Black Mesa

Try using one of those big wooden cotton wheels. Worked for me.

FINALLY, I made the leap. Thanks.

While this game is awesome (I cannot state that enough, it puts what Valve itself puts out to shame) it's making me remember that Half Life has a really stupid plot.

The original Half Life was a deconstruction of the Space Marine genre that doom had started, It was slightly less silly in 2001.

Cheers! Hooray!

I'm really enjoying it so far. I like the minimalist trappings — is that what's putting you off?

I just noticed that the plot of the original Half Life (and by extension this mod) doesn't make much sense at all, is very vague in the game itself, (so yeah, "minimalist trappings"), and mostly exists to give you excuses to shoot things. For example, why is the military trying to kill you? The only explanation you get is one line from one of the scientists. And he never explains how the military intends to cover up randomly teleporting aliens or a massacre of Americans on US soil by the government, nor does he say anything about how they expect to hunt down every single person who witnessed it, how they expect every grunt to stay quiet forever, how no one had a camera phone, and how they'll explain away the deaths of thousands of people. Or why covering it up is even necessary.

edited 20th Sep '12 7:27:53 AM by CPFMfan

About half of those questions I have to say: Go watch any B-Rate sci fi movie, and then compare.

As for the silencing part, in-game it is not shown but black mesa is eventually nuked by the military. Also the facility is rather isolated, perhaps to keep the test labs secure, no mobile devices are allowed period. and to keep with the high security profile, the facility would have absolutely no connections to the internet, Remember Questionable Ethics or the line or the random scientist comment about how they really don't want the public eye on them? Yeah Black Mesa is probably rather isolationist to conduct some rather sketchy experiments.

I know that it is nuked, but that's even harder to cover up; plus, if you want to take add ons as canon, you can easily escape Black Mesa by car, so it's not very secure. And obviously it wasn't isolationist if Eli and Kleiner managed to escape. Like I said, the plot of Half Life exists solely to give you things to shoot.

Plus, in practical terms, it's impossible to hunt down every single person and keep anyone from seeing randomly teleporting aliens.

Opposing Force just makes less sense. They sent other special forces to kill the special forces that were already there? What?

It's possible the military didn't quite know what was going on and just sent in the troops as a knee-jerk reaction. Maybe they thought the researchers had gone all Mad Scientist on them and were trying to conquer ze vorld? Who knows.

The real reason is that the designers wanted to have human opponents in the game, so they kinda shoehorned them in and came up with an in-story justification later.

They sent in the black ops to kill the marines because they botched the job. Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It would've been hilarious if they'd made another xpack where you play as the black ops from OPFOR... who then get targeted by another, even-more-secret group of black ops soldiers.

Speaking of OPFOR, it's implied in the manual that the Gman is responsible for sending in the troops, and had them training for indoor warfare months in advance in preparation for the Resonance Cascade. Of course, OPFOR wasn't made by Valve, and this was back when everyone thought the Gman was an actual shady government guy, not an interdimensional alien.

edited 20th Sep '12 7:44:56 AM by Talby

Actually while I am not sure OPFOR was canon, I do know that the nuke was (Don't ask me source).

OPFOR is canon, but I'm not sure if that extends to the backstory stuff in the manual.

I'm still hopeful they'll bring back Shephard for a future Half-Life game.

edited 20th Sep '12 7:47:18 AM by Talby

The Half Life series has a huge problem with All in the Manual. The whole plot is in the manual.

So, how do I defeat the tank section of Surface Tension? Seems impossible to stick my head out without being instantly murderised.

Which one? (Yeah, there are several tank or APC encounters on that map)

Oh, yes. Of course there are...

This is the first one, after the battle with the Apache on the cliff.

If it is the one where you arrive via underground canal, one of the underground paths there (the right one, I think) leads to the hatch that is behind the tank. From there you can just lob grenades at it until it dies, completely unopposed (that is if you already killed the soldiers there). I think you can even shot with RL at him from there without it being able to retaliate but I am not sure about that.

edited 20th Sep '12 1:50:31 PM by Drakovicz

Do you have snarks? This is one of the few areas in the game where snarks are amazing. Just lob a couple over the walls (AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT MISTHROW)

And on difficulty, that is one of the hardest sequences in the original too, Good luck.

edited 20th Sep '12 2:20:24 PM by stevebat

I am fairly certain you get snarks sometimes AFTER that battle. At least in Black Mesa.

Day 7: 40 fucking percent!

Excellent, thank you. I think I remember that being in the original Half-Life, actually.

I think I preferred fighting the Abrams when it was stationary

The Black Ops are pretty easy this time around, I've noticed. Still some fast bitches though.

Shame you don't like that. There's something about it that I really dig.

I've always liked paying attention to the hints of what's going on, over simply explaining everything. Helps keep the mystery and ominousness of it all.

So, one criticism that I've read on the BM forums is that there aren't as many incidental HECU/Xen fights in BM, particularly in chapters that were somewhat cut down from the original. In retrospect, I'm inclined to agree. One thing Half-Life did really well was present the HECU as having firm control of many areas of the facility in the early game, but from On A Rail onwards it's clear that they're starting to struggle to stem the flow of alien filth Xen fauna and by Surface Tension they're actively losing ground against the increasingly organised Alien Grunts and Vortigaunts, which is why they pull out. In BM...it feels like the HECU have an iron grip, and have successfully secured the facility. There are few incidents that you stumble on in which they're fighting aliens, and when they do fight them they invariably win. I've still got a bit of Surface Tension to play through, but when the "we are pulling out" message comes through, it's likely going to feel like "...why?"

edited 21st Sep '12 8:55:41 AM by pagad

I have no idea what those people are talking about. The HECU would always win the fights in the original game, and there were only marginally more of those fights in the first place.