f13.net

Aside from constantly swearing over the lack of a working trunk or glove compartment in the goddamn car, I'm liking it.

(Fucking gnome.  Fucking Source physics not dealing well with moving frames of reference.  Fucking inability to hold on to something while being shot at by a helicopter.  FUCK.)

fuck the gnome, fuck the gnome, fuck the gnome

Will probably play it tonight after I come home from work.

If any of you have it on 360, do you know if they'll release future episodes on XBOX Live? I can't imagine them not doing it to be honest.

What? They finally released it? I should download it, I guess.

Damn, back at work, I had no idea...

I suspect they'll all be disc based. Maybe Episode 3 & 4 in one bundle.

That said, these games are not, in any way, built for consoles. I don't say that very often.

The mere mention of a gnome in a Valve game scares me. Is it really a gnome? WTF?

I hear the gnome has cake.

THE CAKE IS A LIE

THE CAKE IS REAL!

I saw that gnome underneath something and pulled it out, I also saw an achievement to put it into space.  Does that mean I would have to lug that thing around all the way to, I'm guessing, the end of the episode?

I also don't think I should be able to unlock achievements if I have the developer console enabled...

Surprisingly I heard that TF2 plays alright on 360. I would like to try it.

Yes.

And no.  Little glitches in the game (ones that would easily be overlooked if you weren't trying to do weird stuff like carrying a single object through the entire game)  make a couple of the achievements very difficult in a not-fun way.  Stuff like noclip at least gives you a way to work around the glitches when they come up instead of having to reload from a save a couple of hours ago.

The biggest such glitch is the complete failure of the physics engine to handle objects inside other moving objects.  for example, when I put the gnome down in an elevator and the elevator started moving (holding the gnome is not an option because you can't use the Use key while carrying an object), the "collision" between the bottom of the slowly rising elevator car and the gnome sent the gnome flying out of the elevator and down a canyon or something.  If I'd dropped the gnome through my own ineptitude I'd have been happy to spend five minutes walking my ass down there (assuming it was an option; the elevator might have been one-way in which case I'd have been hosed no matter what), but as it was I was happy to use noclip to retrieve it and then pretend that the gnome had really ridden serenely up the elevator with the rest of us like it should have.

If I hadn't already gone through so much hassle to get it this far I'd chuck the thing into the ocean.   :-P

Do not take the cake's name in vain.

I've lost all desire to play at the 'fling eggs at the striders' Is that at least near the end? I could slog through maybe 45 more minutes.

Otherwise, I'll play Portal and TF2 and hope Gordon Freeman dies of terminal muteness.

THE CAKE IS A LIE is a lie.

It's very close to the end. Very close.

(http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/9323/solongsuckermd9.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

I can die fulfilled.

(edit) And yes, the egg-flinging sucks.  I can't fathom getting the achievement for that section.  Maybe on Easy it wouldn't take every single shell in your inventory to drop the cockblocking hunters.

Has anyone figured out how to kill them with their own flechettes?  I can't get the gravity gun to latch onto them.

It's all about running over the damn hunters. Hell, you can mostly ignore them if you drive close enough to the striders. The human infantry seems to do an OK job of taking them out.

The fun part of that whole sequence for me was hitting the turbo and smashing into three hunters at once, taking them all out. Little bastards.

I'm glad I was oblivious to the gnome, I might just have gone and done it. I went out of my way to squish every grub I could find and I still missed about 15 somehow.

one solution is to grab something hefty and throw it at the hunter just as the flechettes are going to pop.

You know, I tried playing episode 2 last night, after playing portal all of the night before last. The game felt dull and boring so I stopped after the move the turrets section.

Damn you portal, you've ruined me!

Boy, I'm glad that was nearly the end. HL2 was okay, Ep 1 was disappointing, I thought Ep 2 sucked.

I'll probably get Ep 3 just for the Portal tie-in, but damn if I'm going to play Ep 1 or 2 again.

I enjoyed ep 2 quite a bit; actually I think I like it more than ep 1, but it has been awhile. I liked the fact I almost never had full health through the entire game. I was always a little on edge. Generally in HL games I'm almost constantly maxed on health/armor. The big set piece battles with NPCs were also a lot of fun. The strider fight was also wonderfully frantic. Mowing down Hunters with my car just felt good.

I found it more humorous that I locked Lamar in there.

Can you leave the Gnome in areas that you'll return to and still find it there? Example: When returning with the Larval Essence, you come back to the Antlion defense area.  Seems like a good place to leave the item.

Yup.  He never mysteriously vanishes, even across level loads and so forth.  You can also fling him ahead of you and be able to find him later (as long as he doesn't go off a cliff or anything), which is handy during White Forest when you're driving down that big hill.

Don't leave him behind when you go to fetch the car off the bridge, though.  It may seem like you'll get to go back there, but you don't.   :cry:

Biggest issue with ep2 for me is that the gravity gun was completely played out by the end of the main game.

Ep1 I enjoyed despite the gravity gun sections.

By Ep2 the gravity gun is entirely tiresome.

I hate the gravity gun, and by now the "look at our physics engine" puzzles are worn out, portal puzzles will be welcome.  My only fear is that they will combine a worn out gravity gun puzzle with an interesting portal one and ruin the portal puzzle because of it.  I refuse to clean up that last sentence and make it coherent.

I didn't see a G-man cameo anywhere while playing, was I just not paying enough attention or did he not show up this time?

Much as I think a cameo of portals + shooting could be fun, I suspect Portal did almost every trick they're going to think of with portals.

So if the portal gun does show up, I rather hope they don't go overboard.


Half life should be about the pew pew and the cool set pieces.


EDIT:

BAd guys with portal guns feels like it might have more mileage.

You can run them over in the fucking car?   I KILLED THEM ALL BY HAND, goddamn hunters.

Ouch. Yeah, the car is your friend. I didn't fire a single bullet at hunters during the entire fight.

I saw him on the bridge.  And I'm usually really bad at spotting him so I bet that wasn't the only one.

He's in "the video" for about a split second on "the ship."

You can also see the G-Man in the destroyed rebel base when Alyx and the Vort are babbling about how to get to the car. Check the bridge to your left and look through the windows.

I think Samwise was talking about that. On the bridge. Next to the destroyed Rebel base. Babbling about how to get the car.

When can we spoiler this up?  Not that there is a whole lot to talk about.

I think a week from release is reasonable.  If you haven't finished it by then you must not care that much.

Nothing stopping you putting up a postgame thread straightaway.

Just finished Episode 2. Great, good gameplay and good way of enhancing the story. Loved the ending....

BUT

after Portal that's not even nearly enough. All games now look shallow, uninspired and childish.
In a way, I am afraid Portal killed videogames for me. It literally came from the shadows and backstabbed my hobby.

I'm towards the end...I think. Strider Buster training.

It'd be nice if this shit ended on an upnote for once. HL1 doesn't count since Valve ended it in a way that it would be sort of okay if they didn't get to continue it, HL2 was a nothing/downer, Episode One wasn't terribly upbeat either, and so far Ep2 is screaming in my face that they're gonna kill one or more main characters because it looks like some of them may actually be able to answer what the fuck is going on behind the scenes.

It really doesn't matter who they kill if you don't give a rat's ass about any of the characters.

I think in Ep 3 they should have Alex get crushed by the Weighted Companion Cube. In the first scene.

If that stupid bitch would just build a hundred Dogs and give each of them one of her magic wands which destroy all combine locks/computers we'd have won this damn war already!

I'm going to have an article by tomorrow night up that absolutely spoils both Portal and Ep 2 totally and completely.

So, Miasma, tomorrow.

LIES!

das iz tomorrow and zee article iz still not delivered! schild u iz an article racist.

Night. Learn to read.

(which is any time between 7pm and 6:30am, ARIZONA TIME, since the sun isn't up yet)

...... (grumble, grumble, grumble)..... you won't be so smug after a weighted companion cube to the face...

I enjoyed episode 2 a ton, EXCEPT for the final strider fight.  I don't mind the hunter cockblocking much, since I figured out I could run them over, but I do mind the fucking useless bombs not sticking when thrown onto the strider legs, and I do mind the fact that my I keep having major sound stuttering issues with pretty much all of Orange Box.  Episode 2 owes me a new computer desk because of this, and I only wish I was kidding.

My hand really hurts now, time to find some ice.

I thought the ending was shit and pointless.  It happened because they wanted it to happen from a story standpoint rather than from any logical standpoint.

But I suppose I should have seen it coming when my vision blurred when closing the missile silo.  At least, all the build-up to it which was screaming "Yeah, time to close this arc."

And perhaps a therapist!

today I received a response to my strider fight complaint e-mail in the form of helpful after-the-fact advice. it is too bad that it did not arrive in time to save Mr. Desk:
emphasis mine. I have infiltrated Valve at the highest levels.

You complained it was too hard to beat?

I complained that it wasn't fun, sort of, and also asked for a laser.

If you're trying to save all the buildings, yeah, it's rough.  But otherwise I found it to be fun and a definite change of pace from normal Half-Life gameplay.

WHAT IS THIS GAME??

I don't understand.

Have you done this for other games?

I have no idea how you're supposed to save the sawmill because the second strider that appears blows it up no less than 5 seconds after it appears.

The ending was horseshit. Like Deus Ex Machina in reverse. I don't understand how to save all the buildings either because the main 2 you use after the Sawmill become nearly impossible to defend at the end because the striders hunch over and RUN towards them. Also, the game makes hunter fletchettes magically find your strider buster. Running hunters over is a great solution until you notice the car controls like dog shit with wheels.

You have to be ready for that second Strider.  Letting the first one get close, turning around and grabbing the sticky bomb and firing it as right before the Strider gets in position so you can blow it up as soon as it lands will save the Sawmill.  There's only one other Strider (the next one that comes from the Cranes) that is a fast-moving bitch who you need to deal with before you take the slower ones, even if the slower ones show up first.

So yeah, it's possible, you just have to plan accordingly and be as psychic as you can be with a Quicksave system.

That's the part of that sequence I really hated.  I could deal with them shooting at me while I deal with the strider, but the fact that their mere presence appeared to mysteriously nullify my main weapon was obnoxious.  It took me a while to even get that they were 'shooting' the sticky footballs, since most of the time it just looked like the football was fizzling in midair or while attached to the strider for no apparent reason.  Also, I would have thought that if they shot a football that was already attached to the strider it would blow the strider up rather than harmlessly defusing the football.   :-P

Mr. Newell asks for comments about Valve's games and I provided one. while I love these games from the depths of my testicles, that section of Episode 2 bothered me for a number of reasons (mainly that hunters are dickhounds, as is being outlined here).

It wasn't really so much the difficulty of that area that pissed me off as much as the fact that every so often the game would stutter like crazy because of the sound being all fucked up or something and in the heat of the moment I slammed my fist into the desk and it broke because it's shitty particle board.  It's not like I went into some crazy Hulk-Smash mode, just more like the PC version of a broken controller.

Hmm, maybe I have issues...

Here's a little tribute to you gnome freaks.

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

I played Episode 2 again for fun since the combat is great, and I'd just like to say that Valve really fails at foreshadowing.

Eli Vance: Hey, so I totally know everything about what's going on. You see, you know the G-man right? Yeah, of course you do. Anyway, the deal with him and his involvement in Black Mesa, the Combine, and the Borealis are~

Alyx: HAY GUYZ IM HERE TO INTERRUPT THIS CONVERSATION SUP

Eli Vance: Ah well. I'll just explain this all to you later when I will totally still be alive. Go kill some striders. *DIES*

Gordon: ...

So...it's not fun.

I never used the quicksave system. And it was fun. It just wasn't Portal.

Episode 2 had some issues with stuff dragging out, but overall, I thought it was still fun.  I was a bit let down by the fact that the building destruction stuff only happened at the very end, and in a very scripted way.  When I was watching dev stuff about how they were developing realistic building destruction, I had hoped they meant that they would actually put it throughout the game, and buildings could get destroyed as you/combine blow the hell out of each other. 

Ah well, I replayed HL2 recently and realized I had forgotten how awesome of a game it was.  Really enjoyed it, and my experience was enhanced by the fact I did it right as Orange box came out, so I immediately jumped to episodes 1 and 2 (never played 1 either).  I guess if I had actually had to wait for 1 and 2 as long as they took, I would be a little more jaded to.  Whole franchise is great though.

I decided to play through HL2 again with the Orange Box coming up, and held off buying Ep1 til Ep2 came out. So now I've finished HL2, and I'm playing through Ep1. Let me just say that the first hour or two of Ep1 is the most fucking tedious and boring FPS I've ever forced myself to sit through. I'm (probably) close to whatever the fuck I have to do to that fucking reactor. I want to throw Alyx into a deep, deep pit. And Gordon. And the fucking grav gun as well. I hope it gets better.

Yes, I know this is the EP2 thread, but the Ep1 thread is no doubt lost to the dust of ages. I'll go through Ep2 next. I hope it doesnt start with 2 hours of suckitude like Ep1 has.

Episode 2 is pretty much leagues ahead of Episode One, which felt like a mediocre fanmade level.

Lost Coast was more inspired than Episode 1.

When Ep1 came out I thought it was one of the best FPS experiences I'd ever had; conversely, I thought Ep2 was a bit meh.  But that might be because Ep1 came after a dry spell, whereas when I played Ep2 it was in between bouts of Portal, which is going to make anything else look bad.  I may need to install Ep1 and see if it's as good as I remember.

I like 'em both, I just like Ep 2 a bit more.  And I LOVED the ending!

I enjoyed Episode 1 as well.  The whole feeling of trying to escape from the completely bombed out city while the tower is melting down was pretty awesome.  The way combine kept bursting through doors and repelling down from roofs added great effect.  Also, the zombines were a cool touch.

I really enjoyed everything post-tower and pre-escort mission in ep 1. If nothing else it was awesome to have a useful NPC for once.

What's weird is that I liked everything up until after the tower. Running around in the pitch dark with headcrabs/zombies directing Alyx with the flashlight was kinda weak, and the combat the end...eh.

Episode 2 mixed things up more. Usually when you're about sick of fighting one kind of enemy boom, you're onto something else, or you get to solve some puzzles. I actually enjoyed the driving portion of Episode 2 despite HATING the driving portion in the original HL2.

Finally caught up.. almost.

Overall it's been a bunch of mostly fun, though. I don't subscribe to the "portal ruined videogames and sex for me for the rest of my life" viewpoint, so that's a non-issue. I'm playing HL to shoot shit, and while I always enjoy usingthe grav gun to throw gas cannisters at.. well, anything that moves it's really just my love of videogame explosives. I enjoyed the Ravenhlolme-esque section in the abandoned industrial complex as you're going across to get the car, and the "Omaha Beach" section where you have to take out the sentry guns was also a nice change of pace.

on the other hand....

The car handles like dog shit on wheels. Alyx is still irritating, though marginally less so. The "story" exposition is weak and boring. There's some mysterious shit going on, but we're going to be all fucking mysterious about it and not tell you anything really. Because it's more exciting. We're also going to make you sit through several minites at a time of this uninteractive expository dialogue that sounds like it was written by George Lucas. No, fuck HL's story. I don't care anymore and haven't cared since I first played HL2 and nothing was revealed about anything. Doktor Magnusson is a weak character and just as annoying as dunderbrain and his pet headcrab. The annoying, gruff doctor. Yeah, whatever.

I'm up to the bullshit egg-tossing section of Ep2 now. And all I can say is ..not fun. Those hunters are utter tripe. I don't feel like playing it anymore, but I'm sure I'll quicksave pushthrough it in the next couple of days. Worst. FPS-feature. ever. (needing to quicksave through a level.) Reminds me of one of the earlier MoH or CoD's - one of those WW2 FPS games' "sniper" levels where you also had to quicksave every few seconds. Someone tell these fuckheads that it's simply not fun.

I just finished this, I never did that on the Box'

I must say I actually agree with the negative criticism posted above but I really enjoyed the setting and the story.

Some sucky low-quality JPG screenshots (spoiler warning):