Chapter 8: Sandtraps Welcome to the second half of Half-Life 2.
Its 8th chapter begins just after you’ve driven over the large bridge. But the first
half of this chapter is just the same as the 7th, with you driving along the coast in a
dune buggy. In this next tunnel is a scary fight against
waves of zombies. If you’re quick enough, you can clear the way and drive on without
having to hang around but I doubt you’d manage that on your first play-through.
Ahead at this house, the combine are burning bodies. Inside this building is a nasty surprise-
those electrified balls come crashing through the ceilings, making your escape more difficult!
You must then clear several outposts. The first is just full of enemies.
But the second is attacked by enemies, and then you must find the batteries to open the
gate. I believe they’re hidden in different places every time. I’ve heard all sorts
of stories from people who don’t realise they’ve got to do this and they end up building
their own bridges out of stuff to drive over the top of the gate, or they simply give up
and leave their vehicle here. It doesn’t really matter, since the coast
section ends soon after. Which Valve might have done intentionally.
You help the rebels to fend off several dropships full of combine, then you head on over to
the lighthouse to take out the gunship from the top.
With that done, a rebel takes you by the hand and leads you down into the basement.
He opens a secret door and you’re on your way again.
THIS is when the 8th chapter starts for real, in my opinion. And was exactly half-way through
my 6 hour play-through. It starts with a true tragedy, as the finest mind of his generation
is killed by an antlion. ‘You there! Stop where you are- stay on
the rocks! Don’t step on the sand, it makes the antlions crazy. Laszlo, don’t move,
no- HELP!’ ‘Dear God… POOR LASZLO! The finest mind
of his generation! To come to such an end… we were heading for the Vortigaunt camp, hoping
to pick up some bugbaits so these damn things would leave us alone. But without Laszlo,
what’s the point. I know you were trying to help. I’ll stay with him a while. There’s
something I must do. Go ahead. I hope you have better luck than we did. Remember to
stay off the sand, the antlions are edgy right now!’
In case you hadn’t gathered, stand on the sand and the antlions attack you. This is
an excellent opportunity to showcase Half-Life 2’s physics, as you hop from rock to rock
and improvise with props when needs be. You can make it through this whole section
without a single fight, but it’s hard and takes time. I did my best to stay off the
sand, but on a few occasions briefly touched it and an enemy would burst out of the sand
to get me. What you really want is this wood prop here.
It’s the longest thing in the game and is ideal not just for bridging gaps, but for
climbing up cliffs and other vertical obstacles. But nothing will help you in this next bit,
which is when you fight the antlions’ MUM. Or something.
This monster will take a lot of damage before it goes down, so you’re best off strafing
and launching objects at it with the gravity gun- at least that way you won’t deplete
your ammo.
Once it’s beaten, a Vortigaunt comes out of the base and extracts some pods from it.
Since the antlions hunt on smell, having these things make them think you’re their Mum
and they’ll do what you want them to. It’s a brilliant moment in gaming, to suddenly
tip the balance by transforming your enemies into allies to fight against a greater threat.
This base is little more than an elaborate training montage as you’re shown how to
throw and squeeze the pods to direct the antlions on where to go. You have unlimited pods, and
unlimited antlions at your disposal. And just like that, you head off to take Nova
Prospekt. As you head along this beach you must disable
these thumpers, as the antlions refuse to go near these while they’re on.
At times it might be easier to shoot the enemies myself, but I enjoy this segment too much
to do that and instead enjoy commanding my army of aliens to do my dirty work for me.
As the sun sets, I approach the cliffs beneath the prison and start my climb.
This sequence is also awesome, as antlions fly over the walls and destroy the guard posts.
2 gunships appear, which require you shoot down with rockets.
Then it’s time to enter the building, turning valves to extinguish flames.
Chapter 9a: Nova Prospekt This chapter starts slowly as you explore
this complex, encountering three-legged gun turrets which will be a recurring feature
in the coming levels. There’s a rather nasty room full of headcrabs.
Then you’ve got to drop down into the showers- and onto another boss battle.
With the boss defeated, you become the new one and can start your assault on this base
with your army of manipulated insects. This generally involves approaching a heavily
fortified position, using the antlions as meatshields. Then you take out the gun turrets
and flick a switch to open up the next area. This bit’s unique, though. You take a break
from the action to go through the vents and must find a way of getting through this fan.
Then there’s more fighting as you head higher and higher up towards the control room.
Now on, through the laundry room. Then through the kitchen.
Up into another control room… …and down for one last boss fight.
This is an odd bit, where you find yourself between 2 rows of combine walls. These things
slowly creep along, crushing anything in their way, expanding the combines’ territory.
If you’re not fast enough in this bit you end up getting crushed by them yourself.
Chapter 9b: Entanglement The second half of your trip to Nova Prospekt
is with Alyx. Clearly, Valve thought this was one of the strongest parts of the game
because they elaborated on this further in Episode One, which is mostly spent with a
companion. The goal here is to rescue her father, Eli.
This chapter clearly shows Alyx’s handy multitool and all-in-one-pistol, which would
be cool if one day they were made playable! She finds Eli somewhere inside this prison,
which is kind of like the human-equivalent of winzip.
You see some lovely daughter-father interaction in this scene.
And soon you’re left on your own again, with Alyx hacking the control panels to help
open up doors and to warn you of when combine are approaching.
This is what I’d describe as a grenade segment of the game. Yes, you can use guns. But a
few well placed grenades will help immensely in dealing with the headcrabs, then later
the combine, then later, the puzzles, then last, the gun turrets.
Eventually you reach this control room, which is the first of 3 hold-outs you’ve got to
do with just a few friendly gun turrets for company. I never realised before, but they’ve
gone and done the same with these turrets as they did with the antlions in previous
chapters. I always found these holdouts to be some of
the hardest parts of the game. The turrets can be useful, but combine head straight for
them to knock them over and can use grenades to great effect against them. I chose to keep
them close to the main room so that I could easily pick them up again if they went down.
All was going well until I blew myself up with a grenade just here.
Hold out for long enough and Alyx drops into the room and hacks a computer, discovering
that Judith is a traitor and is working for the combine!
Eventually she lets the barriers down and you head off to the basement for a room that’s
more like something from Half-Life 1. The water’s electrified, but these blue barrels
can be used to build a bridge to safety. Now for the second hold-out, this time with
3 turrets at your disposal. I put them all in corners to make them more difficult to
knock over, then if things got really difficult I hid in these metal things for cover.
Alyx arrives just a bit too late to help again and clears the way into a dark basement. I
took 2 gun turrets with me for fun. It’s down here that all the lights are turned
off and you’re both attacked by more combine. Turns out it’s quite fiddly to fit these
turrets down some of the corridors you traverse. You’re eventually spotted, but Alyx is able
to lock the doors down before the combine reach you. And now it’s time to confront
Mossman. ‘Leave the talking to me, Gordon’.
The next room is a large teleport chamber where you set up for the final hold-out against
waves of combine, as people are teleported out of the room one by one.
But unsurprisingly to anyone watching, Judith uses this opportunity to betray Alyx by slipping
onto the teleport with Eli and teleporting off to an unknown location.
You and Alyx again have to survive until the teleport can recharge. I was looking forward
to this with my 5 gun turrets, but something in the game broke and after the first wave,
no more combine came. You hop on the teleport with Alyx and the
two of you teleport back to Dr Kleiner’s lab.
But a week has passed! It turns out the combine have invented the slowest teleport ever. While
you’ve been gone, your actions in Nova Prospekt sparked an uprising and the city now finds
itself in a state of war. You and Dog rush off to help the rebels to
reach the citadel. Chapter 10: Anticitizen One
This chapter starts with Dog showing how OP he is.
And just like that you’re left on your own again as you trace your path back along corridors
you visited early in the game. Upon reaching this open courtyard, a bunch
of rebels choose to follow Gordon and you’re given a quick tutorial on how to boss them
about. This next courtyard is infested with mines.
Don’t get too close to them or they’ll hop up at your face and EXPLODE. But pick
them up with the gravity gun and they become your friend, ready to be used against the
enemies. You then encounter a Strider set to BATTLE
mode. After a few back alley encounters you meet
more rebels and together you storm a building. Then down into the street, and through a destroyed
building to get around the back of the combine outpost.
There are a lot of enemies, but they’re the easiest Civil Protection type who have
less armour and weaker weapons than those found in Nova Prospekt.
You battle your way down to an underground, partially collapsed tunnel and fend against
waves of manhacks- which is made so much easier with the gravity gun.
As rebels work to clear the way ahead you can man a gun turret to help mow down the
attacking combine soldiers. Don’t know what’s happened in the next
room but there’s been a massive toxic leak and you must hop from cover to cover, dodging
the zombies hidden beneath the surface. Finishing this, you open a door to let the
rebels through and head back to the surface again.
Now you reach a neighbourhood that’s very much ready to take on the combine. There are
many rebel fighters in these parts, with make-shift bridges and a good selection of arms.
It’s a real maze as you go up and through these buildings- combine shelling has resulted
in a 3-way fight, with aliens in most of the rooms.
This whole section really does take a while but it’s full of fun, close-quarters engagements.
It ends with you going over one of these make-shift bridges and into a completely bombed out house.
In the next house along you meet up with Alyx again, who’s ready to join with you to push
on to the citadel, but first they need to take a command post downstairs.
You fight your way out to the street and your team of rebels must defend her as she hacks
a combine barrier. This goes on for a while as wave after wave
of combine attacks your position, but you have plenty of allies, supplies and cover
to help. The two of you push on, closing the barrier
behind you and dooming the rebels to their deaths!
Up ahead the road is destroyed, so Alyx climbs a building to scout ahead.
BUT OH NO she’s captured by the combine, leaving you alone yet again!
The next area I can best describe as a well lit Nova Prospekt. You fight against manhacks,
clear some cool physics, probably placed in to showcase the game during the teasers. Head
down this deathtrap of a staircase, then through a hugely infested sewer bit. There are a few
cool setpiece things here which I’ll show you.
Then you get to this massive warehouse, with the goal being to reach the top. It takes
a while, using lifts and ladders while fighting increasingly hard combine soldiers.
Chapter 11: "Follow Freeman!" You hear that Barney is pinned down in a house
down the road by snipers. Suddenly your rebel followers seem utterly pointless as they’re
mowed down by snipers in a matter of seconds! You can quite easily beat them by employing
some Phoon-style bunnyhopping as you erratically hop from cover to cover, until you make it
to the basement- and the greatest Half-Life 2 Deathmatch level of all time.
This poor guy isn’t in good shape- and soon you learn why.
You then head up through the building to Barney and have at your disposal an unlimited supply
of grenades to take down the snipers with. Together, you head through some alley-ways
until you come across this impressive looking building. This is the Nexus Building, now
a hub for Combine activity. You head down to the street and must face
another predictive weapon attack. Only this one’s a bit more impressive looking than
the snipers. Their ‘suppression device’ is kind of like an Ion Cannon that fires a
massive beam down in whichever direction you’re moving, so again you must bunnyhop from cover
to cover as you clear out buildings on the way to the Nexus.
While I don’t like this combine rifle much, its secondary fire does come in handy in situations
like these. Now in the Nexus, your goal is to find your
way from room to room, disabling the forcefields until you make it to the roof. There are 3
power generators to disable. This bit of the game takes quite a while.
There are these gun turrets hidden in the floor, which a well-placed grenade can take
out. This first Power Generator is easy, but the ones after are in quite memorable rooms
with various puzzles and enemy encounters in.
Honestly, I still get lost in this building. It’s a maze. This second room is a laser
maze. Activate them and you’ll get shot up by turrets, so you’ve got to creep through
the room, scaling cover and disabling tripmines. With that one down, it’s onto the third
room. You and your team get sealed inside and combine begin breaking through the doors
and shooting through the cracks around the outside.
With all those disabled, you fight your way to a stairwell and up onto the roof of the
building. Up here you fight a gunship. You can also
take out the striders in the streets below, but they’re only replaced with others.
You face a few waves of combine soldiers along this roof, then drop down into the street
again to fight back through the open plaza, this time with striders everywhere to make
your life more difficult. One of these pursues you into the next level
and you fight your way up several storeys with the strider continually trying to get
a good shot on you. You can take it out… but I just moved on to the next level.
You face some hard fighting in the next area, both above and below ground, all the while
dodging strider attacks. This is when the game really throws everything it has at you,
though you have a continual supply of fresh rebels to cope with it all.
This ends with a fight from this roof-top. Take out the two striders and your route to
the citadel is cleared. You head towards the horse statue, then meet up with Dog again
who proves to be quite useful. Chapter 12: Our Benefactors
You finally reach the Citadel, and must find your way inside in this platform segment.
It’s eerily quiet inside- it’s as though nobody knows you’re there.
You hop on this pod and are taken on a beautiful tour of this place.
Eventually it drops you down into this room and strips you of all your weapons. But one
of them refuses to be taken! Your gravity gun is given super powers and
is now much more powerful. You become an unstoppable super-solder as you’re able to pick up and
chuck the combine themselves! All the while, Breen can be seen on the monitors
trying to reason with you. As you progress through this level and beat
wave after wave of combine he gets increasingly frustrated and desperate.
The healing stations on the walls are super-powered and charge you up quickly and to 200% charge.
This sequence ends with a long hall-way where you’ve got to use energy balls to take down
a strider. Then you hop on another pod.
But you’re spotted, and are taken to the top of the citadel.
Chapter 13: Dark Energy There’s a
lot of cutscenes in this bit, but to summarise, Breen holds all the cards now that he’s
captured you, Eli and Alyx. Well, you kind of captured yourself. But whatever.
But Judith betrays him and sets you free! You and Alyx chase Dr Breen but he manages
to escape, and from the conversations you hear him having, it sounds like he’s going
to be put into a host body to let him survive somewhere that’s not like Earth.
Alyx says her farewells to you, and you return the favour with a nod or something. Then it’s
onto the final boss fight. You must clear power generators and hop from
platform to platform as you race Dr Breen to the top.
Once there, you’re attacked by gunships and must destroy all of the shields surrounding
the reactor core.
And
after the credits is this clip.