I'm happy to report the third week of my Half Life play through occurred tonight. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, please allow me to explain. I'm playing through all of the Half-Life games again starting with the original Half-Life. I decided to do this partly because I want to experience the games all over gain but also partly because I want to see how well the games have withstood the test of time. I've already posted two other blogs in this series. You can find them here and here if you're interested.
Tonight's Half-Life game time was largely uneventful. When I exited the battlefield last week, Gordon Freeman had just made it to the surface and was being attacked my fast-roping soldiers descending from the skies out of the belly of an Osprey. I took refuge from the overpowered enemies by evacuating through the sewer system. This meant I didn't encounter any bad guy soldiers on this part of the map but I did have to deal with significantly more aliens. The name of this level is Blast Pit.
Blast Pit
I've heard some people call Half-Life a "platformer". And while I never really considered that label with this game, tonight had a lot of platformer elements going on. From jumping pipe to pipe to traversing giant gaps nearly wider than what I could jump. There was certainly a lot of that in this level. The objective of this level is fairly obvious. There is a huge creature in the center of the map you have to destroy before you proceed. But first you have to reactivate a couple of life support type systems first. This creature is apparently named The Tentacle. Seems appropriate. One interesting feature in this particular level was the ventilation system. When you reactivate the system, this gigantic fan begins spinning and spinning. I was stuck for a little bit and decided, "What the heck...I'm going for it." I jumped onto the fan. It worked, and blew me up to a different part of the level, right where I needed to be.
This level also had a few bad guys placed in just the right spot to scare the bejeebus out of you. One time, a door opens and an infected scientist is waiting for you; in another, you climb down a ladder and there are a pair of them just waiting for some hapless victim they can gnaw on.
Other than though, this level was fairly low key and uneventful. The amount of scientist you observe is on the decline. The amount of aliens you have attack you is on the rise. And all the while you have it in the back of your mind you're still going to have to address this problem of the military trying to kill you sooner or later.
I did take a number of screenshots to share with you...while also providing some comments to go along with it. Enjoy.
(I've heard of The Claw but never The Tentacle...well except for Day of the Tentacle.)
(That poor scientist should've zigged instead of zagging.)
(And you thought you had a bad day at the office.)
(One can never have too many crow bars.)
Well, that wraps up this latest episode. Hard to believe I'm only a quarter of the way through the game. A lot of ground still left to cover. Until the next chapter, enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Cheers.