Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club - Half Life 2 - Episode 1
Unfortunately, it's hard to do a G-Man voice in a synopsis, so screw the foreplay. Hello! Welcome to the first installment of our Game Club series on Half Life 2 plus episodes, where we talk about the fundamental differences between Half Life 2 and its predecessor (and its first person successors), the finer nuances of zero-point energy manipulation, and more! This episode covers from the beginning of Half Life 2 up through the end of Ravenholm, and be sure to play through the end of the game for next time. MIT penis!
(upbeat music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Okay. Hello, hello, hello. - Hello and welcome to, yeah. Hello and welcome to the Rebel from Game Club. First episode for Half-Life 2. Covering up from the game start through Ravenholm. - I can't believe no one took advantage to do like a G-Man introduction. - 'Cause that would have been cheesy and lame. - I'm Anthony Gallegos, a game spy and Rebel of him, along with Arthur Geese and Tyler Barber of Rebel of him. And then also with us, our area fives, Matt Changerine as always. - Hello. - And joining us finally for the first time since Call of Cthulhu is Ryan O'Donnell from A5. - Hey, he was lost in the abyss. What's happening? - Ryan O'Donnell was lost from a lot of work, so it was Arthur's clever idea to do Half-Life 2 to bring him back. - It worked. - So. - Then we fed him, so that's how we keep him coming back. - It worked again. (laughing) - But yeah, so we're here to talk about Half-Life 2 in all its glory. First episode we'll cover Half-Life 2 up to the Ravenholm. Second episode we'll cover the remainder of Half-Life. - I had a question about that, actually. We had more than one listener post in the comments that-- - The second part might be too long. - The second part is awfully crowded, but with the mines, the coast, Nova Prospect, the city rebellion and the tower. - Well, you guys can't talk about all that in like five minutes. (laughing) - And all of that in a week in addition to anything else to come to us. - Coolest. - Coolest. (laughing) - When we tried to decide how we should split this up, I consulted a strategy guide, and I don't know. - Well, this is a little less than halfway through the coast, but the coast is such a great part. I wanted to like save it. I feel like once we finish Ravenholm, all of the, you know, if Half-Life 2 has bad parts, we are through them all by the end of this episode. And then after the rest of it, it's like smooth sandlin' all the rest of the way out through the end of episode eight. - And like through, play through Ravenholm, I guess, wasn't as clear as it could have been either, because for me, Ravenholm ends when I finally get out of the mines. - Well, I guess for me, I stopped right when I got into it. - Yeah, I stopped as soon as I saw the headcrabs. - Right, and once I was outside the mines, I was like, you know what, that really wasn't part of Ravenholm. - Yeah, I pretty much, I wanted people to play through the end of Father Gregori, basically, and that mine part was one room after it. - After he says he'll attend to his flock. - Yeah, like when it goes in the dramatic music and all the guys coming in at him, that's such a cool part, but. - Yeah, I kind of got fucked in that misunderstanding too, 'cause I was trying to play through without using any of my weapons, so I could get the achievement, you know? - Fuck. - There's some stuff. - Wow. - And I didn't realize the part where you're actually, where the trains are. And the, you know, there's the snipers, the first of you see the sniper shooting at you, and there's like a few of the combine soldiers that carry the shotguns. I was like, well, okay, well surely they don't mean here, but no, that wasn't the end of Ravenholm, so I did not get the achievement. - Oh, you need to do it the entire chapter until it tells you. - Until, yeah, until the next one comes up, which is, and there's actually a big encounter right there with some combine soldiers who are armed, and that's when you get. - No, okay, playing through Ravenholm without using anything but a crowbar and a grab gun is a fucking achievement. - That's what I'm saying, well, that's what you want, right? - Playing through that entire sniper section is bullshit. - Hey, you know, it's an achievement, you don't have to do it. - It was fun when we get to it, I'll talk to it, but I don't know how that'll do it. - Man, I thought a gnome achievement was hardcore. - You did that? - No, fuck that. - I got fucked on that too, my first time I did. - Ryan did. - Will fucking Tuttle did that shit. - Of course, Ryan did that. - I didn't do it. - I thought you did it. - I started to do it, and then I was like, this is really dumb shit. - So you mean, I knew how far it was, I thought, oh, just do it, why not? - You mean to tell me I have to get out of the fucking car and fire this thing down 100 feet, and then follow it? - Yep, fuck you, yeah, it's not cool. - You can try to lodge it in the car, but it doesn't work very well. Anyway, Half-Life 2, what a game. - Yeah, let's not talk about achievements. - Why not? - 'Cause those are new to Half-Life 2. - I know, they're even achievements in the PC version. - Yeah, yeah, but there weren't when the game came out. - True. - I wasn't designed for it. - It wasn't, they've added them back in, and it admittedly, okay, so Half-Life 2 is a game where I have played it many times now. I've played it on every conceivable place that it was released, including the Xbox One. - Which actually was an extremely good version of the game. - People don't like to talk about that particular version highly, because it does have some frame rate issues, but realistically, let's say you only had an Xbox at the time, you could have played through Half-Life 2. - It has totally gotten the, you know. It has better lighting than Half-Life 2 and PC does. - Yeah. - That was another situation where. - Yeah, it just looks a little low res is basically what it comes down to when you're playing it. Anyway. - And if you try to play it on an Xbox 360, shit gets wacky. - I thought I had known everything there was no about the environments in this game that I'd seen it all. And as I started out, I beat it on Xbox 360 once. I'm playing there again because the character models are pulled from the latest versions of Alex and the Vortigaunt and these sort of things from episode two. - And the lighting and particle models are also from episode one and two. - Right, so the Xbox 360 version of Half-Life 2 actually looks better than the PC version right now. - Well, except for the fact that it runs, like you won't notice it when you're playing it, but it runs at a way, like at least in my case, way lower frame rate. - It runs at like 30 frames a second, but it's V, it's frame locked and there's V-Sync turned on. - That's what I'm saying, it's not I all by any means. It's just walking from my PC straight over to watching you play. I could see it. - This is definitely different. - Well, it does, what's nice is that if you go into the options menu on 360, our TV is 1080p. It'll tell you I'm running in 1920 by 1080, or 1900 by 1080 right now. And we have a TV that's got one of those 120 Hertz frame doubleers and I didn't even think to turn it off. And so the frame rate looks super high and super smooth. It's been a really nice experience to play it that way, except for the fact that, I mean, I don't wanna get into a whole PC versus console thing, but got the game controls better with a keyboard and mouse, let's be real here. It's just not as tight on Xbox. And back in the, I know that Nick and you and I had an argument way back in the early Rebel FM days about whether or not Half-Life 2 was a shooter. And I argued strongly for Valve's PC, or 360 controls being really strong. For some reason this time, it feels like there's a little lag or something. I don't know, maybe that's my dumb frame doubleer. - Did you just have like, oh, oh dear. - No, it wasn't like an oh dear moment. - No, I mean, and on the last few days on Twitter, I've been talking with Jay and you about, you know, the AI and Half-Life 2 and I purposely play it. - The less said about that, the better. - Exactly, right? No, it's legitimate. Like those complaints are all valid. The AI is not the best in Half-Life 2. - Then we get into Perfect Dark Zero being a better shooter. - Yeah, and then, I mean, I'm not like that. I wouldn't know. - I can't even believe you would put it next to the other. - But the thing is that what were you saying the other day about how Half-Life 2 is obviously like a PC shooter because you were saying, what does it not do? Like you brought this up yesterday when you were doing that part with a helicopter and you had the two guns and you were saying, like it needed like, there isn't enough aim assistance or something that you said makes it obviously like not a console shooter. I forget what it was, but you said it was like a perfect example of like-- - I think it's a throwback to sort of like the last great hurrah of PC shooters, which is that it doesn't baby you. I don't know that it really tells you where you need to go all the time. I'm really trying to remember what-- - It wasn't that. Like I remember telling you-- - It was something to do with the type of aiming it had or something. - Oh, I don't know. - Well, the aim is-- - Well, the aim is this thing would make a lot of sense because the console version-- - There is aim assist though. I mean, I wouldn't be able to survive without it. - Well, and well, there definitely is on the boat sections too, the air boat sections, because like you can fire down the rockets that those things are shooting at you and like locks onto them. - There's not too much aim assist in the main game as like your reticle is huge. And if you fire within that, then chances are you'll hit something. - That's kind of what I mean. It's like you have the same reticle that you have in the PC version. I think, right? Then don't they give you the kind of modern-- - Yeah, there's no theatrical-- - Crosshair or anything though. I think a PC version there is. - There's some aim assist. There's something about the control. I mean, it's basically, it just doesn't feel like college-y for anything like that when you're playing on the console. The controls are not the best first-person shooter controls I felt on the system. That said, they're totally passable. And like I said, you can play all the way through Half Life 2 on Xbox One. And really enjoy the experience. I think the same is true of the 360 version. And you get the really nice visuals and the nice models and the nice textures. - The first time I played through it, I did play through it on 360, I had not played the PC one night. - That was before-- - I played through and start to finish. - We built your computer. - Right, and so now playing through it on the PC, like of course there are the little things like when you're on the airboat section, you do have exact control over the gun with the mouse and stuff. But it's a different experience in some ways, but I didn't feel like when I was playing the console one, like in hindsight, like man, that fucking sucked. It was perfectly fine, I thought it was great. - The platforming is easier on the console version, I feel than it is on the PC version. Like I just, with the analog sticks, it's-- - The thing that I thought was gonna be nice today on Logstick, and we haven't made it to the buggy section yet, but obviously we played all the way through. And man, I hope everyone who's listening has played a lot of Half-Life 'cause we're like, it's not like we're making our way slowly through the single player here, but in Water Hazard, the airboat controls, you know, with a, you'd think that on a console controller with analog sticks that controlling that thing would be totally sweet. - And you would be wrong. - And you'd be wrong because parts of it are, there are things about it that are nice. But the problem is that they don't have accelerate and break map to triggers or something like that. It's all mapped to one analog stick, the same one that you used to turn. And it, and really it's the way that it handles reverse. So if you're never for reversing and you're pressing to the left, it just feels like it's moving the opposite way that it should be moving. And so kind of moving between forward and reverse and left and right, all in the same stick is troublesome, but I actually do like the way that it, it auto aims the turret once you get it. I think it's really easy and really fun to shoot guys with this almost like God weapon and it feels like a big payoff that it didn't necessarily feel like in the PC versions. - And there's still, I mean, there's still challenges in that moment, especially when you're fighting against the APCs that are firing rockets. - Right, right, right, definitely. - So let's back it up for a moment and just go with when we first arrive at City 17. - You know, I'm very beginning to game. - I still like, this is probably the fifth time that I've played Half-Life 2 on the PC because every time I upgrade my PC, I play Half-Life 2 again. - Right. - And this, I'm playing it again now, like this is, it's still one of the strongest openings I've ever experienced in a game. And like, because it sets up the entire world, I feel it, I'm there, like I know what's happening within the first, you know, 10 minutes of the game, even if I'd never played a Half-Life before, I would still get a sense of what's going on. - Without an hour long cutscene to introduce you to it all. - Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's the definition of story through gameplay design. And it's something that I think, it's a primer for game designers out there who are looking to do that kind of storytelling. - Yeah, the first time I played through Half-Life 2, I played it by going to my friend's house, who had like a competent PC that I could play it on. And yeah, yeah, man, I agree with you too. I almost feel that this introduction in Half-Life 2 is like one of my favorite moments in gaming ever. And the weird thing is it's like, there's no action. It's like there's not any kind of like suspense. It's not scary, it's not in your face. It's just this ominous presence that you feel like there's this world that is going on here and something has come before. - And as a fan of Half-Life, if you're, I mean, I would like to know how many people played Half-Life 2 without playing Half-Life 1. I mean, I know you didn't finish it. - Me. - The, you know, seeing immediately like the vortigant that's like sweeping with the broom, you know, while the combine guard is watching over him, you know, they were like one of the most annoying enemies in the game, in the first Half-Life. They would, you know, see you and shoot lightning at you immediately. - What the hell do they impress these guys? - Yeah, they're like domesticated or something. You just don't know when you first start. And it's like a, it's a really sort of different experience than Half-Life while, you know, still having the train ride that was familiar from the beginning of Half-Life. - I was gonna bring that up or, I mean, Anthony, actually, I think you had something to say. - Good, I'll lead off whatever you say. - I think what's interesting is basically they did the amazing, like, genre-bending opening sequence twice. - Yeah. - But like a lot of things in Half-Life 2, it shows how much they learned after doing the first one because in hindsight, the intro to Half-Life 1 where you're on the excruciatingly long tram ride and the excruciatingly long buildup to put on the heave suit and then go and put the material into the portal and fuck everything up, takes forever. And that is definitely not so much the case in this. You, things pick up pretty quickly. And the tram ride is just long enough to sort of give you an idea of where you are and then you're moving through these environments by yourself as opposed to watching things happen. - That's true, but the, I mean, while you're confined to one space in the original Half-Life tram ride, which takes a long time, the time before, I would say, real action starts in Half-Life 2 is a long period. Again, I mean, there's a lot, a lot of people have always complained to me that, and maybe even during the Half-Life 2 isn't the shooter arguments that, you know, it takes forever to get going. You don't actually have a gun until very late in the game. - I'm not even worried about that. I feel like it has you doing things. Like it has you moving around, experiencing things actively. - That's true, but you just, I mean, you don't have to, and there's the interactivity with the environment is limited to, you know, being able to pick up simple objects, opening things that don't matter, like lockers that have nothing in them, or, you know, talking to a person once with an action button, but not really being able to respond 'cause you're Gordon Freeman and all you can do is like, say one thing, or not even say anything, listen to what people have to say and move on, and there's a lot of just being kind of herded forward, like a cattle and, you know, down this path, and it's a wonderful, wonderful path. I mean, I think that's what it really comes down to, is that they make this early part of the game where you kind of just are walking through this path that they want you to walk down, they make it really interesting, and much more so than any other game that's tried to do it. - It's like a Disneyland, right? - Yeah, when you just let go and you experience the environment, like, Pirates of the Caribbean isn't really a ride, it doesn't really do anything exciting, but you love it 'cause you're like so soaked into this cheesy little atmosphere. - I feel like it's more like it's sort of a haunted house kind of situation than-- - That's true 'cause you're walking through it. - Like, whereas the first one was very much fucking Pirates of the Caribbean, where you're all, "Oh, look over there, a robot." "It's like over there, toxic environment." - No, no, that's still true to a very big extent. - One bad thing is that when Half-Life did that though, no one else was doing that, it was really, that scene was incredible to me when it first-- - I don't know if it's me playing with headphones or what, but I really like, when I played it on console, you know, I have surround sound and stuff, but the new headphones I have, which are really good, like, just hearing the sound and stuff, Half-Life has such like distinct sounds. - Oh, yeah. - They like, totally tell me, like, this is what's coming up ahead, this is what's going on, like, everything has such a unique sound to it, that immediately I know, like, that's a machine gun, that's a helicopter. - Everyone knows the maracas of death. - Yeah, exactly, you know what I mean? I just, like, even from the moment though, like with the, man, what's the technical term for it, you know, like the, I guess the Doppler effect or something, you know, like, as you're passing by the loud speakers and stuff like that. It's just like, so good. - I mean, everything, even from the moment you step out of the train and, you know, you hear Dr. Breen's voice coming over the loud speaker, but then there's also that monitor that comes up and takes the photo of you, and then, like, moves, scuttles away. I mean, you're just like, what the hell is going on here? And sad play is a big, big part of that. I mean, there's, you're constantly being bombarded by really good voice acting, which, I mean, I think a lot of people forget or don't give credit for it 'cause there's so many games that have bad voice acting. In general, the voice acting in this game is outstanding. - Well, and when Half-Life 2 first came out, there weren't that many games with good voice acting. It was actually rare, and now we kind of expect it, and in fact, we really fault games for not having good voice acting. But Half-Life 2, one of the reason why people love the characters so much is because, like, holy shit, it's read by people that actually, you know, can do a good job with it, and the writing is well done. - And there's, the narrative structure of Half-Life 2 is really just well done. I mean, it's very cyclical. Obviously, it kind of begins and ends with the Citadel for the most part, I mean, once you come out of the train station anyway. But even before that, there's just great, kind of foreshadowing that you would never notice the first time you were playing through, but the really payoff is off the second time. Like, just after you kind of make your way into the guards' cages, there's a train that's leaving for Nova Prospect before Barney comes in and takes you. Well, you know, obviously, later in the game, you break into Nova Prospect through some back-ass cave, back door, you know, but you could have just made your way there earlier if you got on the train. - Sands have suit. - Right, oh, and it's the other thing. Like, what if Dr. Kleiner didn't have a kind of thing for de-beat headcrabs? If he didn't keep Lamar as a pet, then your portal transfer probably would have gone through, "Okay, and you never would have had to go "and get a crazy drink." - No, that's the thing, that's the water hazard. - Everyone thinks that it's Lamar, but this is actually developed later. It's not, Lamar is not what fucked up that teleportation experiment. - Really? - I don't know that I want to, like this podcast might as well be fucking named spoilers, but I don't know if I want to spoil stuff that comes later if people haven't gotten there yet. - Oh, got you. - But there is definitely, what's the time right now on that? - 20. - 40. - In episode two, like, where they have problems and tell, like, I think that they teleport you or something like that, or there's some other time where someone says there's strange interference around you, and that's created by the G-Man. Like, that's why there's strange, like, that whole thing goes wrong, is because of your exposure to the other dimension. - What if the G-Man did control the head crab and make the head crab do that? (laughing) - Well, but I, oh, yeah. - I don't know. (laughing) It's interesting that you say that because it's, I mean, it's definitely set up to be, like, Lamar's screwing it up. I mean, he jumps in right at the moment of impact. And that sequence, actually to me, when playing through this time, I never had really thought about how strange it seems. Fuck, there was something else I wanted to say. Anyway, the thing that's strange about it is that, you know, you kind of are warping back and forth between your teleportation chamber and the one at Black Mesa East. And then all of a sudden, for no reason at all, you're in Breen's office, which seems just like a completely fucking random place in West, the G-Man is having some sort of like weird effect that was putting you in the right place, or the right man in the wrong place or whatever. - To the relative in the game. - Yeah, exactly. - For a second, this podcast went into a very Giuseppe-Kintelli place. Giuseppe-Kintelli was the guy that used to ride into EGM and went up with the crazy, like, what if Banjo did find Grunty's magic bag? (laughing) That's just what it's like. What if the G-Man did make Forta-Gots your enemies? (laughing) Sorry. One of the things that was really visually striking with me when I first saw Half Life 2 was that I think this was like one of the first games that put like a gleam in the character's eyes. - Yeah. - You guys noticed that? Like, to me, their eyes just really, I mean, that's why you walked up to the NPCs staring at like the train schedules, and he's just talking to himself, you know, about the departures is then you'd look at him and the acting is so real. - No, when it done faces like that before. - Yeah, it's funny 'cause at the same time, it does like these really great faces, like you'll be having a conversation with Alex or her dad, and it'll be like really good. But then it'll like break you out of a little bit when they start doing like the robotic twist walk, so it's like an easy one at the top. - The funny thing is like Half Life 2 on 360, it looks like how you remember Half Life 2 on PC looking. - But it doesn't actually look like that. - But it doesn't, like in there you can tell in certain spots because there are certain character models that you never see in episode one or two, like Mossman later, and she looks terrible. - Yeah, but that's funny that you mentioned that them turning around in the hallways is what kind of pulls you out of it 'cause that's the exact opposite of what happened to me on playing on 360. I was thinking like, I was thinking, man, if this game always looked like this, maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but it seemed like the animation matching for her like doing all the spins, walking around, like interacting with me was totally unreal. You know, it's like pretty fucking, it's like, good job. - Are you talking about Alex? - Yeah, Alex, why? - I know, yeah, but I mean, I think you were, - Yeah, I was talking about Alex, too. It's, to be fair, it isn't like as bad as like, some games, right, where they look like they're obviously pivoting like a rope. - Right, right, but their faces are so real that a thing would pull you out of it at that point. And that's what I'm saying, like, when it comes to especially Alex, like nothing pulls me out of it almost. I mean, you know, obviously, of course, of course there are things that do, but it's such an incredible job in terms of the animation of her character, her entire body language, that they're able to pull it off. - And I'm actually playing on PC, which like we've said, hasn't been updated. You know, the Xbox 360 version, like you said, has the episode one and two character models and stuff like that, and textures and things. And the PC version still doesn't. And they, Valve still says it's coming. In fact, I ran across it, 'cause I was looking, I was like, well, maybe they've patched that by now, 'cause it's been so long since I played, the last time I played Half-Life 2. Maybe they've patched it, so I was looking like, no, I went onto the forums and like, the top, like, the second post down on the Steam forums for Half-Life 2 was, "When's this coming?" And it was like, and somebody from the Steamcast had done an interview with Gabe Newell and like, asked him that very question. And his thing was like, we, yeah, we're still doing it. It's on ValveTime, you know, quote unquote. And like, we're doing all this other stuff, it's not high priority or whatever. - I asked him, I mean, we went out to see the game ahead of time, this was when Orange Box was coming out, and they said, yeah, we really, really wanna do it because it's obviously, it's a far better visual experience if you're playing it this way. But the plain and simple fact of the matter is that, that's the bulk of this game in terms of the file size is those things, the textures and the models. So if it's not like we can just like, turn it on or something like that. We basically have to have people download the entire game again, and so it needs to be, it can't, we need to do it as something where it's like, Half-Life 2, New Edition, something like that, you know, we're not gonna update everyone's Half-Life 2, save with all this crap. We're gonna make you download something else that's like a new version of it or whatever. - And so like, they just haven't figured out. - And playing it on PC, I'm actually kind of glad that I didn't find an update like that, or that they hadn't done one yet, because I'm like, okay, well, this is, this is how I originally played the game. Let's play it again, let's see how it holds up. And it's really interesting, the things that like Arthur, like what you were talking about before, like remembering, after playing the episodes, like remembering backwards, and that it looked as good in it. - There are certain things, like the vortigaunts, especially. - Yeah. - Don't look anywhere near it. - No, and like, and you know, I'm looking at, I'm looking at Alex, and I'm looking at Dr. Mossman and everything, and like, especially Dr. Mossman, but I'm looking at Alex, I'm thinking like, wow, that's still a really incredible character model. Eli is still a really incredible character model, the way that they're-- - He has like the best to me. - Yeah, and their faces and the way their brows furrow and stuff like that, but still, you know, I look at them closely, or I do a suit zoom in, or something like that, to get a really close up look. - And I'm like, yeah, this is definitely the 2004 version of Half-Life. - Props too, no, I mean, fuck, what's his, I'm trying to think of the voice actor's name, but the guy who plays-- - Robert Guillain. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - I was gonna say Isaac Jaffee, 'cause I watch a lot of sports, and it's all I could think of, but I mean, again, as a sports knight fan, it makes it better, but God, the voice acting for-- - So awesome. - Eli is just like, so wonderful in that character. I mean, along with Alex, our-- - I want Eli to be my dad, and also because that means I'm married to Alex. - Right. - Wait. (laughing) - Yeah, he tried to be my dad if I was married to me. - You wanna be your dad. - That's why you like dad. If that means marrying-- - I don't know, man. You could wake up teleported to the fucking Borealis, or whatever. - Yeah, exactly. - Very have a heart-breaking ending to that shit, too. - Well, I suppose we should like, move into the actual game-- - So yeah, let's go backwards. Let's start with like, meeting, being teleported outside of Kleiner's lab. - Well, just to recap, so you make your way into the processing area, City 17. Barney finds you and tells you that you need to go meet-- - Which was like-- - Dr. Kleiner. - As a Half-Life fan, I was like, fuck yeah, that's Barney. - And his character model looks really, really, really good. - It does, yeah. - You know, especially if you go back and look at what Barney looked like, which is just a laughable part of the joke. - And Barney is a freaking great character. He's so cool, like, as soon as I saw him and saw that in Half-Life 2, I was like, man, I really want a Half-Life 2 blue shift. (laughs) - So what is his history? - So in the places-- - There was Half-Life. - Right, so Half-Life came out, and then like, you ran into a security guard, like in the Half-Life 1 opening, and like, you know, you get him to open the door for you or whatever, and that's supposedly Barney. And, but you see, you see those in Half-Life 1, you see these security guards everywhere, and they all look like Barney, so-- - Barney is the every guard, he's the every guard. - And then so then they released an expansion, Half-Life blue shift, which is like, you playing that security guard, and everything that's happening to the, to Black Mesa, while Gordon Freeman is doing his shit, you're doing this stuff as Barney in a parallel, parallel time. And so like, you go through all this crazy shit, you're like fighting the special forces and everything, and it turned out to be a really, really good game, and a really good expansion to the, to the Half-Life. - Really, I mean, I never, blue shift is the one I never played. It's where a lot of people express being underwhelmed by blue shift. - I thought it was really cool. It's not, I think a lot, I think people were underwhelmed because it wasn't as story-driven as Half-Life. It was very much more an action 3D shooter of the time. - It's shorter, it's about half as long as-- - But also upgrades and graphics and engine for the other games as well, I believe. - But anyway, high res texture pack that came with it, yes. - But anyway, Barney is the one that stars in blue shift. So like, that's why he's back in Half-Life 2. - Cool. So you kind of get busted out of the room when Barney hears some guards come, and you kind of start making your way through city 17 alone, but you have no idea where to go. And this is where the game starts to feel a little less modern to me, and this is again, it's just showing its age. I always used to think that city 17 felt really full of things, full of crap, like paper and debris on the ground and like trash everywhere and people walking around. And in this playthrough, it hasn't felt that way. I'm remembering, oh no, it is pretty sparse. You know, you are just like walking down this-- - It lived in though, and not just lived in, but occupied. - Yeah, it looks like it just looks to me like, like they've basically removed everyone. And it's just like the last few people there at this point. - Especially once you get to the tenements, the tenements, that building where they kind of, you walk into the hallway and the combine, knock down those people's doors, and there are a couple of people still living in their apartments. Like, you know, the one guy has that great line where he says, "Was that you knocking?" Who was obviously the combine down the hall, but he says, "Was that you knocking?" I didn't even know we had a door. - Yeah, it's like, and it doesn't have a door, it's great. - Or like, right before you go into the tenements, when you're trying to get away, and there's those two guys standing outside of the one that the combine aren't at. And like, I love that line too, the one guy is like, "Well, they don't have any reason to come here." And like, "Oh, they'll find one." - Don't worry, they'll find one, yeah. Like, sets the mood so well. And I thought it was really cool, like when you're up in the tenements, you know, you can talk to the different people, you can see the stuff that's happening, and then all of a sudden the APC rolls in down the street, and it's like, "Oh, fuck, it's on." And then like, it's just from that point on, it gets really intense, and you're really trying to run away. And I remember the chase sequence. At the very first time I played Half-Life 2, I didn't like the chase sequence. I mean, I thought I liked the tension of it, but I didn't like it because like, I kept getting confused on where to go, you know? Like, I kept like trying to like go other places on the roof where I couldn't go, and I'd fall down to the street level or whatever, but this time it felt better just because I know exactly where I'm going. - And that's something that I'll probably dip into a little bit more later is that Half-Life 2, the specifically Half-Life 2, not the episodes, is interesting as a sort of like midway point between like the old valve and the new valve as far as like getting their chops on really effective level design and not doing level design really well. - See, that's interesting. Like I know where both of you guys are coming from, and it's totally true, 'cause the level design that they have, especially in episode two, seems so super refined. I mean, they'd like kind of know exactly like arena with this many places for cover, these many openings and the sort of thing, whereas Half-Life 2 doesn't, it feels like a little bit more kind of haphazardly thrown together, but what I always thought was interesting about it was that I always went the right way, and I felt like I didn't know where I was going, and that was always really interesting to me, during this chase sequence, but more importantly, right after Barney hands you the crowbar, and you kind of like jumped down and you're on the train tracks, I remember the first time I played that, and it's hard to remember everything about the first time I played through, but I definitely remember going the right way the first time when I was running, and I feel like I'm just running, trying to avoid trains, and I was like, I felt like I didn't explore that space at all. You know, as a gamer, I'm kind of in a retentive, and I like to like go to every corner and look everywhere, and I just like ran through that spot and ended up going the right way, that we thought that was incredible. - And there are lots of parts in Half-Life 2 that are like that, but then there are also parts where you will explore for a good half an hour, trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing, and you won't see that, oh, I didn't realize that I'm supposed to fall, which I've always been told I'm not supposed to do, and then turn this wheel, which will fill this room with water, as opposed to this pump being somewhere normal that humans would accept, would not really access it. - Totally, exactly what you're talking about. - In other places it's like, oh, that grade is red, like that immediately catches my attention, I'm gonna go over there. Oh, there's a red light over that door, that's how I know where I'm going. - Yeah, they definitely get a lot better about like lighting the path forward. - But then there will be periods where you're like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to fucking do, and it's almost like there was one level designer that knew exactly how to lead people where they needed to go, and the other guys were like, that looks cool. - So that's, that's, it kind of feels just like, to me like throwbacks to the parts of Half-Life one at half played where it's like these environmental puzzles that you just like don't really understand, but you gotta sit there and like, it's a puzzle. It really is like a hard puzzle, it's not even like a puzzle that's leading you, it's just like figuring this shit out, good luck. - That's what I mean, like I can't separate myself from having the fact that I played this game a bunch of times, so I don't get locked up at these things. I can't remember what it's like to have forgotten how to solve a puzzle, 'cause I just know how to solve it. But there are moments that I feel are weird, where I'm like, really, that's what they wanted me to do, that seems like the level is not quite lined up right. The part I'm thinking of is once you get the airboat, and you're kind of, this I think is before you get the weapon for it, and you're kind of on the long chase, running away from the helicopter, there's a part where you come out of some like pipes, and you do this little airboat jump, and then you're supposed to land on top of these pipes, and then you kind of slide into the top of no one ever makes the first time. - Right, and well, I think I did originally, when I first played it, yeah, I knew you were gonna say that. I saw Arthur appear last night, I saw him coming to it, and I was like, this is gonna be funny to why. - I didn't this time when I was playing it, and I remember, and then it just like really cements, you get to look at it again, and you get to say like, wow, this is just a kind of strange, weird shaped room, this is a dumb spot, you can't really turn your craft around very well in here. Oh, but you look, the big open part with the jump is back there, this is clearly what they want you to do, but visually, it just doesn't look like your boat should be able to fit through that little slot. - I mean, another thing that the game shows age on is the collision and the way that you move around the environment, unlike most modern games, you will get stuck on geometry a lot in half-life too. - Especially on a boat. - Or especially in water, there's that room, there's a, it's around the part where you kind of turn on that valve that you're saying where the hell is the valve. - With all the manhacks. - Yeah, I actually, and we can talk about manhacks later, I like manhacks, but anyway, you kind of make, there's this room where it's filled with water, and down at the bottom, there's a bunch of boards covering up some like things that you can float up to the surface, and then you can jump across to the other side. - Getting on top of those things and then getting onto that ledge is a real pain in the ass. - So that's what, this game has really terrible space physics when it comes to like jumping up out of water, and it's even worse on console. - They fucking do it again. There's another part where not only is there like floating ship, but there's toxic waste and fucking head crab zombies. - Yeah, to me it seems like it could really benefit from like a call of duty A to climb up the ledge button. Like something like that at times, like when you walk up to that ledge, I don't want to sit there and just don't to tell you get the right jump. - Call of duty four console ruins like FPS interaction in a lot of other games because it's so goddamn good and polished and awesome. - It's modern, and that's, and it's modern. Like this game at least has a run. There's a lot of, like I hear hey lowest, ODST does not have a sprint button, I'm gonna miss the hell out of sprint. - Yeah, I can't believe that. - And when I'm playing this game, like yeah, there's a crowbar and I love it, but you know, what I wouldn't give for a melee on every weapon so that you don't hear about it. - Or the fact that I'm like on PC, it's become my default, right? G for grenade, G, but you actually have to hit like a number key to switch to a grenade. You know, I just want a quick grenade button. - Or the fact that, and maybe this is another console thing, but hopping on and off of ladders in this game is really difficult. The way the jump works, it's kind of a horizontal jump, which makes platforming really easy when you're jumping forward, but when you're on a ladder, whichever direction you're facing, your character will only jump like perpendicular to that or something, and so it gets really tricky. - I don't know if this is something that they added in for the console audience, or if it was always in the PC version, but now if you hit use, like you automatically suck onto the ladder and climb up and then-- - They updated the-- - When you're-- - Yeah, that's not the PC version. - See, I think it is in the PC version now because when you, and then when you press the action button, again, it basically detaches from the ladder onto the nearest surface. - So that you don't have those accidental deaths? - Yeah, maybe I just didn't realize that, but yeah, I'm definitely still playing it like I've always played it, which is run to a ladder and run up it like I'm running up a wall. - Yeah, you should try it, it's handy. - It's mostly that it's the jumping off ladders that's tricky, so I'll definitely try this use trick 'cause I find myself-- - It's huge trick, it's like, strangely. - One thing I, someone pointed out in the comments is that it often feels like you're like walking on ice, like the Gordon just sort of zips across every surface and it doesn't really feel like you have any weight, and that's reinforced by some of the physics moments as well. - And this is again, this is an older PC game, so when this game came out, these were all kind of things that all shooters did. It's just the fact that many shooters since then have evolved and valve in their episodes that seem to mostly keep the interactions between the player and the world the same as they were in Half-Life 2, and so it kind of feels like, come on guys, I don't mind if Gordon puts his crowbar away every once in a while, I get to see his hands climb up a ladder, that might actually be nice, I might like the hands of the hips. - Well, I remember, sorry Matt, where are you gonna say? - Oh, I was gonna say, I think it was E3, was E3 2005 when they first showed Thief 3, I think it might've been, and then the, and I remember the, I went to that E3 and I saw Thief 3, and the big thing about Thief 3 was full body awareness. When you were climbing up a wall, you saw his hands, when you look down, you saw his feet, and like that was a revolutionary thing at the time, and so yeah, when Half-Life 2 came out, it was still standard practice that you just didn't see your body when you were moving. - Right, I was gonna say, you know, think about that same thing, like when I played the original Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2, those games still didn't really have you as much seeing your feet, like they did, but I'm saying like, not, and like when you climbed a ladder, it was still very much, like you didn't want your hands. - Call of Duty 4 is a whole new thing, and I'm saying like one and two, - That's what I mean. - And like, and I played like Doom 3, all these games, right? So it was like the first time I played something like Condemm, where your guy actually saw like your guy's shoulder bending down, and when he climbed a ladder, he was like bending with it, like oh yeah, it was like-- - Samco game breakdown. - But now, it was like one of the first ones that showed your full body-- - Yeah, but now I'm, but now I'm-- - But now I'm-- - But now I'm-- - But your Bay was maybe the best implementation of it, yeah. - Yeah, I was gonna say now I'm so used to that with games, like but your Bay or Mirror's Edge-- - You know, Call of Duty, well-- - And now that I see your hands, you see your character like jumping over things, and they still manage to like, that game doesn't feel slow at all. I mean, it feels really fast when you're hopping over stuff, and I think that was always my concern is like, oh well, I don't want my character to animate and put his gun away, so that, you know-- - Especially in a multiplayer game. - Exactly, I wanna be fast, but that just never really factored in. If the animations are quick and good, it's just gonna work. - Well, and then there's, and it's also like the physics things in Half Life 2, you know, that was such a big thing when Half Life 2 came out, because of the gravity gun and the way that the physics worked in the game, people hadn't seen shit like that before. - Yeah, just picking and throwing objects, yeah. - Yeah, and so they spend a lot of time in Half Life 2, like making these physics things and making those physics puzzles where the first time I play, that was like, this is so cool! And this time I'm like, man, this fucking thing's in my way, you know, and it's like, I'll go up to an area, like when we're on the airboat section, you know, first there's that puzzle where you have to take, you have to take the hollow plastic canisters and raise the ramp so you can jump up it. And then there's one of those optional sections that you can stop at where there's some stuff suspended up in this basket, you know? - And you take the bricks out. - Yeah, exactly, and like both of those sections, like the second section with the basket, I just skit 'cause I'm like, fuck it, I'm not gonna need that stuff. - See, that is exactly what I said 'cause I walked in, Anthony was sitting on my bed, while I was playing this, I was like, you know what? Fuck this, I am not even dealing with this basket. - Well, I eat it. - And then you just have to take some stuff out of the other one. - Yeah, but there's all kinds of planks up where it looks like it might be some adventure. - But I see, it's funny 'cause I had the opposite effect on me was, I think I started to explain this, the, I got an achievement tracker thing that came up that told me that I'd only found 27 out of 45. - Oh, really? - Man, the little amity caches? - Yeah, and I was like, 27 out of 45, I know everything in this fucking, yeah, I played this game five times. I only have 27 out of 45, and then it made me realize, like, maybe I don't know the nooks and crannies of this game as well as I thought I did. - I found a few new Lambda locations playing through so far in my last one. - And some of them are really cool. I mean, there's that one with the two kind of skeletons that are like sitting on the couch below the, I'm trying to think the complex where you are running away from the helicopter, and you end up, like, turning on some alarm and opening some Watergate during. - So that you can get the airboat through? - Yeah, it's right there, and then there's a, there's the one, there's a Vortigaunt cave. After you destroy the helicopter, you know, how you're kind of, you're in the airboat and you need to open up your path so you can jump through. - Fucking hate that part. - If you, once you open up the gate that allows you to get up to the top of that island, you can kind of pull your airboat along the kind of side, and there's a bunch of these, like, pipes that look like they're covered by grades. But there's one that's like, that is covered by a grape, but it's barely open. You would, like, never notice it unless you walk really close. And then if you hop up onto it, in the inside is-- - Is that the sink in Vortigaunt? - It's the radioactive, it's radioactive goo, and you have to hop through, you have to be at full health, so you can, like, hop through the radioactive goo, and then the other side, there's like a Vortigaunt doing a ritual, and he's got a bunch of head crabs that he's cooking on a fire, and it's, aside from the little ritual and the soggy singing, at first it's all, you can just get him to say all the things that all the Vortigaunts in the game say. - You get an achievement for finding him, too. - And it's a window. - Oh, you do. - Oh, that's right, there is an achievement, and there's a-- - Yeah, find the singing Vortigaunt. - Yeah, singing Vortigaunt, that's what it's called. - Let's see, like, I didn't bother, like, obviously, I'm not bothering with achievements since I'm playing the PC version. - Right, steam achievements, man. - But, like, steam achievements. - I actually don't see anything coming up. Like, I don't, maybe my Half-Life 2 version isn't updated the same time. - I haven't seen anything coming up, either. - But, like, I just, I've not even-- - See, I don't think those are in Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 never got the-- - Valve fucking failed. - But I know, but I know where all of those things are, because, like, in the past, you know, when I've played Half-Life 2, I'm like, I am finding everything in this fucking game. - But what I'm telling you is, like, I thought that I had done it. But what these achievements are telling me is that I've done maybe half of them, and I swear I've hugged every corner of that environment. - But I'm still like, but I'm still like, the physics puzzles that I do know, if, like, if I'm, like, going to an area, and, like, the thing hanging in the basket, and I'm like, I got enough shit, I'm like, I'm totally not gonna mess with this puzzle. Though, the ramp that you have to raise up with the airboat, I was like, I know from playing in the past that I really only need two things under there, and as long as I hit it at the right thing and the right speed, then I can make it, you know? Like, sometimes you won't make it if you don't do that, but I'm like, I gotta shortcut this, because, like, the physics puzzles were before, they were, like, these really interesting experiments in gameplay design now are just kind of annoying. Like, there's the one where you're in the sewer, and, like, you set the cinder blocks on the one side to raise the teeter totter, you know? And it's like, I was like, fuck, I kept trying to do that because, like, it would start to dip, and then, like, I would try, and I would try to jump to the other one, but he wouldn't jump while it's dipping, you know? And I was like, ah, this is so annoying. - See, I, like, I'd gotten to the point where I played it so many times, that I'd just, like, walk to the other side of the thing, and I know that you don't even have to walk up onto the teeter totter. You can just lift a brick, lift it above your head, and then walk your character forward until the teeter totter is above you, and then get used, and he lets go. And you do that, like, three or four times. You can put all the bricks on there in less than 15 seconds, and then make your way across. - So my view on all of this, like, basically, the first, for your first time through the first three and a half hours of Half-Life 2 are a tutorial for every situation you're gonna come across for the rest of the game. - And, well, and then Ravenholm's, like, the playground, too. - Yeah, like, all the physics. - I mean, like, every time it introduces, like, a new thing, it has more than one area that shows you exactly how that thing could be used. Like, the ramp shows you, oh, well, you can see saw shit, just like you would in physics, and the blue barrel show you, oh, you can make these float. - And then later, you have to use the washing machine, or whatever it is, to try-- - Yeah, I was gonna joke that I've never been so excited to find a washing machine in the video game before. - All right, the other thing about the first few hours is that playing through the multiple-- This is, like I said, the worst part of the game to have to replay, because it does feel like really long tutorial, it takes a while to get moving. The environments are maybe not the most interesting in the entire game. I think the buggy section, personally, is like my favorite looking part of the game, or maybe the return to city 17 at the end, but. So, your first time through, though, it's like the beginning of a kind of weird road trip, and there aren't that many games that do this in a non-open world game. I mean, it's linear, but, and you feel like it's mostly centered around city 17, but really, you're traveling all these different places, all from the get-go, and so it has this kind of wide scope that feels really strange and different than most other games that came before. - I'd be curious to know how much actual mileage you cover. - Yeah, how far does it go? - Does it just loop back and forth or something? - Yeah, assuming that, but even just total amount traveled, like if it's a couple of miles or more than that. And I don't think that the environments in water hazard are boring because at this point, I assume that we're talking about water hazard. - Water hazard in the kind of sewer area. - I feel like it establishes sort of exactly what's happening in the world, even more than the tenements did, because it's like, look at these fucking canals that are totally disused. And you can see off in the distance there, these really great Soviet occupied, poem-looking buildings in the distance. - Yeah, and for me, one of the things about, just in terms of the level design, sometimes not being exactly clear on where you need to go and whether or not that's a conscious decision-making sort of progression of puzzle. To me, when you're sitting in the rooms and you're kind of trying to figure everything out, and when we're talking about the audio that's going on, all these things sort of build, even though I might not be progressing anywhere in the game, and I'm sort of frustrated, at least I'm still in this atmosphere-filled area and it's sort of adding to the tension of a whole scene, especially in that one physics puzzle where you drop the dishwasher into the little grate. - Into the, yeah, there's this little sound cue that triggers when you go over to climb up the long ladder that you got to, and it makes you feel like something's gonna happen, something's gonna pop up, nothing does, but it's just, to me, it captures that whole feeling, the whole just wide and empty feeling of a city 17. - Oh, then there's the red barn. - I like the red barn. - The red barn's cool. - That's the other thing is I kind of really appreciate that not everything is so, you know, spelled out perfect. That it's got these kind of rough edges because a lot of games down, I mean, I don't know, I played a lot of Batman recently and that game turned out a lot better than I thought it would, but after I played the demo, in my mind, it seemed a lot like the new Prince of Persia where everything is just like, happens to always play out for the best for you, the character, 'cause they don't want anything bad to happen to anyone who's playing the game because they don't want anyone to stop playing it. So everything has to be so fucking by the grid and perfect. And so the fact that Half Life does have these rough edges where you're looking at it, and this is kind of jumping ahead, but after Raven Home, when you're jumping down that giant mine, and there's those kind of like pieces of wood that are going along the outside of the market. - I really like to find the guy at Valve that thought that was a good idea and Slam his head and do a death. - See, I kind of like that it's just like, 'cause when you know it, you know, again, if you've played it a few times, it totally works. You can make your way down that mine shaft without taking advantage of it. - But the slightest misstep at all, like platforming wise in a game that does not do platforming especially well, well, if it doesn't kill you on the fall, it will surround you by 18 million head crabs, including the fucking death crabs. - True, but imagine playing it on PC the first time where you would have, I mean, very likely, quick saved, like, only moments prior. - I mean, I played the first time I played through it, I played through it on PC, and I remember thinking this sucks, just like the part at the beginning of Half Life where you're above the water area where you first meet the bull squids and you're supposed to jump from fucking crate to crate. - Also made me think this sucks. - Yeah, they definitely got, the level design got tighter as the episode. - Yeah, I mean, I don't remember it much platforming at all in episode one or two. - And the, I want to go from like, you know, the air boat section, but then right, when you finally get to Eli's lab and Black Mesa East, yeah. And like that, and you get into the elevator with Alex and you're going down and you see like the Vortagon plane chest and the Vortagon chefs, you know, like preparing stuff. And then you come down and there's, there's that whole little scene that plays out where you're first introduced to Eli and he's like, "Take a look at this Gordon," and you can play around with that rock thing that doesn't do anything. And Alex is like fixing something and then Dr. Mossman comes through. Like for a little while you feel like, oh, okay, like, here's some ordinary world stuff. All right, cool, I'm gonna hang out with these guys and we're gonna like do some scientist shit together. - It makes it seem like they've got other shit going on than Gordon Freeman being there. - Right, I really like that scene, especially like after you've looked at everything in Eli's lab and he's told you all about the seven days war and three, or the seven hour war in Breen and his wife. - He never had them tell me about the seven hour war. - Oh, you have to go, there's like a, like a bulletin board that's got a bunch of stuff on it. If you, if you go up and look at it, he'll say, "Oh, do you remember Dr. Breen?" He was, you know, he's, he stopped the seven hour war by bartering with, you know, the LEO. - Okay, I do actually remember that. - See, and like the, and there's like ways that you can, there's like in, in those scenes, you can like run around and jump around like an idiot and like try to toss stuff at these guys. - Hey. - Or, or you can like go up and look at the cork board and have them say something and get something else out of it. So there's incentive there for like, not breaking the mood of the scene. - And I, you know, they have the little machine with the, the rock in it, which is totally like a throw back to Half Life One when you start the resin. - I'm pretty sure that is like the sample that you put in the machine. - Yeah, so of course I'm sitting there tweaking with the knobs trying to get the resin that's cascade to have it all the while. This is in my most recent playthrough. Alex and Mossman are having this conversation about who's fault it is that something isn't working yet. - Yeah. - And I'm like sitting here tweaking with this thing and all of a sudden it pops into my mind like, "Oh yeah, these people are having a conversation." And for that, just like that one moment, I'm like really Gordon Freeman tweaking with some funny knobs from this machine. - Trying to cause a cataclysm again. - When these two ladies are having this conversation to the other side of me, it all, you know, it's in those moments where Half Life is at its best. - Going back quite a bit, who played with the teleporter and Dr. Kleiner's off? - I did, teleporter with the little cactus plant thing. - Of course you do. - You can't just do, you don't just do the cactus. Like you can grab a book off the shelf. - Really? - Oh, that's funny. - I shut up the monitor, like a PC. Like I had three things. Like I was, yeah. It comes out like Brundlefly at the other end. - That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, they, I mean, they go back and forth. - And that is cool. - They're, I think I also got an achievement for breaking it. - Oh, that's awesome. - Oh, I'm going back. I didn't know you could do all that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's awesome. - You can just spam it. - It's still funny. - Like through this game a lot of times, and there's still new stuff every time. - Well, and then like right after you talk to Eli and in Black Mesa East, like you go right into, first of all, you get introduced to Dog, who is like one of my favorite video game characters. - Oh wait, before Dog-- - And then you get, but like right before that, you get the fucking zero point energy minute later. - And if you want to call it that-- - If you want to call it that. - I was hoping so. - If you want to call it that. - I think that that's what we should call it through for the entirety of this game. - So the zero point energy manipulation tool, when you first get it. I used it to do something that again, and this is another first that I've never seen in Half Life 2. I was glad on this time I finally got to see it. But right after she gives it to you, she's telling you like, grab some stuff, move some stuff around. And if you kind of set up some boxes, you can like jump up to the higher level. And hidden behind one of the crates is a one of the face plates for the HEV energy distribution units from Half Life 1. So you know how in Half Life 2, Gordon's HEV suit is set up to accept the combine energy. Well, there's a Half Life 2 quality version of the units from the first game. It's sitting up on top of this section, and you can like, you go and look at it, you get an achievement. I think it's called Blast Room in the Past or something like that. - Oh, bitch. - And it's awesome. - This is one part right here where I broke the game twice. - Oh, yeah. - 'Cause like, the first thing it did is she said, grab a box and I grabbed it and shot it. And I ended up shooting it right up on the path where she climbs up and she goes through. So eventually she ran into the box and-- - And just a cot. - And yeah, I got cot. (laughing) - And then she teleported through it. - Nice. - So that was one point where I broke it. And also, I shot Dog's ball and it shot it somewhere where it decided back. - I did the same fucking thing. - And so then she was like, "Play fetch, Gordon." I was like, "The bitch, the ball's gone." - Yeah. (laughing) - Can't you? 'Cause there's lots of like pipe openings that I always think of as baskets, you know? 'Cause I mean, obviously there is a basket up there. - Yeah. - Like a basketball basket. But there's all these spaces where you can like, throw boxes through a giant pipe that's up above your head. And I think you can throw the Dog's ball through there and I can't remember. But I think it's set up to not break the game. - Eventually she was just like, "Ah, this game's over." And I was like, "Yeah, it's been over for a while." - All right. (laughing) - See, I think that we're getting excited for the awesome stuff. But we still have the fucking rotor bladed elephant in the room to discuss, which is the duration of the helicopter chase through water hazard. - Oh, right, right, right. - It doesn't bother me then. - I actually like the helicopter chase. I mean, it was never really that dangerous. It just kind of added some tension. It just takes away some life, but I never got like to where I was like, "Oh my God, I'm a mess about it." - I've been playing it on hard this time and it made me use all of, I mean, I stopped at every single one of the Lambda locations, even the Basket one and pulled the stupid bricks out because I needed any health or whatever would give me through all of that, all of the game, really, just 'cause I was never at 100%. But the only time that I, there was one time where I got a bad save and fuck what part was it in. Somewhere around the helicopter section, I had a bad save where I only had like 22 health left and I had to, oh, I know what it is. It's the worst load in the entire game. So I'm reminded playing through it. One of the reason, another reason this game is not as modern as it could be is the goddamn loads every two minutes or whatever, which at the time, that's just how FPS worked. It wasn't that big a deal, but in this game, this time through, I'm like, "Man, what if this was seamless? "It would be so much nicer. "It would feel so much more like a straight on adventure." And the one that really bothers me is the one in the airboat where you finally jump down the waterfall and then it loads right at the bottom of the waterfall. It feels like such a great moment. You're like, "Whoa, whoa, I'm jumping off "this fucking waterfall." And then load sound stops. - Yeah, we jump out of the dam, right? - Yeah, you jump out of the dam. You go down this crazy, yeah, it's a dam, but it feels like you're going down a waterfall 'cause it's like this huge, like, giant thing that you make and loads at the bottom. So it loads at the bottom and I got 22 health. And there's a rocket turret APC right there that's firing at me and I had to like, blaze past this fire. I ended up switching to Easy for a moment just so that the fire in the rockets wouldn't do as much damage to me. But other than that, I've been able to stay on hard the whole way through and even through the helicopter section, it was fine. - One thing I will give to it is that the points where it finally gives you something to fight back against the helicopter feel that much better for your complete powerlessness against it. Something else I noticed this time is the helicopter looks like a locust, like an insect, not something from Gears of War. - I think that's intentional though, and I say this because after we talked about that, I went and read the Wikipedia page, several pages about Half-Life and stuff, just reading about the combine and stuff. And since they've integrated so many other life forms, that could be where that comes from. - In my less ethical years, I actually acquired a digital version of the Half-Life 2 art book. - I actually have a physical version. I almost brought it today. - There's some pretty amazing shit in there about the development of the game, and stuff that got cut and explanations of where someone was coming from. - What is it, the air supply center? There's this whole facility called the air supply depot or something about where air processing takes place. - And then there's like it talks about the tentacles, which were cut, and how-- - Shows all the pictures of the voice actors and the people that they base the models of the characters off of. - Like random people in the Valve building that didn't even work at Valve. - The Steiner guy is like, the guy, Dr. Steiner is based on a model of a dude who actually worked in the building that Valve's offices are in. - That didn't work for Valve? - No, so there were times after the development of the game where people from Valve would be down at the Tully's coffee, getting a drink downstairs, and would see this guy and then be like, "Oh, why does that guy look so familiar?" And I just always thought that was really funny. - Hey, you, we need your face. - Yeah, so the end of Water Hazard with the helicopter battle, one thing that was nice that Valve did that sort of broke the physics model of the game as opposed to what they established elsewhere is when I killed it this time, it fucking crashed right into me. - Yeah. - And killed me, which was awesome. And then I took the ramp over the wall into Black Mesa East and ricocheted like a pinball all over the valley. And I'm pretty sure I have video of this. - That's awesome. - Yeah, I mean, occasionally the physics do get totally silly. Like there was one point in the early chase scene when you're running and all you have is your pistol that there was like a door blocked by a bunch of boxes and I killed all the boxes except for one. And then I was like trying to crawl past it and all of a sudden I got crushed to death. - Well, it's like hanging out with your friend that's got like poor impulse control. It's like everything's cool for one second and then you say the wrong thing and flips over the table and everything on it. - Have you seen the, sorry, Tara. - Oh, no, no. - Have you seen like the Half-Life 2 speed runs that came out like shortly after Half-Life 2 was released the first time? - Like people breaking the physics. - Yeah, like a grab jump, you could like grab gun straight down off of like a-- - If you got a box-- - Or the blades or whatever. - Well, no, it's like, could you pick it up? - Depending on anything, if you got like a box or if you got a barrel and if you were standing on it, then you like, if you like jumped and then shot your grab down down, like you're shooting the object, then you could like jump. - Yeah. - And so there's-- - I say the night plates 'cause they're flat, so they lie flat on the ground. They were an ultimate object to grab jump off of. Because you just walked on it and you press down and jump, it was like rocket jumping off of nothing and you could totally sequence break with it. - And I think, yeah, I think they fixed that pretty soon after those speed run videos came out. But it was so cool because you see people like go through Ravenholm in like under five minutes 'cause they're like just jumping over the entire level. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Oh, shit. Totally forgot what I was gonna say. If anyone's got anything, go. - You were about to talk about Ravenholm. - Was I? - Yeah. - So you play with dog. - Yeah. - Then like shit happens, a combine attack, black makes it east and the only way for you to get out after you get cut off from Alex is to go through Ravenholm, even though we don't go there anymore. - Oh yeah, that's like one of the cheesiest parts of the entire narrative of Half-Life. That fucking video that plays when Alex and you get back in the elevator and her dad's like, "Don't go to Ravenholm!" (whooshing) And she's like, "All right, Gordon, you go to Ravenholm." You're like, "We're watching the same fucking video?" "I don't glitch, but he got the whole word out." (laughing) - To be fair though, I mean, it was that we're gonna be captured. - Yeah, I know. - No, I know, I know. - It's still, it just seemed like, it's like I wish-- - I wish I would get it. - I wish her lying was something more like, I know my dad said to not go to Ravenholm, but we don't have a choice, Gordon, let's like, I would have appreciated some fucking queries. (laughing) - No, it just seems silly to me when she sent you there without a thought. - It seemed contrived. - Yes. - Ravenholm is such a bad ass part of the game though. I'd just like to say that. - It's my least favorite problem. - Really it's, I feel like Ravenholm is probably the best part of the game. - Ravenholm's such a cool thing because it contrasts like, it is so drastically different from everything you've experienced up till then. - It's, so, okay, so this time playing through it, I've been paying particular attention to the AI because of Chase talking about it. - Chase, so, Chase how? Forza turned 10 studios. - Former one up. - Former one up. Like he and I are never of a nine to perfect dark zero. (laughing) - He and I used to, I like arguing about Half-Life he knows. I love how all men he knows. (laughing) - He thinks the most important thing in a shooter is the AI. And in a lot of shooters, that is the most important thing. I think in Half-Life 2, it's maybe not the most important thing. I would say that the, kind of the environment, city 17, is the most important thing to me about it. I think it's just a wonderful, and physically, I guess. - So you would say that the shooting is not what really sells you in Half-Life? - No, but I would argue, I'm not gonna say that it's not a first-person shooter, either, it's a first-person shooting game. You walk through it and you shoot the entire time, except for the beginning when you don't have a gun. - Sorry, you say that. - And despite the fact that the enemy AI sucks, you are still required to be precise with your shooting. - Yes. - Which is easy on the console, or on PC. - Yeah, and there's lots of precision shooting that you need to do to get through the game quickly and effectively. And I still feel as though the Half-Life guns are really cool. - Yeah, I like shooting in the game. It's just, I can't help but notice this time because Jay has been talking about it the last couple days. Yeah, the AI is pretty fucking bad. And the thing that makes it worse is that the combined soldiers themselves seem to have worse AI than a fucking head crab wandering around which will at least go hide behind a wall or something like that. The combined soldiers literally just run at you and stop and shoot at you and shoot at you. - And they'll stop there and shoot at you until you peek around the corner and shoot them. - That's the results of their human combined genetic manipulation. - I mean, I almost wish there was a story way for them to explain it here. - If you leave it at the title screen, you hear a lot more of the kind of random shit that is set over the PA and over the radio for the combined troops. And among other things, they talk about how memory or placement is a step towards advancement in the ranks and things like that, so. - I mean, narratively, they might explain it away but it doesn't change the fact that the soldiers that you fought in the first Half-Life and the kind of spy ladies, the ninja ladies that you fought in the first Half-Life were fun to fight because they flunked you and seemed to use cover and do all these things that were way ahead of their time that the combined soldiers do none of. - Well, I guess what I was gonna say is that it's there, it sucks, like you just kind of have the combat, wall fun, the enemies don't really do anything and so, yeah, that's one of the problems. - So, to go back to what I was gonna say bring it back around, bring it back to Ravenholm. Why it relates is that Ravenholm to me has always been like the least favorite section because I don't like the art direction of it as much and I think Father Gregori is kind of a silly character. - Shut your mouth. (laughing) - I think he's a silly character. I just never liked the look of it. In playing it this time, it has been fun because, you know, obviously getting the grab gun is fun and sadly the combat is more exciting when you're fighting the zombies and head crabs and these kind of creatures rather than fighting the combine gaffes. - I feel like, man, Ravenholm is such an awesome environmental example of like their abs, it's like Hiroshima, it's like them saying, "All right, you don't fucking do what we say "and we will Ravenholm your town." - Yeah. - Like we will draw, like when you, I think before you make it to the boat in water hazard when you go through the small area and they say they're shelling us in the rockets with the head crabs come down. - Yeah. - That's where you realize this isn't just oppression, they are willing to like, to murder all these people or. - And it wasn't just that, like I got the sense from the very first time I played Half-Life 2 that Ravenholm used to be like the resistance area, you know, like one of the last towns. - Yeah, like that was their town and then it was linked to their, to this underground lab in Black Mesa East, you know, and then yeah, and then the combine found out about destroyed the whole fucking place. - Which is, which is why I have to ask you, why do you think father, why do you think he's a silly character? - He's just, his model always looks silly to me. Like the other characters feel like, you know, I mean, this is a sci-fi story, essentially. You've got all these doctors, MIT graduates, you know, Alex is kind of a very serious character, all the characters are serious. And then Father Gregori is just this crazy guy, which again, makes sense in the context of the game and this time through it has been more enjoyable. But yeah, he's always just seemed a little bit off to me and like it's not, it doesn't add anything to the Half-Life kind of. - I just feel like it's another few more aspect where there's this priest that is driven insane by watching his entire friend. - Yeah, the thing is, is I don't even necessarily think that he's insane because logically it would make sense why he thinks that because these people aren't dead. And so to him their souls aren't at rest. - I heard a really good line this time that I've never heard as you're in that final fight through the cemetery, when you're ready, alongside Gregori. I've never noticed it before, but this time, when he was fighting the zombies, he said to one of them, I knew your face. - Yeah, I remember your true face. - Yeah, I remember your true face from before, brother, or something like that. And I was like, that's a pretty fucking good line. - A lot. - Yeah, and he makes little references about how he knows they can't rest and stuff, and so he's-- - And it establishes that that is very much the case because a lot of people just recall that the headcrab zombies scream, but one of the things they scream is pull it off me. - I thought they screamed, "Yeah, boy!" - Yeah, they came, "Boy!" - It's cool, yeah, yeah. - Jesus Christ, it's a bunch of flavor flames! (laughing) - It's true to him. - It is a little funny when they all catch on fire and scream like the exact same thing with the exact same thing with the exact same emotions. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (screaming) (laughing) - Man, they're pig. - And they talk about this in the art book is that one of the things they thought was horrifying is that these are people that are being used by these creatures as opposed to-- - I know, I was actually, I was actually like-- - They're not zombies, they're like, they are still people who are being controlled by the heads. - I was actually laying in bed thinking about the actual way that that would work. Like a headcrab bites you and what, it causes your genetics to actually change and like your hands turn into claws and it controls you, but you're still conscious. Like I was wondering like, to what extent, I want someone who created those evaluates to explain to me the shit behind it, 'cause I'm always into that, even if it's a fake universe thing. - I mean, they show, I don't, I was the testicle monster in the first half-lifer was that like a show-- - It's at the end of the first half. - An alpha headcrab basically, like a queen headcrab that is at the end of their life cycles, a headcrab is opposed to something that infected someone else. And it is like a giant headcrab with a single ball. - It's a, I just refer to it as the testicle creature. It's one of the most funny things to shoot with a gauze rifle in the history of half-life. - Oh, well, yeah, you really should, we should have done half-life, man. Zen, for his first, he's, he's guys have never seen all of half-life. - I've seen, I've seen like four hours of it. - Remembering half-life is much more fun to me at this point than playing. - There's a lot of Zen I could live without that. - I don't know, I mean, but I just, I think it's intro, I mean, to me playing through Zen makes the, you don't know that when you go and talk to the Vortigant over and over and over again, when he says, "We remember you from the Nehillon's chamber." He's, Nehilloth is the last boss of half-life one. He says, "We watched you there, you were fucking jumping around 'cause there was these crazy like bounce pads in the room, and you were flying around, totally killing him. And man, it was awesome. We know who you are for the Freeman. - Dude, bro, it was sick. - Like, it's like a blue-gossip junior talking like a stater. - Yeah, I know. - But if this were a half-life game club, this would, about half this podcast would be me saying, "Fucking Vortigants." - I mean, I did fight Vortigants at least, you know, I played enough to do that, and they weren't knowing, I mean. - Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, but they're, yeah, no, the way that they talked to you about the final boss encounter, and you're, the way you handled it, you're like, yeah, that's how, 'cause you had to, in order to fight the last boss, you had to take these crazy bounce pads that like, took you high up into this chamber so that you could attack it properly, and they're like, recalling this story, like, yeah, we were there, and we are one, you know, they're a hive mind sort of thing. - Yeah, it's just really cool. - We're going back to like the enemy AI thing again. Like, again, that interview with Gabe Newell that I read, he's, Gabe Newell was like really excited about Laraby, which is the new Intel GPU, CPU thing. - Combination. - Combination, yeah. And he was talking about it really excitedly because he was saying how it frees up resources to do a lot of things that they couldn't do before, and like, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but the way I was reading this was, 'cause I was thinking about the enemy I think at the time, was it like, it seemed to me like maybe in Half Life II, what they did is they put all this resources towards the physics, you know, and towards the, towards like their realistic, you know, materials that they were always demoing, you know, like mattresses float and wood floats. - And there was a lot of, a lot of, bet hedging in the lead up to the release of Half Life II, technologically speaking, like they almost didn't include normal maps and bump maps in the game. - And so, so I think that the, I think in Half Life II, you know, it's like they were focused development wise and the game resources in terms of your RAM and your processor were focused on the physics and stuff. And so like, the, I think part of the AI is they're, just to make the physics stuff look better. - And I think the main problem was that if you, again, if you go back, and this is something that Jay and Arthur reminded me, is that if you go back and watch that 30 minute presentation from the E3 when they first showed off Half Life II, there's a part in Ravenholm, where again, we know, as we play through Ravenholm, there are no combine soldiers there, but in this version of Ravenholm, there's a room which is still in the room that you can like block, they block the doors, there were guards throwing grenades in and like kind of trying to come into the door. - You could put a table in front of the door basically. - And they would try to kick it down or whatever, you know? And there's none of that sort of stuff in the game at all. Then again, the encounters with the Combine AI are much better in Episode II than they are in Half Life II. And then beyond that, they add the Hunter, which is such a good kind of enemy to fight, then almost all that's forgiven by that point. - Yeah, but in Ravenholm, this is this time playing through, 'cause normally when I'm in Ravenholm, I'm like, all right, point A to point B, fuck you guys, I can even waste my ammo on you kind of thing, because you can pretty much just run by everything. - Yeah, for the most point. - But this time I was like, all right, I'm gonna take my time a little bit, and it's clearly meant for you to just be having fun with the gravity gun. There's the saw blades everywhere, there's exploding barrels and exploding gas canisters and stuff all over the place to use, and I just got really into trying to use my gravity gun for everything. - I almost feel like Ravenholm is set up to start you off feeling powerful, and then to say, look at all these amazing things you can do with the Grab Gun. This is what you're gonna be doing for the rest of the game. And then that's followed by an extended chunk where it's like, yeah, you know that Grab Gun? These are the situations where it is going to not be as much of a help as you thought it was going to be. - Right, against any fast moving gas. - Yeah, or the parts where I can't even find a fucking cinder block to throw at these things. I am firing 8 million paint cans of this thing, and while it is a lovely shade of blue now. - That is one thing that always bugged me about Half-Life 2, is that the paint cans don't hurt things. It's like, have you ever picked up a can of paint that fuckers heavy, at least. - You've got someone with those sides. - Yeah, it's at least as damaging as a goddamn cinder block. When I fire a full can of paint at somebody, they should die. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, but when I played through this part, I played through using only my Grab Gun and the crowbar for kinda-- - The cheese. - Yeah, and I felt it created this really cool tension of like, oh shit, here comes three zombies down the hallway. I don't have anything in front of me. I gotta go look for something, but I know I have time because they're just like lumbering my legs. It's like a slow tension. - When you're using guns, they're still tension because what you don't realize early on, I think until you get to Ravenholm is that every time you've met like a zombie, it's been one or two. And up until this point, you've always like fought a zombie or something, used a bunch of ammo, but it was cool because then you killed Combine because they were useless and took their ammo. Whereas in this, you realize, oh, that fucking zombie just soaked up 35 rounds of machine gun ammo and there are six more of them behind that one. What am I gonna do? - Were you shooting them in the head? - I think with the submachine gun, it doesn't matter if you're aiming at the head, it's still gonna not all get there. - It's easier to take 'em out of that. - It burns, yeah, yeah, it matters. - I mean, it matters, but you're still in that. - All it matters, I know, I've been in a good little bit. Like it's only a couple shots in the head with MP5. - I mean, you're gonna exhaust your machine gun ammo pretty quickly. - Dude, it's just five wacks of the crowbar. - Yep. (laughing) - Crowbar, like, does those guys-- - Yeah, yeah, you can get in and do a two-hit combo before they swing, quickly run back, sprint forward, two hits, you know, run back and fall back. - But then, one of the best additions, graph gun additions that I only really noticed in Ravenholm, 'cause it's right the first time you have the graph gun, that isn't in your PC version that you're playing. That's an episode one, two thing that they, you know, that Half-Life 2 on Xbox 360 gets, is that you can point at a supply crate and press the primary action through it, and it leaves the item sitting right there in front of you, so you can-- - So you can scatter them. - Well, before in Half-Life 2, when I played it the first time, you have to pick them up and throw them against the wall to break the box, but now you can just walk up to it and go, bam, bam, bam, and all those boxes are broken, you can walk over and grab them. - And being able to jedi a health kit across a room is fun, too. - Yeah. (laughing) - So, yeah, anyway, we get to, and I actually, this time playing through, I totally got stuck near the end, like, right before you go to, right before the part, where you go with Gregori through the graveyard, and you're waiting for the elevator? - No, not that part, just before that. There is a part where you go upstairs, and there's like this attic room where you climb up this ladder, and there's totally a door there that doesn't look like you can open it. - Yeah. - And like, so I didn't even open it, because like, if a door doesn't have a handle in Half-Life, it means you can't open it, and this door-- - This door does have a handle, it's like-- - Yeah, but-- - But it's colored and textured the way that doors that don't have handles in the game, that the ones you're not supposed to be able to walk through. This one looks like one of those, basically. - Right, and so I was like running around, like, I was running around like this one area of Ravenholm, like, forever, until I finally just tried this door, and I was like, fuck, that's right, this totally happened to me, like, other times that I played this game. And it always gets me. - As much as I like Ravenholm, like, as a level, as a narrative thing, like, as an experience, it is another example of, for me, where the level design is not where it is in other parts, because in other parts of the game, there are certain colors that they'll use in levels to sort of denote, oh, well, maybe you should head this way, that are just used casually in Ravenholm as part of the atmosphere. Like, there's a lot of red in Ravenholm that has nothing to do with where you're going. - That's because this game has so many fucking exploding barrels in it. - Yeah. (laughing) - I just think the game's showing its age, right? - Yeah. - I mean, since then, this is like, what was this game made, 2004? - Oh, it was released, 2004. - Yeah, so it's like-- - I mean, it was in development for basically eight years. - Right, so I'm just saying it shows its age, 'cause since then, it's like, even just over the last five years, like, crazy lengths of like, making usability so much more friendly than made. - I don't know. I think that there were two, it's ironic to me that Half-Life 2 and Halo 2 basically came out within a week or so of each other, because they were pretty much the two shooters that like, design-wise and combat-wise are about as separate as shooters get. And they were sort of showing like, and it's weird that Halo 2 is the direction that most shooters went as opposed to the Half-Life 2 direction. - Yeah, I mean, Halo 2, you don't have to worry about things, like finding the right door that opens or anything like that. There's like, none of that, which is not a bad thing, by any means. - Well, Halo games are much more wide open, even Halo 2, which is essentially much more of a corridor shooter than any of the other halos. I mean, it's still like, when you're going through a corridor, it's a fucking fat corridor, and there's only two ways the way you came and the way you're going now. - The way you're killing it. - Yeah, I do want to just one more thing. Yeah, the combat, again, Shay, I'm going to give it up for you here, 'cause the combat at the beginning is so heavy on exploding barrels everywhere. It just feels kind of cheap and lame, and I definitely think that part of it has shown its age. - Even then, I feel like the, I mean, in the beginning-- - There's a lot of it that's Donkey Kong-ish puzzles where they're like, dropping stuff down on you, and it's like, hey, can you hide from the exploding barrels? Cool, good luck, but still, I mean-- (banging) - It's like a-- - We don't need red-explaining barrels-- - I'm okay with you making and saying all that that's not good as long as you're not saying, because Perfect Dark did it good. (laughing) - Perfect Dark did not-- - No, no, no. - That was a game I convinced Arthur to buy, and then I just wanted to be like-- - That was a game I played in zero hour. Actually, I just could not get into it. - You guys, you are? I was there, too. High five. - The-- - I have the DMV achievement. - I don't think I got it, 'cause I didn't have, I was shooting-- - Do you have the zero or a faceplate? - No, a faceplate. - There's a faceplate? - Yeah. - You came home with a faceplate, I remember. - I might have a faceplate. - They didn't, they didn't send, well they, I mean, they sent a few people home faceplates. I had to wait for mine in the mail. - I'm pretty sure Ryan came home with me. - All I know is that, wait, what are we talking about? Oh, Perfect Dark Zero. (laughing) - That's how cool you forget about Perfect Dark. - That game had really good graphics and the multiplayer is interesting, even though the characters are like colored slime green when you're playing it. It is one of the ugliest, it is the worst art direction of many, many, I mean, it's got really pretty textures and lighting though at the time. I mean, any game where you have to sit there and wait for a blue arrow to appear on the ground. It's only where you need to go. - And I miss jumping in any first version of the game that doesn't have it, is dumb as it seems. - Defeated by a three inch incline? - Yeah, exactly. - The, I've actually, for me in Half Life, the enemies, I kind of enjoy the shooting gallery nature of it. You know, it's like this first part of the game that we've been talking about, like I've been conscious of it too. I've been like, man, these enemies are not as fun. It's like, I remember, like I think I was like so enamored with the world that I was like kind of overlooking some of the bad enemies. - Yeah, that's how I feel to you. - Yeah, but at the same time, I'm kind of like, you know what, that's right. That guy's gonna repel down right in front of my airboat and I'm gonna fucking run him over. - I'm gonna say this right now, the me from February is standing over here with his arms crossed across his chest, staring at the two of you saying these things. - Well, there we go, yep. - You were right, Arthur, do you feel vindicated? Do you feel superior now? - No. (laughs) - I saw that people give me shit about that. - The thing is, though, that in the grand scheme of things, even though that I'm willing to give it up and say that, yeah, there's parts of the combat that aren't the best, I maintain that shooting the guns to me feels fun, I still love the weapons in this game. Even if I do-- - That's why I'm saying I like the shooting gallery nature of it because it's like, you know, the Half-Life shotgun? - It's like, great shotgun. - It's a fucking great shotgun, you know? It's like, I can shoot guys across the room, it has a really tight spread, it has a cool sound. - The Magnum, even the MP5, Walnut as good as the MP5 from Half-Life 1 with the grenade attachment. I mean, this one has it too, but there's just something about that first Half-Life 1, MP5, though. - The last big PC shooter where you had this many weapons at the same time, two things. - Yeah, they dropped that, that's true. - I mean, that's like, they're recharging health and two weapon mechanic is like the Halo mechanic. - Yeah, I mean, on consoles it just doesn't make as much sense 'cause you don't have a number case to quickly switch. - I actually, like selecting weapons and Half-Life 2 on console way better than I do on PC. - See, I was gonna say, like one of the things that I felt was the biggest detriment in sort of, in terms of pointing Half-Life 2 out as no longer being a modern shooter was the weapon selection on the deep head. You know, the way you have to like scroll to it, it's like, you know, I love using the shotgun and I love using the Combine Heavy Machine gun, but like, you know, just knowing like, okay, hit twice or hit three times to scroll, like it just felt a little arcade. - I mean, it's a better solution for that many guns. - Yeah, but I think I feel like-- - Yeah, it's great, it's just like no other, there aren't that many games that got to make that mechanic standard, like if there are a lot of games where you had to remember, okay, three clicks left is this weapon and two clicks right is this other one, then maybe we would have gotten this too. - Well, I don't understand those why more people haven't done a circle fly-out menu. - Yeah. - Because like in Counter Strike on the Xbox version of Counter Strike, they didn't do it like in-game, but while you were buying shit, like you could-- - Where was that? - Yeah, you could hold in triggers, it would bring up the Rosette and you could flip the things, so like, 'cause buying shit in like that 10 seconds before the map starts or whatever was pretty critical to Counter Strike, so they got that menu down pat and I was like, man, this menu is fucking sweet and it works so well, like I could totally use this for all kinds of stuff in gaming and nobody is, nobody-- - I mean, it's like this. - I mean, it's like this. - Like, yeah, Bioshock did it, resistance, both resistance and status. - Yeah, I played Bioshock on PC, that's a claim. - Chronicles of Riddick did it. - I was gonna say, there are games that use the Rosette and when they use it, it's great. It would have been, it seems like a natural. Of course, you can't really, in most of the cases when you're using, when you can't move and select weapons at the same time, but then again, it's not like you can move and select weapons when you're tapping on the D-pad, either using the same thumb, you'd be using it to move, so yeah. I would prefer selecting for the Rosette. - Again, I just think that so few games have that many weapons in them at this point. - Or they, it's not that they don't have that many weapons, it's that you don't carry them. - Yeah, exactly, like your inventory is not that pronounced. - And that's one of the things that makes Half-Life 2 as the kind of last of these sort of PC shooters, it makes it interesting because you do at the end of the game once you've acquired all the tools, all the weapons, you have a bunch of different options and you have the opportunity to say, okay, well, I'm gonna use the Magnum for this section because the enemies, you know, these are good enemies to shoot the Magnum. - I'm so mad at them though, 'cause the Magnum has always felt like stymied to me by the minimal amount of ammo you can ever carry for it. - You can always carry a minimal amount of ammo, but I've noticed this time, 'cause I haven't been using it as much, that I'm leaving the ammo behind this way and that, and I think it's because the crates are dying, I thought they were dynamic and gave you what you needed. You know, when you hit a supply crate and it gives you what is what you're lacking at the time, right? So if you need health, it gives you health. If you need machine gun ammo, it gives you that. Well, there are times when you're full, it just gives you whatever it gives you, and I've been leaving behind a lot of Magnum ammo to take this game. - So we should talk a little bit about the stuff that they add in Ravenholm because they sort of take the head crab zombie thing and throw it on its head in a couple of different ways, which is first you meet the black head crabs, which you weren't here. - The scariest enemy in a game. - Yeah. - It's all because of that sound effect, the fact that your screen flashes yellow, it takes you down to one health. - Who's playing Someday Amigo in Ravenholm? (laughing) - Well, yeah, it takes you down to one health, but then your health comes back. So they're not lethal by any means, but at the same time, what hits you next can kill you. - Right, all it takes is a head crab. - And I think if they hit you and something else hit you before your health recharges all the way, it just stops recharging. So like you-- - So you got two hits. - Yeah. - Basically. - I just think they're, what a great idea because it's just a play on the normal head crab, and it's the scariest fucking, they leap further. - Yeah. - But they're the scariest-- - And they're eating it with the scariest thing in the entire game. - They're fucking enormous. - Yeah, and they can never, they can never kill you. They can't kill you. - And then you, like, I didn't even think about it. Like, it didn't even occur to me that, "Oh, well, what does this come from?" And then you meet the black head crab zombies which are like horrifying and pathetic all at the same time. Like the dude that's basically covered in them. - Yeah. I've been, it's been very easy to shotgun them this time for some reason, I've been not having any problems killing the zombie, the black head crab zombies that are just infested by the black head crab. - I didn't throw those things so far. - I didn't know they ran out of the crabs. - Yes. - Oh yeah. - They have a finite number of crab zombies. - The ones that are on their body, they think four, someone got three, four. - In the section where you meet the head crab zombies too, like, that's an annoying environmental puzzle that I've always forget, there's a part where you have to like, well, I'm thinking of a main arena in Raven Home where you have to kind of jump on top of a building and then go across some wooden planks and then you have to have hit the switch in the other room and it brings the little like tram over so that you can make the next jump. I always, every time I replay this game, I always forget to pull the fucking switch. - And eventually the zombies in that point will stop coming, but not for a long time. - Yeah, you like waste all of your ammo before they stop. - There is, but they're all admittedly, there are a lot of, again, exploding barrels in that room and there's a lot of things that are kind of set up that you can play with and... - I do like how the one like Father Gregori chat with the trap at the spinning blade. You're like, I'm gonna use that. You turn it on and it breaks two seconds later. You're like, fuck. - But you can use that giant blade to go. - Yeah, which is kind of awkward, but... - But works. - It's heavy and it slices through many things. - What's the most zombies you've cut through with one saw blade? - 24. - Oh, I've done more than that. - There's that one room where there's seriously like six of them that you can get all coming down the hall and you can get them all in one shot. - I've done it, I would say at least six and if I had to throw caution in it, when I'd say between eight and 10 is my best, but I don't know. - Jesus Christ. - Well, we need to pay this game like a bunch of times. You try to do things like, how many... - How many do you wanna go on? - This is like my fifth playthrough of Half-Life 2. And then they introduce the fast zombies. - Which are great. They're like the perfect shotgun enemy, you know? And that's... - That might have to be the perfect magnum enemy. - Oh, well that's true. - Well, that's the thing is I always use the magnum because it's a one shot headshot kill on those enemies. And especially the part where you're waiting for Father Gregori to send the tram over and they're climbing up the side of that building. - I broke that part. - In previous playthroughs, I've always just pulled out my magnum and shot him in the head 'cause it's a one shot headshot. One shot kill for a headshot. And this time I was using the shotgun in that section. Again, I'm playing on hard and... - Same thing. - One shot kill, one shot kill headshots with the shotgun even on the normal attack. You didn't even have to use the secondary double fire attack. - I fell off. - And I was like... - I fell off too, you can get back on. - Yeah, but if you fall off the building and then come back up, it basically, for me it broke some of the scripting for the fast zombies. - Oh really? - And I got, I had precisely one come up. - Wow. - The side of the building. - I've made any mode since I was, you know, going through all my, with my melee attacks, I would just stand over the grate that they were climbing up as you can see, held down. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you could start hitting them before they even get up. - I was like, picture in Gordon's room and like, how many things they had. - Yeah, and I would literally kill them before they would even attack me. - And I mean, they're so iconic, but the funny thing is, is that they weren't even originally like part of the design. They were the result of leftover AI from an enemy that got cut, which are a combined version of the ninja chicks from Half Life One. - Oh, interesting. - I like those ninja chicks. Like, if you, I think the Half Life Two gun game in Japan actually has those. - Oh, really? - A single assassin models. Like, they're definitely like, combined with boobs in that game 'cause it's in Japan. - Right, right. (laughing) - But I just thought that was interesting. Like, it's interesting seeing like the stuff that turns into other stuff. - Which is why everyone should get the art book if you can find a PDF. - It's one of two art books I own. - Or maybe they actually sell it at the Valve Store. Anyway, I have it. - If you come over, if you can find me, I'll let you look at mine. (laughing) Just kidding. Don't find me. - Yeah, be careful. (laughing) - So I guess we should probably-- - Rapidoop? - Yeah, this is the longer one, so that's fine. - Are we gonna finish Half Life for next week? - Yes. - Yeah, that's what we're doing. - Crazy. - You don't wanna say like, play up to the Citadel and then finish the Citadel in episode one. - Well, it's not like any of our first time in playthroughs, so. - I'm not ours. - But audience. - I'm thinking of the audience. - I don't know. We're entering the busy game season. - All I know is that I think, I mean, I could be crazy, but I think I like episode one better than Half Life do, and I know that episode two is the one that everyone's supposed to like better, but I have a lot to say about episode one. - Yeah, let's just finish. - All right. - Let's do it. But I understand you're sent to me because then you're breaking in and then breaking back out and then breaking back in again all at once. - Yeah. - But I feel like we should see the ending of the game, let the G-Man do his thing and. - Yeah, so we'll finish for the next episode. So all the way through to the end of the game. - End of Half Life two. - Two, yes, not the episode. - We didn't talk one bit about G-Man sightings. - I was gonna mention that, I saw a good one this time that I never saw. - Which one was that? - And I think in either water hazard of the canal, some spot, I don't know, just some random spot where I looked up and I was like, "God, you're right there." - He's watching you, which is really fucking creepy. - Yeah, yeah. - The one that you'll almost always miss unless you know to look for it is the first time you meet a vortigaunt. Like, and he charges you up and he's like playing chess or whatever with his friend in the red box car, the vortigaunt is zapping the TV. And if you look, the G-Man's face is on there. - On the TV? - Yeah. - There's another, he's in the, when you first make it to Steiner's lab on one of the screens I think he shows up there as well. - Oh, shit. - And the one I saw was him in person, not him on a screen. - Yeah, I saw him in person when you were during the boat part. - Yeah, in the water hazard. - Like, he was just standing up on a platform or something. - Yeah, I love you waiting for you to come down. - He has a briefcase and he just walks away. - It might be the part, the part where it's right near the beginning of water hazard where you kind of have to get off your boat and kind of clear out that one. - Cementaria. - Cementaria, you go all the way to the end. There's, I think of it as the grenade spot 'cause there's like at least three full grenade, you know, get as many grenades as you want boxes inside. - The grenade training ground. - Yes, the grenade training ground. And you, which is a fun place for me, I always like sequence breaking that spot because you leave the way it's supposed to work as you get off your air boat, you go up, kind of work your way through this like shop, you come out the other side, your outdoors for a while, you walk all the way to the end, you make it down where you're supposed to press the button but the button is sizzling 'cause it's broken and you like look over and there's an exploding barrel that you shoot and it breaks this kind of pendulum thing down that breaks through the door. Well, you can shoot that exploding barrel from very, very far away if you have a clean shot and so you just can stand all the way back. Yeah, from, if you just kind of stand back and look for red in the distance, you can pistol shoot it until it explodes and walk right through. - That is dirty as hell. So I think next time we'll actually be talking more about the narrative of the game and more about specific levels whereas the first half of Half-Life is sort of like training. - It's not very narratively driven. - It's basically training, it's atmosphere training for the rest of the game. - We covered the important narrative part which is that you meet the people in the lab and then you go to Ravenholm, it's like very little narrative whatsoever. - It picks up as the game progresses. - The next part of the game is my favorite part, probably of all the Half-Life 2. - The coast. - Yes, I love the coast. So a new little wrap up thing that I've agreed to do with people is that we've decided to encourage people to go visit the other people that are also hammer sit partners with us, which means that the Geekbox will also be doing this but yes, you guys should go to thegeekbox.net and go check out the Geekbox as well as bitmom.com. - Thanks. - There won't be a podcast next week 'cause I'll be busy packing. What about this fucking bullshit apartment? - No, I mean, they're gonna do it for us too. We're all partners, so we're gonna help each other out. The whole Geekbox AIDS thing is funny but it is obviously just us joking around, so. - Are we? - Are we? - Yeah, jokes. - And then most importantly, above and beyond going to check out Geekbox or bitmomber, even Rebel FM, is that you should go check out co-op at area5.tv. - All right, above. - Area5.tv. - It's okay. - It's actually more important than listening to this podcast. - No, it's not. - If you've listened to us talk about Half-Life and you enjoyed it, then go to area5.tv and download our latest episode where we talk about Dreamcast. - Yeah. - Can you talk about the lost Dreamcast version of Half-Life? - It never comes up, but. - For shame. - I did have a strategy guide for the Dreamcast. - Exactly, I remember fucking seeing that strategy guide and going, when is this game coming out? - And there, you know, it's out there. - There was a question on the internet. - There was supposed to be a Dreamcast version of my favorite game of all time as well. - It never came out. - What's your favorite game about that? - Outcast. - Oh. - Was also supposed to get that. - Half-Life on Dreamcast was finished. - Yeah, it was complete. - There were reviews of Half-Life for Dreamcast. - Yeah, well, this was a game that was being worked on. I think I canceled. - I got you. - Yeah, so, yeah, we'll see you all next week. - Play Half-Life, love it. - Love it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This thing on, is this thing on? Can you hear me talking? Hey, hey. - You see the one? - Sorry. - Is this on? (humming) - Here, we gotta unhook you real quick from there. Will you get that right there? - I'll never make it that way again. - Do you guys ever, do you guys answer for Gordon's three minutes when people tell you things? - They're like, "Geez, Gordon." - And you're like, "I'm really glad you got here. "As soon as you did." - I know, I really got to know the game and start playing facibly. - You know, it was a great character. - It was funny, because like-- - I consider role-playing experience. (laughing) - Because Eugenia was around like yesterday when I was playing the game and I was totally talking back to this game. - Oh, I always talk back. - And I was talking back like partially for her benefit, just 'cause I knew it would be funny. - Anyone else play on Half Life 2 RP server? (laughing) - Hi, everyone's pretty good. - I wait, let's-- - Don't know how you do that. - Oh, okay, this is so good. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, so. - Oh, this is what you want. - Conversation. - We're having so fun. - Stroke my half suit. - I mean, that's picking up good for you. All right, what do you-- - Yes, for a retail. - Oh, there are things to say about others. - Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. - How about buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. - And then buzz, buzz, buzz. - Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. - And then buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. - Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. - I mean, favorite, Gordon Freeman moment. (laughing) - Gordon. - It's the time when, Gordon didn't say anything. - Gordon. - Gordon. - Is that you with the high-pitched things? - Gordon. - Hello, hello, hello. I must get very close to make a peek. - Gordon's okay. - Gordon's okay. - God, oh my God. - Gordon, dude, you guys. - I'm totally peeking right now. (laughing) - Gordon, Gordon. - Oh, man. - Gordon. - Gordon.