of the fucking like black poison head crab laden. Those are those are on the no those are right afterwards. Those are no those are right before the double doors that burst out because you're in that sort of. Oh I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. There's a little bathroom off to the side. All sorts of blurs together to be completely honest the hospital section blurs together. Not for me actually that's because it's it's my favorite combat scenario in the game. So I actually this is the one I remember this is the part I remember best of all. And I like the last the last room on that far right corner which is the one that has like three of the white elite combine soldiers in there as soon as you open the door they fire an energy ball at you and get them every time. Yeah. So you can always grab their energy ball back and slide it back and it goes through the hallway and kills like all three of them. It's just a really great feeling. And you know there's rocking guitar music the whole time here. But anyway yeah you hop down and that's where there's a there's a giant room that's kind of enclosed in bulletproof glass but there's holes in the bulletproof glass. And there's the black headcrab zombies there's one in the room and then there's a bunch of those hopper mines and black headcrab zombies on the outside and then a bunch of zombies and regular zombies. There's a fire in the room too isn't there. You can act there's players all over the place in there too. So it's just a one more giant kind of combat room before you get to the electrical platforming barnacle room. It's like they figure out that the more options that give you to tackle these combat areas like the more fun they become exactly. Yeah it's it also like more and it means it so you know like granted every time you play a shooter you're going to have variations on things happen because the AI is not going to do everything the same you're not going to shoot the same guys in the same way. But yeah having those options mean that it's like oh well this time instead of placing the hopper mines I'm just going to chuck them at somebody you know I'm going to instead of throwing the like in like this time instead of throwing a flare at somebody I actually threw the flare at the the blackhead crab zombie and like sit him on fire you know stuff like that. And then he throws flaming blackhead crabs at yeah or this time I haven't had magnum ammo so I'm going to snipe the blackhead crab zombie through the hole in the bowl proof glass before he comes through you know it's just like yeah it's fun to experiment with those options and by this point in the half you know at the beginning of half life too again one of the things we mentioned is the problem is that it's just a bunch of combine metrocop soldier dudes running up to you and firing their gun and you like firing at them and so the AI feels really freaking dumb. But in these scenarios where it's like okay the combine comes through two separate doors there's different types of enemies they're coming through holes in the glass the combat just holds up better when it's not you just firing at humanoid things that are standing in front of you firing their gun. It's like what you know when fear two came out and people were like it has some of the best enemy or when fear one came out. Yeah when fear one came out people were like this has some of the best enemy AI we've ever seen in the game and like then they came out and said like well our AI is really not that much better than it is in other games just we have levels that are designed to take specific advantage of our enemy AI and that's what that's what half life that especially the hospital scenes that's what they feel like is like levels that are designed to take advantage of the enemy AI and take advantage of options for the player and so so moving on to where we do finally get to the barnacle death room yeah that barnacle death room actually I liked it like you did to only because it's one of the few times that barnacles actually get you like you don't know they're there like barnacles are always just kind of like they're kind of seen coming in it's they're kind of cheating this room though that's my problem with this room is that it's not it doesn't feel like it's designed to make you solve a puzzle it feels like it's designed to kill you several times before you figure out what you're doing wrong if you notice by looking at the ceiling that there's holes in the ceiling and there are barnacles out there you can kill them all ahead of time you can't quite kill them all it's hard to reach them all this time before going up to the second floor but their thing that's dick about them is that they don't put down their sucker their box list until you get close or until you know you completed the first part of the puzzle where you put the blue things on it's because they they sense electromagnetic fields that you give off and so when you get close you should that's why they dropped their things no valves are valve made of assholes it's a giant building made of assholes I just like it in there you know again it's what they say in the commentary it's just a pacing change you know you just did this giant combat sequence in the hospital I'm pretty sure no mine I'm sorry so they give you I was gonna say something dumb about how you might as well just play with the commentary no I was gonna say that if you click gave new holes commentary boxed in at times where he talks about the electromagnetic fields oh but like I also want to go back real quick though to the the barn rocket gunship we're there we're just about to go is that after this yes I thought it was before this we're still getting there no because after it's all it's I mean once the barn thing is done it's pretty much like straight downhill for well not downhills and it all sucks but just like straight to the end clips along to the end got there's not that much more by the time you get to that point you're pretty close to the railroad uh to the to the train station I mean it's just like Jesus Christ how fucking big a city 17 what am I out of here I always think of this this particular game is very short like I mean obviously this was episode of content it is only like only there's like three hours I mean you really and if you know what you're doing if you really like I played it a lot you can get through it pretty darned and probably shorter than three hours it's like it goes by pretty darn fast and I don't know I guess I I appreciate that because I feel like every single room is has something that it does you know they're all their own little puzzles yeah there's no extended travel sequences sort of established scope it's just like you need to get the fuck out of here shit is always happening Alex is there to establish narrative and and the sort of emotion of the scene you don't have to worry about this is a desolate house in the beach that's abandoned if you go in there you'll see that everyone is dead and they had Chinese food it's like Alex is telling you what you need to feel keep moving and and one of the the things you lose because of that it that I actually missed particularly on this playthrough is the Lambda the Lambda locator sections which again weren't in the first game all the sec those things were there but there wasn't an achievement for it that told you how many out of 45 you've gotten or whatever and so in this game there isn't very much reason to kind of explore the you know the corners the far corners of the environment for the 360 version in particular the achievements are really well designed because they encourage you to do things and play in a way that you would not otherwise got in an interesting way yeah that's cool as opposed to just I will do this unless you're a sadist from Japan that hates themselves and likes to make early videos of like you know playing as you like tofu in the original resident evil beating it with only a knife or some bullshit like that I'm not that that's what I'm saying achievements now make people do those things that previously only like the most insane people put on that we all just watched the videos of yeah so I don't even know how I used to know about stuff like that back in the day before you do yeah one screenshot of the magazine or chips and tricks magazine but in all fairness like when I was playing through using the only using only the gravity gun it kind of made me feel like some of the things you were bringing up in your dead space extraction of you and Anthony when you're talking about removing the options sometimes will free you up like you know I I just felt like it presented all a completely different experience for me where I was like always scurrying around like where's my next piece of ammo what can I do and I had to like think every situation through differently than I normally would have mm-hmm I don't know I found it very just like so enjoyable and in just my my entire playthrough in general of episode one I liked it more this time when I played through only using the gravity gun then I'll play through you know using weapons that's awesome I mean so wait how do you kill the gun chip in the barn with oh you can use rockets and grenades the crowbar rockets grenades crowbar you just can't use like firearms like a like a any sort of shot guns rifles yeah cross the crossbow the problem is if you use your last grenade it automatically switches to a weapon and occasionally you might accidentally fire shots get a reload it's funny so anyway let's say we don't know exactly how we got there but we know you could you finish buying like there's the vent sequence with the exploding shit in the collapsing and more barnacles and more anger the elevator and the elevator and then you then you go to another hospital area and and go through and you go up into the barn okay so we get into the barn and so how badass that is that is I think it's a really great sequence I mean obviously they were trying to do this is the scene probably only this and the entering the core sequence where HDR really really matters you know it's an interesting battle that kind of as it plays out maintains a kind of constant level of difficulty because at first it's hard to shoot the airship because you know you can only see it out of these little holes I was gonna say I just used my rockets and blew away the roof I was like fuck this I'm gonna speed this up I can stand you know I stand right next to this box and keep refilling it exactly is the alt fire on the shotgun as well to destroy oh really oh that's awesome I didn't know that and one of the things I actually like doing is I like trying to fight the thing without blowing away any of the cover and what I'll do is I'll I'll fire it I'll stand next to one of the holes and I'll fire it way out there so that he's shooting at it and then I'll put the dot like on the inside like if I miss so that the rocket comes back to me and then I'll put it back out the hole I can like make a rocket fly around forever until I can kill the guy I just like I don't I don't play with that magic shit yeah that's my favorite thing about this is the trick shotting yeah that's what I love so much about the bridge when we first played through I don't understand how you could do that part without the roof being destroyed though because he saw me no matter what like my issues with this part is like no it's not like I don't it's not like he doesn't destroy parts of the roof I'm just saying like I try to do it price of gunships I just try to use it with his little damage to the roof oh yeah see me I blew away the roof entirely yeah and then I would go down to the floor beneath where the rockets are and fire from there and then when I need more and run a real quick grab and drop back down like first of all he takes more rockets than any other gunship in the game which is between five and seven I don't like I was playing on hard so I think it took a couple more think it takes five yeah and normally they take three yeah so yeah he he fucking never misses if he sees you and he shoots you are taking white gob like giant gibbets of damage and flesh you're flying off well that's that's probably true on hard yeah and he like he virtually always knows where you are as long as you're always running and always jumping that's not that big of you this is actually another point where Gabe Newell in the commentary it's because those gunships have infrared vision so they always do know where you are they installed on their way out for the ones that didn't crash it's just it it was it was it's just for me this is one of the first times where the lighting the HDR lighting actually affects the boss battle like you know you it's it's easy to kill it at the end once the roof's all blown apart but at the beginning like you've got one little hole coming through and you can barely see it because you know it's all ultra bright and you see maybe you see a little bit of blackness flying across the top of it I mean as much as that's true the big thing is still like the typical valve thing sound is everything in that and I played a really good set of 5.1 headphones right into that it's like I can just be like oh he's you know behind me yeah because they have such good sound right and I love doing the trick shot stuff and leaving the roof intact because I know that he's scripted to crash into the roof yeah and the more stuff you leave there the more impressive that final explosion is I was kind of wondering about that yeah since he goes in the circle like like when I shot him he was perfect where he was like he was he died in such a way where he naturally flew but I'm wondering if there's like a way where he's like and I'm gonna do a big circle and come back down he's scripted to come around a certain way so he knows he doesn't always come in the same way I've had him come in like front or back but he always does like crash into the building yeah he like they they say in the commentary that he scripted to land there but what's interesting is that I thought because every time I played it he'll always land on the top the top floor yeah but this time he didn't he landed yeah I've gotten this time he landed on the bottom floor it seemed so it would be a good idea to have him always land on the same spot he totally does him from breaking that section he totally doesn't he lands in different he can land in different spots but the you know she'll always give you that same line of dialogue about whack it with the crowbar to make sure it's dead whatever she scored you're a real terror yeah and they'll tell you you know in the commentary we put it we put it here so that you could because he made it more exciting and because then you could get a look at this thing close up you know you could I did hit it with the crowbar and I think what you don't know is that I'm actually Bill Murray and I've lived this day 700 times before but yeah that's just a cool battle the one thing that's kind of annoying about it maybe is that when you're standing around whacking it and looking at this thing all of a sudden the room starts beeping and they burst in to uh to take you down and uh I like using rockets during that particular battle since they're the rocket box right there that can be so on so I had any excuse to use and this game especially during the final like uh move the troops sequence I use the rocket launcher more than I ever do there's every other half in your little pathway there's a rocket thing and it's just like every time it's like doesn't know how far they are please exploit me you know it's a real sale yep rockets are fun in that game they really are and they're great for taking down combine soldiers that are far in the distance so when I was three troop escort segments through this part is one of the real ones that I had it set to hard wow so you've been playing it all the way basically I bet that's the reason I thought about it is because when the combine come in through the windows and shit out behind the people off like the shotgun dudes would just take me down to fucking nothing like right away it makes no sense I don't understand how they're fucking going well because not only do they always use the double blast in the shotguns but on hard yeah and they and they really do the like up here right behind you you know like jump down on top of you and then you're dead and you're like but Alex is right there with the gun why didn't she so I at this point I started playing like very specifically where I like walk forward a little bit trigger them to come down so that I could have Alex take them out with the turret before I had to waste any of my ammo and health trying to deal with them I may have been so angry that I shook so much I've actually vibrated through space and time a little bit right figured out that I had done that man I I man I think I was about like on my third or fourth escort before I even killed a combine soldier oh really man I just booked it nice between escorts when I came back out and it's being like you were all fucking dying now but just the only time I stopped and attacked anything was to attack the the combine vehicle that rolls up and again that's funny at this part that just seems why the man acts makes like to me because they're so you know they're like a new level of annoyance but it just says about you where where you don't even have to worry about combine you just like sit in the doorway you pull and then you just throw and then you walk out and deal with everything else that's true but those those shotgun common soldiers can still come at you from the section I mean I killed them when I I know but they'll jump in again oh see that that was never a problem like okay seem like the man hacks were just down there like guys we well the first time the first time I played this game like I heard the man hacks I didn't know where they were I ended up out in that courtyard area in a really frantic battle with man hacks in like combine and everything in a rocket shooting this section again I think I will definitely try to take out all the man hacks with rockets the thing I like about this is that you know it's like like we were saying in Half-Life they usually send you forward and only forward this is one of the few times where they have you going back and forth through a space and I think the basic idea is that they want you to do combat in an area that you're familiar with which is why they send you through the first time with no no enemies at all and of course they Alex has that annoying line of dialogue huh if we knew if it was gonna be this easy we should have sent everyone we should have brought everyone with us the first time and you're like you fucker why did you say that i'm gonna have to bitch it's the only time every Gordon Freeman talk in the entire time why did you say that you just jig-sticked you totally did she did i mean it gets awful every other time they do some great things though with that did you really think it was awful though i didn't think any of the runs on normal it was pretty hard it's on normal it's pretty damn easy this is a pretty this is a pretty hard part of the game on hard except i swear to god if you run out of shield and as soon as you're out of shield any one thing can can be the end of you and it's like Arthur was saying that they have these shotgun dudes that dropped down at you yeah and they'll be right on top of you in one blast and you're going on yeah and so once you're in once you're out of you know there's a little bit of there's health scattered around everywhere but there's very little shield energy and so once you're once you're out of it it's really high i get really it's on hard you play pc style which is like you save anytime you make any meaningful yeah exactly yeah there was yeah there was a lot of that this part i got really annoyed with uh those fucking hoppers because they're so useless like i would pick them all up and i would place them around you know so the um so that the combine would hopefully run over them but even when they do they hop up in the air they explode and he just like oh that kind of hurt it's being the combiner it's like oh i'll back up yeah those are basically only there to kill you because you're sprinting in a hurry yeah exactly it's like they're they're just useless to use against the combine once you know if i'm in the room with the the trains like the indoor area like i'm pretty much relying on shotgun or that's rifle to get by because it's you're mostly fighting combine soldiers in there but then on the outdoor space the other the other room i pretty much am always using rocket launcher because the ammo's right there well i loved it like the first time you you take a group through you get to the you get to the end where uh every where they're waiting for you and they load you up with a magnum and full and full ammo yeah it's also um pulse rifle ammo yeah as well but i use the magnum a lot in this stage like basically every single combine soldier who's repounding down a building is dead before he gets the bottom body found had a magnum round yeah for me it's the same except for they had a rocket fired at them so they flew like a thousand feet away i love that i love that too and that's that was a big thing in half-life too they showed in the original trailers but you know that that when you shoot a rocket in and me like that so it's so satisfying to watch them ragdoll like 20 feet up in the air above where they were okay so you finish the escort barney unlocks the door and you go to the train yard yep why are you not on the same train as barney so you mean distraction is what yeah you're gonna buy them time so that they don't get taken out by a strider yep because because you and Alex are the fucking heroes fuck that well no i mean they the reason they do it is not to buy them time it's too it's too not they're like they're he she says like they're after us you go ahead in this train we don't want to sacrifice all the other dudes by having having them know where you have even though yeah they don't care about basically it's kind of like it's kind of like when uh when Luke Skywalker goes on the mission with Han Solo and Princess Leia to the moon base on indoor and then they realize that he realizes that he's a threat to the mission because Darth Vader can sense him yeah it's like that it's exactly like that in fact that's i'm sure that's what they were inspired by during the sequence you know it's actually that is if you click the Gabe Newell chat button in that part of the day at this part of the game we just decided that uh like most of the other parts of the game we wanted to rip off Star Wars so if you remember and uh that's exactly all impression we're thinking man we really don't want to put this on ps3 we're gonna get a quick save anyway yes yes yes yeah okay so you i just did that to annoy the ps3 people who were latched on lately because the one charted to non traversy non traversy yeah good word uh so the i i really liked this because in the half-life to the the strider the strider segments the where you're fighting them they were cool but you didn't feel really i never really felt that threatened by them and in this section best striders are fucking menace you know yeah and it's like me it's the opposite like i didn't really feel threatened by the strider where it's like every other strider in half like two as striders i did i felt like this one was so up close and in my face and like the way that it changed the environment you know the other striders though it's that there are other people so they'll like shoot at you for a second and then spot a different target and shoot and this one his only mission is to kill you the whole time he's like the goddamn terminator and constantly behind you know i mean i think it's like kind of this is this shows the the way that valve was uh kind of growing in in in half-life too when you're fighting a strider they're just they're just combat you know you just fire rockets at them and they fire shit at you and they run all around this one this is a puzzle you know it's like to make your way through this environmental puzzle and the the stuff that you can't even you know you're basically just avoiding it until you can there's a few of the um you can't even get up through your shot at it that you can toss at it once you get up to the top level but i mean you're basically waiting until you can get some rocket launcher at home it just kind of keeps you from standing in one spot and being like looking ahead and being like okay this is exactly every step of the way what i'm going to do and this one you're kind of just having to figure it out on the fly i would say this something that it seems like they understood more in this one than in half-life too which is is that one well-placed super enemy in a cleverly designed area is much more effective both narratively and like fun-wise than a large open area with a bunch of things walking around like that single strider has more impact than i think a lot of other parts of striders do and there's there's one asshole enemy that i just want to call out right here so you do it you fucking you know there's there it comes in it shoots a bunch of shit you run around back some of these crates and uh some dudes repel in and you fight them in their bitches and then you jump on top of some more crates and then you go into this room and there's some head grabs in there and shoot those guys fuck those guys if you climb up to the top level where you can finally you know there's a hopper mine up there that you can throw at a strider and there's a health thing on the wall and you're on this like top cat walk on the left side of the building with you and right on that ridge right there there's like a hole in the ceiling and there's a guy a stupid comma and you're like wondering where you're going with it and the fucking guy the uh you know the cover on that catwalk is not the greatest it's destructible cover that the strider can shoot through so you can't really wait too long in one spot and you just got up here you just got this brand new health and this guy starts throwing grenades and firing at you and you're like where the hell are strider and then like you realize oh you one motherfucker up here really you and then you'll do something like try and sprint past them and run into a hopper mine and day exactly yeah so saying that because you watch me fucking do that the payoff for me after that part is when you hop down behind those those two uh crates and the strider like uses it's like powerful blast that like pushes the crates towards you and it's even pushing like these these supply boxes get crushed and ammo is like sitting there and ammo is getting pushed back and the health and you have to run out from behind it and dive down before this thing crashes on it was nice to have the strider push around debris that didn't crush and kill me yeah because you made it out ahead to time uh no uh in half-life two the part where uh in the courtyard yeah if you run into the building and they destroy the walls while you're inside of it that's the building with the health station yeah like it more than one second trying to figure how do you know where the building is talking about it's the building with the health station very into the courtyard in the center with it's past the uh past the rocket crate you have fucked you really well so you come to that room well like first you head toward it and your other guy gets vaporized and then you run into room and he blows one hole oh man he blows another and it but the fucking pushes me everywhere and at least twice the fucking desk that was in there like crushed me against the wall i'm just picturing ryan meeting all the dudes that made it in person being like remember that time you're the guy that level when you guys when you guys had that part with the the salt rifles i've met those guys i have nothing to say like i'm i'm i'm there's something wrong with me i don't know how to like do you like take your mind off of like sort of like down at your feet yeah i just like don't want to talk to him like um if i if i ever meet valve guys i'm like yeah you guys make really good games i don't know how to talk to you about them because i'm totally non-objective and i don't want to be a fanboy so just keep you go over there in your valve spot you keep making the games and i'll keep playing them i have no i don't want to talk to those guys if you're going to that left or dead thing this week right yeah but it would be dug they're probably in chat talk to chat and say he should come on episode four with us yeah that would probably be feasible if they weren't located in Seattle yeah we'll fly him down and then we'll say we'll find out and then they'll pay for themselves and donate the money to charity um so you finally get to the part where you have rockets and can fight back except you're still behind cover that can be eventually blown out that's true but like although i killed it so fast it's totally really quickly at that point like i say it's almost like a puzzle i feel like you could you can't possibly kill it until you get to the spot and then we'll let you know what you do there you're allowed like all right let's do this fucking as soon as i chase the difficulty man it's like walking on a rainbow i think are there should never ever play games on hard when i when i did i never when i i think it's something else yeah when i did let's know what you're getting into if i if i know it's hard i'm like well it's on hard yeah i own fault when i mean it was hard when i did this part you know like by the time i finished that last strider i had like 15 health and then i went to go grab on the ladder and missed i totally done that too and i was like i was like no and i managed to do that thing where you like grab the ladder at the very bottom you're like oh okay i'm just glad like once arthur gave me the trick of being able to use the ladders and get on and get off i use that all the time now you're not your magic magnetic ladder yes yeah thank you and i love it when it'll like go around corners and step you off onto the right spot it's just one of like a son of a delay i do okay so we're basically this is the end of the game and i like Alex's response like at this point she's like totally in awe of you and amazed at how awesome you are the smile on her face is he's worth all the crap that you went through there might as well be like an unzipping sound yeah this guy oh you're wrong in the same thing yeah they end up over and over the end zipping sound you actually heard was uh me standing behind you how about actually happened oh shit you know what that was real life yeah hamburger that night i was curious about this in sequence when you're on the train yeah and the shit's going down yeah the message is being sent yeah there's one particular particle effect that or you know i just call it that that occurs and it looks like the same exact effect that the what are the big overseers called the advisors it looks like that same sort of mental attack that they it's doing it and the advisors as they pass the advisors are coming by yeah like if you look at the message and the advisors are flying over your head and doing the mental attack yeah if you look at the citadel you can see all the advisor's ejecting from the citadel all the same time my so my question is do they know that Gordon's down there and they're attacking or is it just like anytime you're around these i think it's just that they're passing by i think that they're entirely too occupied with fleeing to know that i think yeah i think it's purely them passing by and maybe even talking to each other and just when they're even that close and their brain waves are pumping out just don't do you good because otherwise why wouldn't dr brain or is somebody like always be getting fucked up when he's around them or talking to them yeah who knows i don't know i mean they know they know that Gordon and Alex are out there no question at all yeah and they they know they know that they that there was a big strider battle at the train station i mean i just i kind of get the impression that you know we don't know exactly how smart they are but there's some sort of hive mind and as long as there are combine dudes fighting against Gordon i get the impression that the combine knows where Gordon is so my guess is that they do know where he is and this time which is why that you know the the beginning at the end of this game in the beginning of episode two is the train being wrecked and you getting off of it so whether or not they decided to attack your train and fuck you up or whether or not it happened as a result of the combine or the citadel exploding to send out their message or i guess the message gets sent out earlier in the episode but you know you know it no it gets sent out right then yeah it's the exploding gets sent out because Alex even said it she says they're getting ready to send out the message earlier but uh yeah i i don't know i i think that the advisors definitely know where you are the only thing that's really weird for me on on this ending part and i don't know if this is the case in the xbox version it's just a graphical thing uh up at the top of the citadel because i'm playing on the pc version where where that effect is in the clouds there's some kind of like weird ring weird ring where it's like a transparency and the texture that's like super solid and has no like softness around it yeah it's basically like like a matte painting yeah and i'm like i'm looking at this i'm like wow that looks really video gamey yeah there's a lot i mean yeah but that's like the only tech thing yeah that's that's the only thing in that whole scene that like kind of kind of like tarnishes it for me because the rest of it you just feel i i really do feel like this thing is blowing up in a very bad way for me i'm like wow that's that's it i'm over it's over and i just started like two and a half hours ago what the hell was this thing that i just played and yeah how did you feel about that back in the day where they're like episodic content where you like man i can't wait for the next episode next month yeah that's what i felt like i didn't listen episodes i i i thought i played sin episodes first actually you did because it came out earlier no i but i do i did when it first came out 100% not lying like as soon as it was over i watched the credits and i started it up again and went right back and it doesn't go doesn't it go into like a preview movie too yeah episodes too yeah and and and like yeah like dog fighting hunters yeah and i remember thinking to myself going the same thing right i was i was thinking to myself well i'm not going to have to wait too long to figure out what happened always till like three months from now when the next one comes yeah exactly this would be awesome yeah that's true but then again episode two came out with portal and team fortress two and these remastered versions of the first game so it was the orange box as the one we're talking about episode two yep that's true i mean they were working on a the 360 version of of half-life two basically like as soon as the 360 came was announced right because there were rumors about that shit like before the x-box version of the game came out yeah whether or not i mean obviously episodic content uh the way that valve originally envisioned it didn't work out the way that they envisioned it for them i mean there's no question about it that said at the time i thought hell if i can get these every six months or something like that hey it's better than waiting five six years for the next half-life chicken market and it feel it would if they were making it that way it feel like such a waste because i i really like the source engine and i really like the way that they the source engine kind of advanced as they built the episodes and that sort of thing and i still think episode two i mean obviously doesn't it looks like in charted two or anything like that but it it still looks really really good and so i was glad to get more a games in the half-life series out of them sooner rather than later and i don't think that was necessarily a mistake yet i mean i think episode two ends really well and it's if maybe if there were no other games to be playing i would be like where's my half-life but games have been really good for the past couple years i feel like at this point i'm kind of wondering where my half-life is i'm not in two years since episode two i've been i've been i've been just two again which is well i'm going to play episode two again i i think it is i think this before i think this if this was you know if this was four or five years ago and and i didn't play as many games a year as i do these days and and i was these days i'm both a console gamer and a pc gamer and back then i was definitely more of a pc gamer um i probably right now i would be kind of feending for half-life i mean and then that's when you tied yourself over with the articles from the valve store it is it is this is the longest gap that there's been for half-life two contents that's true yeah but i mean this last one i think if episode three comes out and is basically like you know more more of the same stuff people will feel like man it's been a it's been a long time but they they did say and it was very vague they said something like we're going to try something a little different with episode three and i don't know what they mean by that if it means oh we're throwing a portal gun in it and so that and you know that's a whole new series of gameplay challenges they need to figure out how to solve the one if it's like maybe the who knows like what what are the things they could do they could do like a hub world uh sort of structure for the game that totally changes the way that you play it they could you know they there are those videos that came out of um death death gamers being shown half-life did you did you see this yeah gave newel showing showing off parts of the game today okay well gamers this is all like this is all post-episode do stuff so i think that we should say that sure yeah okay uh another two-hour pod important things to do are to uh to go to area five dot tv if you want to whatever hey what's up with that attitude all right all right come to our website area five that tv watch co-op or go to revision three dot com slash co-op um and then you should also check out all of our hammer suit partner podcasts uh you know of course a rebel of them but then you should also check out the geekbox at the geekbox.net or just geekbox.net fuck i almost fucked that up every time intentionally and then you can check out the mobcast at bit mob.com you should check out the geekbox it's mobbox.org and then uh yeah then you should uh review yeah yeah so mate you should check out man on the mob cast this week and uh review our podcast on iTunes subscribe to us if you haven't and uh play episode two play episode two for next week if you're smart i'm also on rebel effing game yeah he's also on rebel effing game clip which this is this is regular push fucking hollywood golly wouldn't matt that's your back pedal all right we'll see you all next time i love you so so [BLANK_AUDIO]