Black Mesa

Memory Serves the best way to kill assasins at the end of apprehension involves SMG Grenades in small spaces . (Unless they got a massive increase of speed).

edited 18th Sep '12 6:41:26 AM by stevebat

I just took them all out with the crossbow with few problems. Much less than when I encounter a group of marines, anyway.

@Nicknacks; did you get the fuel flowing?

I got the power on, that was about it. I thought the other pathway (across the bridge) will open after I got rid of the Tentacle.

I finally beat it on Normal.

I never want to do all those platforming puzzles ever again.

My solution to the ninja assassins?

SMG grenades to the face.

Seriously, it works wonders. Or at least it did when only fighting three of them...

Nope, you've got to go that way as well before heading back to the control room and hitting the test fire button. In the silo itself there are two boarded-up doorways, one leading to the power and the other to the oxygen.

edited 18th Sep '12 9:33:55 AM by pagad

The final path does open once you get rid of the tentacle; it's just that the final path happens to be down.

The final path is kinda through the tentacle, so yeah.

Ok, I found some more time and just finished Apprehension (that level where Freeman is captured by Marines). Another observations:

• Marines are surprisingly...not that hard considering what was said about them here. While they are deadly at close quarters, and can drop you from 100 to 0 in one sustained burst if they catch you unaware, but otherwise are pretty manageable. They have piss-poor accuracy over long distance (in fact the most effective tactics I discovered was create as much distance as you can and then plink them away with pistol. You will kill him sooner than he can damage you). Plus they have an easily exploitable "lag" between actions ever few seconds and can be dropped by a double-shot from shotgun
• Blast pit was as much fun as I remembered
• It is a pity that you can not blow-up Gargantuan in the Power-up as you could in the original game. It was sequence-breaking, yes, but it felt incredibly awesome and badass when you managed that.
• So crossbow now shots tranquil darts? Huh.
• The fight with black ops in the warehouse was epic, and despite restarting it like 5-8 times, I am unironically looking forward for the second, bigger fight that will come later. Those ladies are damn hard to kill.

Still playing on hard, still finding it only moderately difficult, still having a blast.

edited 18th Sep '12 2:45:34 PM by Drakovicz

The Crossbow always shot tranquilizer bolts.

I agree about the Gargantua. I dislike when games only let you kill certain enemies in scripted sequences.

I usually plink them with the pistol too when I can, but the problem is I usually can't and they still take off way too much of my health in between squads.

edited 18th Sep '12 2:53:19 PM by CPFMfan

For some reason, after that Gargantua blows up I felt like taking its arm and whacking enemies with it.

The question is for the airstrike sequence at the very end of Surface Tension can you airstrike the gargantua?

Spoiler: Yes you can, and it is glorious.

Against the marine, cover work wonder. I found engaging the marine in the open to be suicide, so I don't engage them in the open. Just by staying in cover, I get shot a lot less. Lots of sparks and dust flying though.

While their behavior are pretty impressive, they are still pretty predictable. For example, shotgun marine will charge into close range and will not shoot you until they got to a certain range. Deadly in close combat but hilariously dumb in wide open area like at the dam fight. Gunning down a marine in his single-minded charge without him ever considering stopping to cover or shooting back is kinda sad. Meanwhile, his SMG buddies got only a few hit on me since I'm hiding behind a concrete barrier on the roadside.

The marines are pretty easy, but I guess I can see them being a challenge if you're only FPS experience is with Call of Duty and its ilk.

edited 18th Sep '12 9:29:51 PM by Talby

My first FPS expierence was the original HL, and I found those new marines hard to kill, even in easy

Thing is, I love FPS games and I know that I am not bad at them (I consistently get a positive K/D ratio in multiplayer games, for example) so I'm continually puzzled that people aren't finding it as Nintendo Hard as I am.

I suck at FPS games, and I am finding the game only pleasantly challenging. Now if only Gordon didn't have to crouch jump all the time... It's difficult on my keyboard, as pressing CTRL+Space makes the game mess up.

Yeah, the marines are going down like lead balloons. I'm confused about the disjunct.

Day 4: The constant pauses, my internet crashing, and several factors is making installing this game a fucking nightmare.

@Noob, Maybe you should torrent, At least that way when the internet dies, you don't lose anything. Unlike traditional downloading where you have to LOLSTART OVER.

Well, I beat it. Overall, it was worth the wait, and unlike a certain other game that took forever, you can tell that the long development time was the result of putting effort into it as opposed to just messing around. Can't wait to play the Black Mesa version of Xen.

I think I heard somewhere that the Steam version is apparantly coming out on October 10th, but I don't remember where, so don't quote me on that.

edited 19th Sep '12 2:29:53 PM by cfive

Stuck at the beginning of "Apprehension". I'm almost certain I've found all the buoys, but still that walkway won't float up. Sigh...

You need to put something on the walkway and jump off of that.

Seriously? Dammit, now I have to go align shit so it doesn't roll away or something.