T w e n t y S i d e d

Things I noticed:

• At 4:20, when Josh put the crosshair right on the tripmine, and the auto-aim “helped” by bending the bullets into the soldier. I have to say this kind of thing drives me crazy. Boo.
• Am I the only one who did the see-saw puzzle the “right” way? I distinctly remember not having enough weight in the room to hold down that pipe, but apparently I’m the only member of the cast to solve it by supporting it. So… I have no idea.
• At 16:30, the title for this episode was nearly, “Alyx is so Metal”. So you were going to get a pun either way.
• At 19:30: I really agree. The antlion queens aren’t a very fun enemy. They’re pretty the bog-standard FPS damage sponge with a huge melee attack. I’ve never enjoyed fighting one. Maybe if their stun animation lasted longer, or if you could reliably sidestep them matador-style. But as it stands, these fights feel incredibly random and chaotic. (In a bad way.)

I really do love covering these games.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I’d like to see how everyone answers Rutskarn’s question, “What’s the WORST section of Half-Life 2?” Try to give your answer before you read everyone else’s.

In contrast to Rutskarn, I kind of think the whole sand traps (“The Floor is Lava”) section of Half-Life 2 is fun… ONCE. It’s basically a really long puzzle with lots of fiddly physics busywork, and puzzles lose their appeal once you know the solution.

That said, I usually cheat past the mines, but sprint through the sand traps. It’s actually pretty easy once you realize it won’t spawn more that four antlions at once, and once you get ahead of them they’re a small threat.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Just to be clear: All of my complaints in the episode were really trivial. Maybe it sounded like I hated this game. I don’t But this is what I would have said if the designers asked me for my analysis during development. The energy spheres are too random and unwieldy, and the explosion sound effect doesn’t really satisfy.

But for all my whining, this is making me really sad we haven’t gotten Half-Life 3 yet. They just don’t make games like this anymore, and they should. They really should.

For the curious, here is Ivan the Space Biker:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Half Life 2 Episode 1 EP2: How to Win at Physics”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.