I have heard that a fix for that may be in changing the languages back and forth.
Hey marshmallow, if you ever come back, I’ve gotsta question for enlightened Half-Life fans such as yourself (or anyone else who’d like to offer a theory):
[spoiler]Prior to evacuating the Citadel, the Advisors appeared immobile. For the most part they appeared physically helpless (either suspended or strapped into chambers) and there weren’t any indications that they were capable of regular movement, much less the sort of telekinetic flight of Neo in the Matrix or the sort of psionic attacks of Jean Grey from the X-Men. As of Episode Two, we now know they’re quite powerful and capable when it comes to getting around on their own and making aggressive attacks, so here’s my question:
Why do they need to be escorted around by Combine in large stasis pods when they can fly anywhere and attack anything at will? Obviously they’re not invulnerable, so it could just be for protection. Granted, they’re obviously vulnerable to conventional attack, but their surprise attack put them at an advantage, and if they can do all that then I have to wonder whether, like Neo, they can also stop bullets. It almost seems to me they’d do just as well on their own without the Combine escorting them in pods if that were the case.
What say you?[/spoiler]
The Cake Is A Lie. :eek:
Incidentally, you should also check out Peggle Extreme, basically one of Popcap’s overly cutesy puzzle games, but with their Peggle University being attacked by the Xen and the Combine. Basically, all the menus are changed to include stuff from the Half Life games (particularly hilarious is a unicorn being attacked by a headcrab), and the puzzles themselves are based on Half Life, Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.
I’m downloading Episode 2 now. So psyched! But dang it’s taking a long time.
I would’ve bought the Orange Box, but I don’t do multiplayer games like TF, and I’m not sure I want Portal. Heck, I can’t really get a mental grip on what exactly it is. Since some of you have already played it, can you explain to me, slowly? Like you would to a dog?
Still only 67% downloaded after four hours. ARRGH. So much for playing it tonight.
OK, you ever watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Or see that old cartoon about the guy who invented Portable Holes? That’s basically what you’re playing with here in this game.
You have a gun that can either make a blue portal or an orange portal (one of each at a time), when you go through one portal, you come out another. You are a test subject helping with the development of this gun, and you have to use it to get through various obstacle courses, although it gradually becomes apparent that Something Is Very Wrong (I mean, hell, it’s a Valve game where you’re doing a science experiment, of COURSE something is going to go wrong). You have to find ways to use the portal gun to get through each test chamber, solving puzzles sometimes in a mildly Rube-Goldberg fashion, figuring out what weird properties of the portals you can use to help you in your goal.
Fortunately, the game takes baby steps with you at first so you can figure out how to use the gun before you have to really start freestyling it in the later missions. The AI’s commentary on your progress makes for some wickedly dark humor too.
And best of all, once you finish all of the tests… there’s cake! 
THE CAKE IS A LIE!
MOIST DELICIOUS CAKE!
Finished Portal last night. Great stuff and very funny. Hope the mod guys get some new maps out PDQ 
Episode 2 is brilliant so far and peggle is good mindless fun.
Anamnesis:
[spoiler]I think this is one of those things where you just have to nod your head and accept it. Obviously, if we’re going to place into the universe these nigh unstoppable psychic beings who can fly around at will then we have to wonder why they didn’t stop Mr. Freeman in the citadel in vanilla HL2 or why they didn’t hunt him down when Alyx and him went back to the citadel in Ep1 or even later before the citadel explodes.
The developer commentary sorta talked about this. It’s in I think the third chapter, or whatever the one right after you come out of the antlion hive and you see a huge open field and a big bridge in the distance with all the combine troops marching. One of the commentators says they thought about having the advisors fly in the distance with the escape pods but they wanted those to be for emergency escape from the citadel only.
What they’re trying to go with, I think, is a life cycle where the advisors start out as grubs, grow to the size we see in ep1, and then finally mature in ep2. In the same area as above, the guy says something about how they used to be “harmless larva” back in HL2 or whatever. The only problem with this is that simply didn’t happen to my knowledge. The only advisors in HL2 were the mature ones on the screens, like the one Breen talked to. Plus the Combine have been on Earth for several years now and all these baby advisors are just starting to mature as soon as Gordon arrives?
So…yeah. Nothing satisfactory.
I don’t think the Advisors could pull a Neo and stop bullets. In every scene they appear in they are very slow and clumsy. In the first appearance it tries to do the tentacle thing on a barrel and then a corpse. And in the finale they take their sweet time and then when DOG attacks they seem completely helpess because he moves too fast for them to react. Just my view though.
[/spoiler]
OK, I just found a part of Episode 2 that I hate - the strider battle.
You pretty much have to use the car to tote around the strider-buster weapon, but they’ve cluttered that forrest area with so many obstacles that you can’t go anywhere without smacking into something. And of course, they chose this part to put in time pressure.
Challenging is OK. That’s fun. But this part is not - it’s just really annoying.
They should have made that a more open area such as the helicopter battle in HL2.
While I see your point, I have to disagree. I wasn’t banging into anything, and it’s rare when I have a game experience that actually gets me as excited as that Strider/Hunter standoff battle did. That was how a boss battle should be done. I knew it was gonna be a hectic last stand from the way it was being set up. It was more entertaining (and replayable) than the HL2 and Ep. 1 finales. I ran out of ammo, and out of time, and was scrambling to finish them off. I obviously wasn’t working fast enough and had to redouble my efforts, although I only had to reload once, because one got through and blew up the silo at first. I like fighting against uneven odds in a chaotic arena like that. I think it sort of levels the playing field. I also think I actually had a mild adrenaline rush, and it turned me into an even better driver.
For the Strider battle, I kept running out of ammo, and dodging about unloading Magnum clips into Hunters, before I finally realised… drive the car into them. Granted, they dodge, but I felt really smart for figuring that out, and then immediately stupid again because it was pretty obvious in hindsight. :smack:
It didn’t help that the Magnusson devices kept falling off. I’m certain I got them attached, only for them to be evil and drop off again while I was switching out of the gravity gun. Bastards.
Rather than explain (as has already been done) I think this link will suit the task best (note below the video you can select Flash, Quicktime or Windows Media…whatever suits you). Gives you a feel for what you are about and a taste of the demented AI which guides you through the place.
Also in Post #7 I provided a link to a free (legally free) game called Narbacular Drop. This is the predecessor to Portal (Valve hired those guy to make Portal). It is exactly the same idea except of course Portal’s visuals and overall polish are leaps and bounds past the freeware version. Still, will give you an idea. Narbacular gave me headaches though I think from all the low res stuff. I had no issue with Portal at all and had a ball.
Only complaint is it is too short (ends just when you feel it should be really getting going) although packaged as it is in the Orange Box can’t say I was ripped off.
I also think Portal is overly easy. Only one place stumped me for a bit but it was 2am and I was drunk so that might have been part of it. Of course the solution was actually simply and easy.
They should make an award for best closing title sequence. Portal should win it just for that wonderful song.
What. the. HELL. Okay, I might have to try that, but I know it’s gonna be way too mindbending for me. I’m such a linear thinker at times. Although I’m getting better at figuring out HL-esque puzzles.
Anyway, Episode Two was awesome. I agree with Mach Truck about that last battle, where those hunter mofo’s kicked my ass from City 17 to Ravensholm, metaphorically speaking. I’m embarrassed to say that this was the first time I’ve ever used a cheat code in HL. What kills me is that I wouldn’t have had nearly as much trouble if I hadn’t had to use those stupid-ass sticky bombs. Screw Magnusson or whatever his name is – gimme a good ol’ fashioned stack of rocket launchers and watch those striders kiss the ground!
About the ending…
How awful (as in sad, not bad) was that ending? Poor Eli! When he was yelling out to Alyx, “don’t look!” my jaw dropped at the horror of it. And poor Alyx for having to watch her father’s skull turned into jello! Doesn’t help that I love Robert Guillaume anyway; he’ll always be Isaac from Sports Night. I knew something tragic was gonna happen, with all the goodbye scenes and the way too happy false ending, but I thought DOG was gonna be the poignant loss. Well, in addition to Lamarr the headcrab, that is. Anyway, hearing Alyx crying as the game went into end credits was surprisingly powerful … totally wasn’t expecting that kind of heaviness. Very cool. Guess Gman knew what was coming, with his warning to both Vances. Slimy bastard.
The voice acting makes this game. The second I heard that Vortigaunt speak, I recognized the incredible vocal talent of Tony Todd. LOVE him in everything he does. If they couldn’t get Lou Gossett, Jr. again, they got an even better replacement (vocally speaking, he’s more recognizable than Gossett to me). And I have to say, the woman who voices Alyx has improved tremendously since HL2. In that game I thought she was stiff and not especially convincing. Here she was a standout.
The gameplay was lots of fun and the variety of settings really took my breath away. The forest! Holy cow, I just wanted to walk around and enjoy the view. Loving the motion blur effect, by the way. Really adds to the realism.
By the way, is the quality of the Portal game trailer how these games look to everyone else? As great and lifelike as HL2 looks on my system, it never looks as good as (for example) the “previously, in Episode One…” movie at the beginning of Ep Two. I’m wondering if this is normal – if the trailers are shot in a more ‘filmic’ style – or if my system isn’t set up properly.
For the final boss battle, you have to make sure to kill the hunters first. If you don’t, they’ll shoot the bomb off the strider. I used my Gordon-mobile to run down the hunters. You can actually take quite a beating in that car, and it’s an instant kill if you squish the hunters at top speed. After the guards are down, you can leisurely walk beneath the striders and attach the bombs. Combine that with liberal use of F6, and the battle is cake.
Welp, I finally finished Portal and EP2 tonight. I was in no rush, and these things must be savored. I don’t feel like futzing with those evil spoiler boxes, so unspoiled readers beware. If a mod could put a spoiler tag on the title, that’d be great.
…
Overall, I really enjoyed EP2. I thought the Antlion hive trek was kind of stupid, but I have an abnormal hate for caves in FPS’s. Besides that, my only complaint is that the puzzles were a bit brainless and retreads from the previous games. Half-Life is great because it has both superb action and quiet exploration. EP2 brought the action, but I was missing more of Valve’s excellent immersive cinema. In future episodes I’d love to see more devilish mind teasers, and more moments where you can just sit back and absorb your surroundings.
Loved the car. The drive around, dismount, explore, fight, drive to next location mechanic is too much fun. Valve could do a spin off game that focused on vehicles. They could call it Half-Life: Off Roadin’. Maybe not.
Perhaps the advisers are prisoners? You were supposed to shut off their “life support,” but they clearly don’t need any support to survive. What if, instead, you accidently shut off some sort of suppression sheild and freed it? They might even join your side like the vorts. Oh, and speaking of movie inspirations, the advisers are totally brain bugs from Starship Troopers. “They sucked his brains out!”
I used to think the G-Man was like Star Trek’s “Q”, an omnipotent being that played with the universe as if it were his personal playground. Now, I’m not so sure. We know that he has employers and limitations. What are his powers exactly? He can freeze time and jump through dimensions. He can also play with your head and suggest stuff to you, but I don’t think he can completely possess people. What else can he do, and not do?
And, either I’m having a massive brainfart, or we’ve never seen Magnassun before. Where did he come from?
Portal was genius. They need to make a sequel. Like, now. Don’t wait for EP3. I absolutely loved the Douglas Adams-ish humor. Your “Weighted Companion Cube” and its euthanization just about made my day. I also appreciated the end of game fake out, and was pleased that it went on for quite a while after test room 19.
Agreed. Why in the holy bejeezus did they send you through miles of mines and antlion tunnels to go get this goo, when it was located at the bottom of an elevator that went directly to where you started? “Oh, sorry, didn’t we mention that? Our bad.” Not that I wanted to trek back through all those tunnels of course, but it did make the preceding half an hour seem slightly pointless.
Can you get Portal by itself? Where?
Only through Steam, I think. Not that that’s a bad thing; despite roundly detesting Steam when it was first introduced (because it prevented me from playing HL2 for a full day and a half after I’d bought and installed it), I’ve become convinced it’s the way forward for game distribution. It’s given a new lease of life to some neglected titles like Psychonauts, too, which I think is great.
The elevator was broken, remember? You even went through it on the way down at one point. At the bottom you have to solve a simple puzzle to power it back up. But c’mon, you didn’t have fun sliding around in the nasty chambers coated in yellow pus and blood and littered with skeletons and maggots? Those were lovely. Plus that part where the guardian’s head comes through the wood and you’re trapped in the small room for a second was a Kodak moment.