pyrian ([info]pyrian) wrote,
@ 2007-10-28 20:04:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:games

Half-Life 2 Episode 2
Mostly fun, generally interesting, occasionally frustrating, occasionally boring.

Continuing the tradition, Episode 2 does a lot to vary the gameplay of the basic FPS formula. Aside from that, there's also a surprising amount of relatively coherent (for Half-Life) story in this one. Sadly, to make that happen, there's quite a few of what I would call "de facto cut scenes". Half-Life tries very hard to keep you in your character, so they never do standard cut scenes, but in this one I think it got quite forced. They're constantly finding excuses to take away your control of the situation or even, in several cases, yourself. It's not entirely new (this did this a couple times in Half-Life 2, and frankly less believably - "why yes I will voluntarily climb into this prison module rendering myself captive and helpless"), but it's wearing pretty thin for me.

What's also wearing kind of thin is Gordon's complete inability to engage in social activity. That wasn't a big deal in Half-Life where there is very, very little social activity to engage in, but again, in this episode there's a lot that could be done but can't be done, if you know what I mean. As just a tiny example, when I finally won the last battle of the episode, one of the rebels holds up his hand to give me a high-five, and I can't do a damn thing about it. I totally felt like I snubbed that poor guy.

Highlights: Running things over (never gets old), vortigaunt covering fire, sprinting by the ant-lion guardian, killing Hunters with their own fletchettes, having Alex provide covering sniper fire, throwing bombs back at the helicopter that dropped them, crawling through trenches to attack a fortified position, the lead-up to the final battle.

Lowlights: Hauling a stupid garden gnome 9/10ths of the way to its destination only to find it impossible to keep it in the car in the final drive while under chopper fire. Endless ant-lion caves (might've been more tolerable minus the garden gnome and my attempt to squish all the grubs - stupid achievements). The obnoxious final battle.

Seriously, what was up with making the final battle several times harder than the rest of the game? It was kind of cool in a crazy way - a real battle, lots of resources, lots of enemies. But ultimately I found I could only beat it by majorly abusing the quicksave feature: drive up at full speed quicksaving as I go, hop out, run around back taking cover, grab the sticky-bomb, and heave it out, hoping against long odds to (A) hit the strider and (B) not have it get hit by the hunters and (C) not have the strider turn around. If any of A, B, or C, reload and try again. Quicksave. Run back for another load, deal with any hunters that followed. Quicksave. Drive at full speed, quicksaving, towards the next strider...

I really don't like to play that way, but if I had to kill all the hunters, miss with the bomb, go back for another bomb, kill some more hunters, then finally hit only to have the Strider turn around so I couldn't set the bomb off, then hide until the strider moved on and I could kill it, then miss again... Well, that wasn't working, to put it mildly. And I've read that they actually toned that battle down after playtesting. Sheesh.

The only thing that made it bearable was the way the rebels cheer when you blow one up.


(Post a new comment)


[info]crashtrans
2007-10-29 07:40 am UTC (link)
The best solution for the final battle is to ram all the hunters, then jump out and deal with the Strider. I've heard a few people had problems with that battle but I never really did, yeah I died but relying on the autosaves was enough to get me through.

As for the gnome: http://www.kfj.f2s.com/index.php/2007-10-15-gnome-quest

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pyrian
2007-10-29 08:23 am UTC (link)
I was able to ram a few hunters when the opportunity presented itself, but not enough to make it a reliable strategy. :(

I read the gnome guide when I was trying to figure out how to take it in the car. Seriously, that broke the physics something bad, since it makes it painfully obvious that the physics model of the car bears very little internal resemblance to it's actual model, nevermind its occupants. There's really no good way to keep it in; you can wedge it into the back window pretty good, but not under fire. It's doable, obviously, but IMO not worth the hassle for a frankly meaningless achievement.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]crashtrans
2007-10-29 08:56 am UTC (link)
Aren't most achievements "frankly meaningless"?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]pyrian
2007-10-29 03:34 pm UTC (link)
Umm... All of them, I'd say, unless they unlock additional content or abilities, in which case they're really annoying!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]thedisgrace
2007-10-30 11:04 pm UTC (link)
Same here. I drove down the hunters before attacking the striders. It was a lot easier if you did that, because the striders would largely ignore you until you started whipping bombs at them. So you kinda got to fight each strider apart from the hunters; they only really acted like a timer for how long you had to kill the hunters before the strider was getting too close to the silo.

I didn't use quicksaves either. Just autosaves. It took me a few reloads of autosaves at first, because I tried to just kill the striders right away at first, but found that the hunters made it too hard to get a good shot off without the bomb exploding in my face.

I also found that the final phase of the fight was the easiest part. Even though you have to fight most of the striders right at the silo gate, they ignore the little house with the bombs and resources, so you could pretty much just hang out there and pop striders as they came. Easy peasy.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]pyrian
2007-10-31 12:03 am UTC (link)
I think I would've had a much easier time if I was a better driver. :P The hunters get out of the way! Once they go into the trees, or are between the legs of the strider, I'm likely to hit something... Once I accidentally rammed a strider leg at full speed. It took that as an attack, bent over, and then it and all three hunters shot me to shit. :P

It reminded me of my "favorite" original HL2 fatality: Some combine came down on ropes and I tried to ram them in the fan-boat. Turned out one of the ropes was a barnacle tongue, which plucked me right out of the boat and dangled me like a pinata in front of the squad. I like to think they giggled as they filled me with holes.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]the_tellurian
2007-10-30 10:30 pm UTC (link)
The final battle is challenging, but in no way as hard as it might seem.
The Hunters are VERY vulnerable to grav-gunned logs and rocks.
I didn't realize that at first and had a very hard time (read the whole drama at the forums).
But once I got it that those alien-biotechnical anti-infantry walker tanks were easily downed by throwing stones and running them over with a car, the final battle suddenly became a lot easier, and lost pretty much all of its frustration.
Still, it's a bit like the Ewok-syndrome... I just didn't get it. Wooden logs flung against a tank. Doesn't compute with me. But meh, it worked. And apart from that, I enjoyed every second of EP2.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]pyrian
2007-10-30 11:50 pm UTC (link)
In my experience, you could insta-kill a hunter if you rammed it at full turbo'd speed, or hit it with a log full of fletchettes, but it more typically took two rams/hits. That meant six hits to take down a strider's allotment. It was all well and good except by the time I did that the strider was long gone... :( I already knew by that point that conventional arms would take far too long to get the job done.

I was a little surprised to learn that Hunters can take a rocket to the face! Seriously, I decided to take one strider down the "easy way", and quickly put three laser-guided rockets into each of its hunters. The resulting smoke clouds kept me from realizing before I was done that I wasn't killing them...

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…