Half-Life 2, 8 hours in
Nov. 18th, 2004 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationFinished the little airboat cruise. That was a BLAST. Lots of fun zipping around and occasionally running over enemy soldiers and stuff. The opposition gets more intense as you go along, but partway through you get a gun. Blam. Blam blam blam. Fun.
...although I'm going to be very vague about certain things in order to keep some surprises surprising. Heh heh heh. (Any game where I open a door, look at something moving under a pile of cardboard boxes, and say, out loud, "WHAT the FUCK are YOU?" is doing something very very right.)
Nice touches while poking around Eli's office-- he says, "Feel free to look around," and then goes off and does something else while you check out his stuff. If you appear to be interested in various things-- a picture on the wall, a collection of newspaper clippings, some of the hardware, he'll comment on whatever you're looking at. This was really neat, and gave the feeling of being in a place with somebody who, while busy, still cares about what you're doing there and wants to make you feel welcome. The NPC interactions are also nicely done.
One weird thing: NPCs, when talking to you, try to face you to make eye contact. Oddly, they have no qualms about walking backwards to do this. They walk kinda slow when going backwards, but hey, so would you, right?
Gravity gun very much fun. Has potential to unbalance game, but appears to have been designed not to. While it's the most flexible and useful device/weapon in the game, its uses are limited in ways designed around making it challening to master. (And if you look up above the place where you enter the junkyard, there are two big pipes in the cliffside. If you can lob a barrel into the left-hand one, a bunch of birds will fly out complaining.)
Of course, not ten minutes after you're given it, you enter a room with a table stacked high with giant saw blades. Zombie sushi!
Ravenholm ("...we don't go there any more.") is really creepy and has some very effective atmospheric stuff going on.
The headcrab-zombies, this time around, are MUCH more pathetic and terrible. They wail and moan, as if aware of what their bodies are doing. It sounds like they're begging to be killed, but are kind of muffled by the headcrabs stuck on their faces. They burn real good, but don't stop moving.
I have just made my way through Ravenholm, which (from the "Oooh, technology" side) has some very entertaining uses of the physics engine and lots of things to do with the gravity gun, and which (from the "Game Experience" side) is, as mentioned, creepy as all get-out.
I'm appear to just have been ushered into "the mines." You know, lots of dark tunnels under a city infested with headcrabs and their hosts. Fun.
...although I'm going to be very vague about certain things in order to keep some surprises surprising. Heh heh heh. (Any game where I open a door, look at something moving under a pile of cardboard boxes, and say, out loud, "WHAT the FUCK are YOU?" is doing something very very right.)
Nice touches while poking around Eli's office-- he says, "Feel free to look around," and then goes off and does something else while you check out his stuff. If you appear to be interested in various things-- a picture on the wall, a collection of newspaper clippings, some of the hardware, he'll comment on whatever you're looking at. This was really neat, and gave the feeling of being in a place with somebody who, while busy, still cares about what you're doing there and wants to make you feel welcome. The NPC interactions are also nicely done.
One weird thing: NPCs, when talking to you, try to face you to make eye contact. Oddly, they have no qualms about walking backwards to do this. They walk kinda slow when going backwards, but hey, so would you, right?
Gravity gun very much fun. Has potential to unbalance game, but appears to have been designed not to. While it's the most flexible and useful device/weapon in the game, its uses are limited in ways designed around making it challening to master. (And if you look up above the place where you enter the junkyard, there are two big pipes in the cliffside. If you can lob a barrel into the left-hand one, a bunch of birds will fly out complaining.)
Of course, not ten minutes after you're given it, you enter a room with a table stacked high with giant saw blades. Zombie sushi!
Ravenholm ("...we don't go there any more.") is really creepy and has some very effective atmospheric stuff going on.
The headcrab-zombies, this time around, are MUCH more pathetic and terrible. They wail and moan, as if aware of what their bodies are doing. It sounds like they're begging to be killed, but are kind of muffled by the headcrabs stuck on their faces. They burn real good, but don't stop moving.
I have just made my way through Ravenholm, which (from the "Oooh, technology" side) has some very entertaining uses of the physics engine and lots of things to do with the gravity gun, and which (from the "Game Experience" side) is, as mentioned, creepy as all get-out.
I'm appear to just have been ushered into "the mines." You know, lots of dark tunnels under a city infested with headcrabs and their hosts. Fun.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 10:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 11:11 am (UTC)join us.
join us now.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 02:20 pm (UTC)Before I went to sleep last night, I was stuck in the area where the two big gates slam shut in front of you and behind. You can get out on one side, but the other is too high. I am thinking I probably have to throw some debris into the water and climb that to get up.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 02:30 pm (UTC)I think it's even simpler than that...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 06:25 pm (UTC)I still dont really understand what the hell is going on plot wise though. You have any insights?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 08:09 pm (UTC)It seems like a pretty standard join-the-resistance plot to me... They were mostly trying to get your to Black Mesa East, where Eli was going to tell you something or have you help them do the stuff they're doing, but you're interrupted and sent off in a different direction and have to rejoin him (and them) later. I don't know how far you'll be by the time you read this, but that becomes rather more difficult soon.
In the meantime, the director (Breen? Whatever his name is.) knows you're around because the teleporter accident gave him a good look at you, so he's mobilized the troops to try and find you.
Or did you mean other parts of the plot? Did you see the newspaper clippings in the lab? The headlines give more of the backstory, as did the video screen things in City 17...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-18 08:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-19 05:43 am (UTC)I don't think that was mentioned in Blue Shift... It was neat, but very short, and really just another retelling of the same story from a different perspective, without much more new revelation.
As for who's being resisted, it's Dr. Breen (the guy on the screens, and whose office you visit) and whatever he calls "Our benefactors," presumably the aliens or alien-augmented bad guys he sold humanity out to (in exchange for personal power) after the 7-hour war. That part I picked up from various people around Black Mesa East and the wall of newspaper clippings in Eli's lab area...
I'm not sure where I found out that the vortigant guys were slaves-- I think it was toward the end of Half-Life...