What was that? I don't think it was suppose to do that. No, that definitely wasn't right. What do we do now. I don't know. Abort the experiment. ABORT! It's too late. What was that thing. I don't know. I don't think its from here? Not from here, what does that even mean. I don't think we're alone.
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Welcome to another round of my play through of the Half-Life games. Last week I finished Blue Shift and this week starts a Half-Life game that I have never played before and only found out about a few months ago (after starting this feature). The game is called Half-Life: Decay and apparently it is/was exclusive to the Playstation 2. The good news is I have a Playstation 2 still and was able to find (and purchase) the game on eBay. The other interesting thing about the game is it was designed to be played as a two-player local cooperative game, although one person can technically play it (as both characters). So, if you’re wondering how I am playing this game, I am playing the PS2 version on a PS2 with my son as my cooperative partner.
I’m no stranger to playing shooters with a controller but playing Half-Life with a controller felt very odd. Especially the PS2 controller. It took my son and I a few minutes getting acclimated to the configuration. Oh, hey…this button jumps and this one shoots. Also playing Half-Life in with a split screen took some getting used to. I have the Orange Box on Xbox 360 and the games just never felt right, but I’m sure that’s because I played them so much on the PC. This felt about the same we.
We played through the first chapter (actually we played it several days ago and I’ve just been waiting until today to post the blog). It was pretty short but provided an interesting perspective on the original Half-Life story. These scientists are received with a notably different attitude than Gordon Freeman ever was. In fact, there are a few scientists who apparently have nothing but disdain for Gordon and freely bash him behind his back. The one scientist in particular, the guy in charge who was also in a wheel chair, had particularly harsh words.
I will say this is the first time I didn’t really recognize places in Black Mesa that I’ve seen in the other games. Maybe this is because of the Playstation 2 graphics, but in Opposing Force and Blue Shift I recognized parts of Black Mesa I saw in the original Half-Life but everything looked different in this game.
In this level, we’re there at the beginning of the incident. Apparently we are the ones who bring Gordon Freeman the sample being used in the experiment that would eventually lead to the cascade resonance and the portal being open to the other world. My son and I had to split up which is always an interesting experience in a cooperative game. I remember Gears of War did this often and you feel so very alone when it happens. Well, he was in one part of the game wheeling the sample along on the cart and I was at some sort of control panel. We hear all the commotion as things head south and then there was a loud explosion and everything goes dark…until the sirens start blaring and the emergency lights start flashing.
We finally team up and start making our way back to the area where the head scientist in charge of the experiment was holed up. Along the way we encountered a few headcrabs and a few scientists who have been infected by headcrabs and a couple other oddities. We both found crowbars right away…clever. We also found a few automatic pistols which game in very handy for dispatching the headcrabs and scientists infected by the headcrabs. I will say it seemed harder to kill them in this game, but that might because half our shots missed. Shooting with these new controls is definitely going to take some getting used to. We also discovered if one of you dies, you both die – the level starts over. This is definitely an interesting mechanic and makes working together even more important.
We finally made it to the central room with the lead scientist and one of his fellow researches. They were bickering back and forth about what happened and why it happened. He told us to use the elevator to escort doctor so-in-so (I don’t remember his name) up to a different level. It’s then something very peculiar happens. If you remember my blog from a few days ago called “Have A Plan To Kill Every Video Game Character You Meet”. It talked about how and why we sometimes shoot or try to shoot the obviously friendly characters in our game. Well, here we are escorting the doctor to the elevator when a shot rings out…and we’re immediately treated to a black screen telling both of us our employment been terminated. Apparently my son was “switching weapons” and accidentally shot the good doctor and the game didn’t take too kindly to this blue on blue – friendly fire incident. We had to start at the beginning of the level and play through the whole thing again. Interestingly enough, the level ends once the doctor is on the elevator…so yes, we were practically at the end of the level when the incident occurred. It was actually hilarious and we both laughed and laughed over the ordeal. I told my son about the blog I wrote about this circumstance and how fitting it was for it to happen in this game. He swears it was an accident.
That’s pretty much all that happened in this first level. We had a front row seat to the accident and now, like everybody else, we’re trying to make sense of it all and escape the Black Mesa Research Facility.
I took more pictures. They’re certainly not as good as being able to use Steam’s screen capture function, but they’ll do. I’m still having some technical difficulty posting this blog, but I’ll get them posted soon.
Cheers.
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