Half-Life 2: Episode Two

[aoanla]

rimspace wasn't kidding - the Strider assault section, the last bit of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, is the most annoying setpiece in video-game history. I have no idea what Valve were thinking, making something so utterly un-fun.

Comments

[rimspace]

It apparently isn't so bad if you kill a strider, use the car to kill the hunters, repeat... but that car handles hideously, and I kept getting killed trying to get into position to kill them. That entire level is just painful. It wouldn't be so bad if the friendly NPCs actually concentrated fire on the things that are the real killers - the hunters - and left the striders to you, but they pretty much always just ignore the hunters and fire ineffectually at the 'larger' threat.

So full of hate of that level.

[aoanla]

Apparently, Valve had great difficulty in adjusting the handling of the car; they were trying to balance a "realistic" feel for driving enthusiasts against a "simple point and go" approach for people who just wanted the thing to handle like a player character.

I also have major issues with the stupidity of the friendly AI; but I also have issues with the Hunters' ability to shoot Magnusson Devices off of a Strider without detonating them. Shooting them in mid-air, fine, shooting them once they're primed and ready to explode when something hits them?

[jordanis]

I dunno, I guess I have an easier time handling the car than you guys. Once I discovered that you could kill the hunters so easily with the car, that level became some of the most fun I've had in a video game.

[aoanla]

Oh, it wasn't really so much the car for me as for TW. For me, it was the Hunters knocking off attached Magnusson Devices, the timing of the second Strider arrival (you can't, as far as I can tell, afford to kill the first Strider's Hunter with the car, because you then can't get back to kill the second Strider before it blows up the Sawmill, and your closest Magnusson Device Dispenser), and the stupidity of the allied AI.

Oh, and that I don't like Hunters as an enemy. At all.

[moltare]

I quite liked it, but then I do live in Crazy Backwards Alternaworld where N is easy and X-Com is impossible on Easy.

[aoanla]

You are a strange man - but I did expect you to make precisely this reply to my post!

However, it seems as if you're in the majority here - the two responses to Strider Defence are "arg, so annoying" and "wow, so awesome", and the awesomes appear to have it, according to an entirely unscientific survey of some forums I just did.

[eisenhart]

I am in between. Is there room on your survey for THAT?!

[aoanla]

Well, forums tend to polarise response, once sides are drawn up - so my survey wouldn't detect such reasoned responses as yours.

Hah, serious response!