# Game guide to HALF-LIFE 2



## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

For the gamers that are stuck somewhere in the game and don t know how to proceed to the next level ,this is a precious tool : enjoy !


*PART 1*

By Matthew RorieDesign 
by Collin Oguro

Anyone who played FPS games in 1998 will have fond memories of their first play-through of Half-Life. Many of us probably recall sleepless nights shortly before our Thanksgiving break of that year, as we struggled to get through just one more encounter with ruthless government troops or horrific alien entities before finally getting to bed. No one can seriously counter the claim that Half-Life was a watershed moment in gaming history, and indeed, its popularity is part of that legacy, as it spawned the most fertile mod community in the modern FPS community. Now, six years later, Half-Life 2 is upon us, and it's unbelievably and almost unbearably good. Although it sticks pretty closely to the formula laid down by its predecessor, the sheer weight of technical advancements made in the last six years have opened up new vistas of storytelling (e.g. the innovative use of full-face animation) and gameplay (e.g. the compelling new environmental interactions made possible by the Source engine), and Valve has proven themselves to be quite adaptable to these sea changes, incorporating them into a genuinely compelling adventure through the streets of a city defeated and oppressed by alien aggressors. Luckily for Gordon Freeman, though, he's not alone in his travels; he'll have you along, and you'll have this guide to help you out! Included within are a bestiary, a weapons rundown, combat tips, and, of course, a complete walk-through, complete with video guides to the game's most challenging sections.













Weapons

Many of the old favorite weapons from Half-Life return, but many are missing - the game's city setting doesn't really favor the inclusion of such oddities like the Hornet gun or Snarks. The biggest change, though, are the restrictive max ammo settings; you'll find that many weapons will only be able to hold a few clip's worth of ammo before running out, so you'll have to switch between weapons more often than you might like.


*Crowbar*

Well, it's a crowbar. You can hit things with it, or break open crates without having to use ammo. Although much-beloved due to its iconic status as the representation of all violence in Half-Life, you're pretty much never going to use your crowbar after you get the gravity gun. 


*Gravity Gun*


Coolest. Weapon. Ever. Bar none. There's just no competition here; the grav gun, in addition to being the perfect way to show off the Source engine's implementation of physics, is just incredibly fun to use. The primary fire here isn't going to be used very often, but it is useful in its own way. When you're close to an object that it can manipulate, hitting it will shoot out a burst of zero-point energy, blasting the object across the screen with force commensurate to the mass of the object. I.e. small objects will be flung quite a ways; larger objects (such as cars) will be moved in a less drastic manner. (If an object is too big to manipulate, you simply won't be able to fire the gun.) When used properly, this can kill enemies due to the sheer weight of the objects that are hitting them, but you'll rarely be in a position where a suitable object is directly between yourself and your foe. Thus, you'll most often use the primary fire only after sucking an object in with the alt-fire button. Said alt-fire will draw in almost anything towards the grav gun and hold it in place in front of you; the exceptions are organic enemies (such as Combine troops, headcrabs, zombies, and, well, almost all of the enemies you come across except turrets, manhacks, and scanners) and objects that are too massive for it to handle, such as everything car-size and above. Everything else is fair game, and there's a whole lot of stuff in the "everything else" category, from crates to barrels to tires to radiators to wine bottles to dusty old mattresses to...well, you get the picture. Anyway, the secondary fire draws stuff towards you, the primary fire shoots it out again, and the marriage of these functions will undoubtably soon be the stuff of gaming legends. There are so many applications here that it's difficult to even begin to describe them all. The most obvious are the ability to suck in helpful items, such as medpacks and ammo, from across gaps that you can't get past, and the ability to pick up large items and throw them at your enemies.

Depending on the mass of the object, you'll usually be able to kill an enemy with a single well-thrown object; little wood chips and cardboard boxes aren't going to do much damage, but few enough enemies are capable of withstanding a 100 mph cinder block to the head. There are other items that have special effects when propelled from the gravity gun, most of which can be found in the Ravenholm area of the game; these include cans of paint (to give your foe a new look), saw blades (which almost invariably cut a target in half), explosive barrels (which explode on contact, dealing massive damage in a large area of effect), and oxygen canisters (which set your targets alight, resulting in a slower, but infinitely more satisfying death; zombies are especially fun to burn "alive"). 
Of course, the grav gun has more utility than just those examples; you can also use it to smash supply crates without wasting ammo (by picking them up and flinging them against the wall), to make a path across a hazardous area (by picking up items and placing them so that you can cross, say, an electrified pool), or to push a car over an enemy standing behind it, crushing it instantly. It is, perhaps, the most versatile weapon/tool to ever appear in an FPS, and while you'll obviously have to use other guns to get past the tough fights, you'll still have a lot of fun with the grav gun in areas that are filled with manipulatable objects. 


*Pistol*

The good old pistol will be the only ranged weapon you have for a long stretch in the early game. It'll soon be outclassed by the SMG and other, more powerful guns, but it's still something you'll
be whipping out from time to time throughout the game, if only because you'll probably have plenty of ammo for it, and it is fairly accurate, allowing you to hit targets at long range without much of a problem. In most cases, though, you'll only want to use it on headcrabs, zombies, or other slow-moving targets on which you don't want to waste your more precious ammo. 

*.357 Magnum*

The much-beloved magnum returns from the first game, and while it isn't quite as useful as it was in Half-Life, you'll still be using it fairly often, if not for the purposes you probably think. Its basic abilities remain the same, in that it fires single rounds that pack a whole lot of punch. Most targets will still require a couple of magnum shots to the body before they go down, though, which, combined with the fact that your aim gets knocked around when you take fire, makes this a poor weapon to use against Combine forces. Against enemies without ranged attacks, though, like zombies, the magnum can help you drop them quickly without using a lot of ammo for your more useful weapons. It's worth pointing out that the magnum can be used as a makeshift sniper rifle when you see a distant Combine trooper that's standing still, thanks to the fact that it's perfectly accurate (and is probably the only projectile weapon in the game that we can say that about). Since you have zoom functionality built into your suit (bound to the "suit zoom" key in your controls section in the options menu), you can zoom in with that, align your targeting cursor over the target's head, then retract to the normal view and get your headshot. The weapon won't fire unless you retract your view, but you'll have to be careful not to jostle your aiming when you hit the fire key. 


*SMG*


For much of the game, the SMG is going to be your primary weapon of choice, due to its fully automatic fire (its one of only two weapons that boast this feature). The fact that you can hold your fire button down to let loose with a steady stream of bullets will let you kill enemies in intense firefights that much more easily, and will let you more easily make your headshots, at least at close range. The main drawback to it are the relatively small clip size, which you can breeze through with only a few seconds of fire, and horrendous accuracy at anything approaching medium range. If you can see blood on the wall behind your target, though, you'll know you're hitting your target, though, so feel free to flip through clips and keep firing until it goes down. The alt-fire on the SMG is the truly kickass SMG grenade launcher. Although it's pretty easy to spaz out and send this thing into a wall or obstacle and wind up knocking off half your health, when you can land it in the middle of a bunch of Combine troopers, you'll feel pretty good about yourself, since it's almost always going to kill anything within a few feet of where it lands. It detonates on impact, as well, unlike a regular grenade, making it one of the most powerful offensive tools in the game, but ammo for the grenade launcher is really rare. 



*Overwatch Pulse Rifle*


The other weapon with pure automatic fire is the Overwatch pulse rifle, found exclusively in the hands of Overwatch soldiers and their elite counterparts. Its primary fire is similar to the SMG, although it seems to deal slightly more damage; you'll need to weight this against even worse
accuracy problems, though, and a horrendously limited supply of ammo. You can only carry a total of three clips for the damn thing, which can be used up in the opening barrages of a single firefight if you're not careful.
The alt-fire here sends out an exposed fusion core, which disentegrates every organic entity in its path, and what's cooler about it is the fact that it bounces off the first dozen or so surfaces it touches, killing everything else that it hits after the first impact, before finally dissolving. In practice, it's difficult to get multiple kills with this unless your targets are in an enclosed space, but it's still somewhat fun to use. Note that Combine targets you kill with the alt-fire won't drop any weapons or extra ammo, so take that into consideration if you're running short on the bare essentials. 


*Shotgun*

For close-range encounters, nothing kills quite like the alt-fire from the shotgun. The weapon plays essentially the same as in the first game: the primary fire is a single-shell shot, decently accurate at short to medium range, while the alt-fire sends out two shells at once, and will pretty much automatically kill anything that's standing within a few feet of Gordon. One of the most startling disconnects between the first game and the second, though, lies in the fact that the shotgun now only carries six shells at a go, rather than eight. This obviously makes it more likely
that you'll run out of ammo during firefights, so we hope you're used to ducking behind cover and reloading. 

*CrossbowPainkiller*

The crossbow is really your only option for long-range killing. Even on hard mode, it'll still kill almost anything (save toxic zombies) in one hit, even if it impacts your target's chest. (You might even get some neat Painkiller stakegun effects if your target is standing close to a wall.) What's better is that it has an actual scope attachment, letting you zoom while aiming, allowing you to get a better idea of where to aim in order to actually hit your target. Unfortunately, the crossbow bolts do have a bit of a dip in their trajectory, meaning that you'll have to aim above your target's head when firing at long ranges unless you want your shot to fall short. The other main drawback isn't really specific to the crossbow, but it is among the weapons that are most affected by it: since your aiming reticule is jostled upward when you're hit by enemy fire, you're much more likely to miss with the crossbow if you attempt to use it in the middle of a firefight, especially when your targets are, say, across a large room. At close range you can usually compensate for this jerking around, but when you're dealing with long-range targets that are aware of your presence, you may want to just close the distance to them and take them down with a more conventional weapon. If you're dealing with only a single target, try waiting for them
to reload, then wait for them to come back out to their normal firing position, where they'll usually stand for a few seconds. Of course, the bolts don't travel to their target instantaneously, meaning that if your enemy moves around while the bolt is in the air, you're going to waste a shot, and since ammo is fairly rare for the crossbow, this isn't something you really want to be doing. 


*Grenades*


Half-Life 2 has one of the neater grenade implementations of the recent FPS generation. They're neat not because they're particularly easy to use (they're not), but more because of the way they look and sound, which we suppose isn't exactly a ringing endorsement; they're pretty, but they're not often very useful, especially against Combine troops. The thing about the grenades here is that there's a delay of a couple of seconds between the time that they impact the ground and their detonation, and that they are fully a part of the game's physics system, meaning that they tend to roll quite a ways beyond where they land. Both of these factors mean that it's pretty difficult to actually land a grenade near a concentration of Combine troops and then have them all remain there until the grenade blows up; you're better off just chucking a few grenades at a time and hoping that one of them gets to where it needs to go. You can only hold five grenades at one time, so don't get too trigger happy; there are generally plenty more to be found in the game world, including on dead Combine troops. The primary fire for grenades will lob them towards distant targets, while the alt-fire will underhand one a short distance. 

*Rocket Launcher*

The RPG in Half-Life 2 brings back the distinctive laser-designation system that made Half-Life multiplayer so bizarrely fun, and, in fact, completely eliminates the conventional dummy-fire system that every other game uses; here, you're either going to manually aim your rocket, or not use it at all. The specifics of the system can only be learned through use, as it's a bit tricky to describe, but we'll try to give you some of the basics.
In essence, your projectile, when fired from the RPG, will travel towards whatever point you paint with your laser designator. If you aim at the sky, for instance, the rocket will start travelling away from you at a good clip; if you then move your laser and point it at your feet, the rocket will turn around and streak back towards you. (This is actually a useful way to prevent rockets from travelling beyond a target you want to hit.) If you move your targeting reticule around while the rocket's in flight, it'll follow your movements, which will allow you to bypass the defenses of your gunship foes. This bizarro targeting system will let you squeak rockets around barriers that most projectiles wouldn't be able to bypass, but you'll rarely want to waste your rockets on non-critical targets, since you can only carry three rockets at a time. 

*Pheropods*

The pheropods are only useful in a small portion of the game, but during that portion, they can essentially replace most of your arsenal. When used while you have an antlion retinue, you'll be able to command said antlions to target any specific soldier or general area for attack; your primary fire will launch one of the pheropods, and when it lands, any nearby antlions will make a beeline for that location and attack any hostiles nearby. If you manage to land a pheropod directly on a Combine soldier, he'll also flail about for a few seconds, preventing him from attacking. The secondary fire here recalls any nearby antlions to your side; if you move far enough away from
them after using the primary fire, though, they'll recall themselves automatically anyway.


Tomorrow PART 2


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## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

PART 2


*General Combat Tips*

Use Your Ammo BoxesOne of the new additions to Half-Life's gameplay is the inclusion of ammo boxes throughout the game world. You'll know these when you spot them; they're big, green boxes, with the icon of a specific weapon or ammo type on its side. When you open them up, you'll get a full refill for that weapon's ammo supply, and they don't run out, letting you return to them as often as you wish to keep fill up. In the case of the SMG ammo boxes, this isn't all that noteworthy; you're going to be finding plenty of SMG ammo on the bodies of the Combine troops you kill. When you find rocket or grenade boxes, though, you can bet the developers put it there for a reason, so get yourself outfitted and start looking around for something to blow up. In the case of rocket ammo, you'll probably already be under attack by gunships or Striders by the time you find a box, so there's no mystery there; grenades are less situation-specific, but there may be something you have to blast through near a grenade box, or just a whole bunch of Combine who'll be easier to kill with explosives than your guns. After you kill whatever target the ammo's intended for, though, don't forget to return to the box and fill up again before moving on. To a lesser extent, normal ammo drops will occur in similar situations. Crossbow ammo, in particular, is often found immediately before situations where you'll be facing off against distant troops, so be sure to max it out whenever you see it! 



*I Would Die For You, Man!*








*Your team members are only too happy to take a bullet (or a whole lot of bullets) for you.*
Your teammates know what they need, so try to give them medpacks when available, and use your medics or resupply stations to heal yourself.




In the later portions of the game, you'll be given command over small groups of friendly soldiers in a mechanism that should be familiar to anyone who played the underrated game Freedom Fighters. Although you don't have to rely on your squad, they can make life a lot easier for you, if only because enemies will shoot at them instead of you! You don't have to stress out about finding extra friends to come along with you, though; they'll automatically appear as you go through the game and will join up of their own accord. If the game detects that your party is understrength, it'll actually spawn in extra party members in your path, so that you may notice soldiers appearing in different places if you replay the levels over again. When you do have squad members, you can order them around with your squad movement key (check your key bindings to find out where this is bound). Pressing the key once will send your squad out to wherever your reticule is pointing towards; you can either use this to send your group ahead as a means to distract enemies and prevent them from firing at you, or to send them to a point behind you when you know that there's danger ahead and you wish to deal with it alone. Tapping the key twice will bring all of the squad members back to your location; as with antlions, though, they'll automatically return to your location after a set amount of time. The most important aspect of running a good squad is keeping them healthy and giving them access to items that they need. The medics that come along with you do a good job of healing
both yourself and your teammates; they have an infinite number of medpacks that they'll use, so try to give everyone a minute to rest now and again, and watch the medic do his thing. They can only give them out so fast, though, so if you need more than one medpack, you might need to grab one, walk away from the medic, then walk back and wait for him or her to give you another.


The main thing to remember here is that your medics can't heal themselves. 
If you have two medics in your party, then they can heal each other, but a more likely source of healing comes in the form of medpacks that are found in the game world. If you smash open a supply crate and notice a bunch of medpacks in it, try to avoid picking them up unless you're in dire need of health. Instead, stand near them with your teammates, and anyone that needs one will walk over and pick one up. In addition to medpacks, though, your teammates can also exchange their weapons for anything better that's lying around. In practice, this doesn't have a huge impact on the game, since they'll almost always go from SMG to pulse rifle; they don't seem to want to pick up shotguns, unfortunately. They might also upgrade to rocket launchers, when available, but these are in awfully short supply in the levels where you have squad members. 

*Bunny Hop-Hop*


One of the oddities that seem to pop up with every new FPS game is the bunny hop phenomenon. Every game seems to have some method of circumventing your maximum movement speed (in Half-Life, you could just strafe while standing next to a wall to pick up a good amount of extra speed), and Half-Life 2 is no exception. The technique is fairly simple, but can be difficult to pull off correctly. When moving forward, start jumping; at the precise moment that Gordon lands, hit jump again. If you can string together jumps in this manner, you should be able to pick up a good amount of extra speed, but if you don't hit jump at the correct moment, you'll have to start all over again. If you get going, you can move almost as fast as you do when you're sprinting, but without the corresponding loss of Auxiliary Power. Sprinting is still your best bet for emergency movement, as you have more control and can immediately start out at full speed, whereas bunny hopping requires a bit of start-up time. 

*Walk-through*

Note that, wherever possible, this is a spoiler-free walk-through, so we're not going to describe what occurs during cutscenes except where it's relevant to the gameplay (which is rare). We also assume that you're playing through on hard mode. 

*Point Insertion / A Red Letter Day*

The Trainstation 

Welcome to City 17, "Where It's Safer." In case your surroundings didn't clue you in, you can talk to the other blue-jumpsuited inhabitants to confirm that this is, indeed, Squalor Central. It could use a good dose of Carol Channing, if you ask us, but instead, the G-Man has chosen to send you, Gordon Freeman, into the fray, for reasons unbeknownest to us. You're not exactly full of pep. You can prove your misanthropy, if you wish, by fooling around with the objects and debris strewn about the train station. You can pick up almost all of the trash, boxes, suitcases, etc. that you see with your E button and throw it with your attack button (by default, mouse one). Fool around as long as you wish, but when you're ready to proceed, you'll have to head into the Combine checkpoint. There's nothing to worry about, though, as you'll soon be reunited with none other than the man himself, Barney the security guard. Although his appearance in the original Half Life would often precede a gaping head wound (at least when we played), you're unfortunately unarmed at this point, so you'll have to listen to his conversation with Dr. Kleiner before escaping through the storage room behind the interrogation room. To do so, climb the ladder in the room and stack the two boxes atop one another underneath the window, then jump out. 

*The Plaza*









The game quickly introduces you to Dr. Breen - the ultimate quisling - and the ominous Combine Citadel.After proceeding through the door (your manipulate key will open it), you'll soon find yourself in another part of the station. Walk through it until you reach the plaza, where you can take a look at the impressive spire that the Combine has apparently constructed in the middle of the city. You can also listen to one of Dr. Breen's little lectures on reproductive rights, if you wish, but when you're ready to move on, head to the right from the station exit and find the alleyway with the ladder above the dumpster. Jump up to the ladder, then head round the corner and into the building beyond the decrepit playground. Combine troops are apparently raiding the building, but you won't have much to worry about here; your ability to move around will be circumscribed by the troops themselves, so you'll only have one real route to move through. Once you reach the third floor, you'll have to start running, as the raid begins in earnest, and the CP troops will begin chasing you, and rather quickly, at that.
When you reach the attic of the building, move out onto the rooftops and start running from building to building. Your path can be difficult to discern in a couple of spots, but so long as you keep moving in a more or less straight line, you should come to a pair of open windows; head inside to meet up with the creepily attractive (for a computer character, at least) Alyx for the first time. She'll escort you to Dr. Kleiner's lab, where you'll get your very own HEV suit! After the teleportation gone bad, you'll finally get to engage in some combat, although you'll initially only have your trusty crowbar at your side. It's not going to be of much use against the CP troops, since they'll be behind a secure layer of fencing, so just quicksave before you head into the railyard and run through it as quickly as possible. You're going to need your crowbar to bust through a few of the obstacles in the cars themselves. As you make your mad dash to the safety of the sewers on the far side of the tracks, you'll undoubtably take a bit of damage due to the pursuing CP troops, but fret not, for there's a medical station immediately after the start of.... 










*We're not sure whether or not these guys can actually kill you, and we recommend that you not stick around to find out.*



Tomorow PART 3


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## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

PART 3


*Route Kanal*

The Joy Of Physics

You'll gain your first pistol shortly after you begin this level, as you'll have to take down a couple of CP bastards that're harrassing a pair of civilians. Both of them will drop pistols, giving you a bit of ammo with which to fight your way through the other CP on the stairs beyond.











After jumping the train to the ruined building, bust your way into it and through it (being careful of the explosive barrels within - they make for an easy way to clear the door but can do a lot of damage if they explode near you. After you get through the house, make your way over the busted fence before crawling through the small pipe. Note the small Half-Life symbol above the pipe itself; this is going to notify you of the correct path in the levels ahead, as well as point you towards caches of itemy goodness here and there. When you clear the pipe, drop back down onto the train tracks and start making your way through the small corridors; these eventually will lead you to the other side of the blue forcefield. Note that the force field only prevents your body from passing through; bullets can traverse it without a problem. If you see a CP cop on the other side of a field, then, feel free to bust a cap; they'll do the same for you without hesitation. Eventually you'll come out to the end of a canal, which you'll have to jump into. This will take you another cell in the underground railroad, where you'll confirm that the big alien presence in Dr. Vance's lab wasn't just a figment of your imagination or a weird by-product of the teleportation accident; apparently the underground resistance has teamed up with the Vortigaunts. This is never really explained, so far as we can tell; weren't these guys trying to kill you in the last game? 

*Fun With Turrets*











Regardless of that little twist, you'll have to continue along the tracks until you come to what used to be another railroad cell; it's unfortunately been the victim of a roll-up operation by the Civil Protection boys, who've set up a turret overlooking most of the canal. A little damage is unavoidable here, so use your sprint key to dash up around the corner and into the tunnel to the right; this will let you get behind the turret and take out the CP troops manning it. As you may surmise, this'll give you an opportunity to take control of the turret yourself, so plow through the incoming troops, who just happen to stand near explosive barrels or on top of wooden planks that you can destroy to force them to fall to their deaths. The real danger here will arrive in the form of a CP riot truck, which will attempt to shell you with heat-seeking missiles; when it drives up, you'll have to leave the turret and proceed down the walkway along the right side of the wall (after using the turret to destroy the wooden planks; this will drop the metal plank across the gap, allowing you to pass over it.) In the debris-filled tunnel beyond the turret trap, you'll come across your first Barnacles. You'll remember these from Half-Life; when you step into the little flypaper tongue that they drop beneath them, you'll be slowly drawn up into their maw and devoured. You should just be able to avoid their tongues at the moment, but if you wish, you can use your pistol to kill them off; each one will require six or seven rounds to kill. (There are some much neater ways to deal with these guys, but we'll get to those later.) If you're short on health, jump over the red car near the first Barnacle to find a bunch of supplies in a crate.
After your encounter with the railroad member, you'll have to pass through a pair of sewers; the CP units above will attempt to instigate a bit of death from above with their makeshift depth charges: burning barrels tipped into the sewers from the surface above. There isn't much you can do save dive underneath the water and wait for all of the barrels to explode. You'll probably take a bit of suffocation damage, but you regain all of this health when you surface again; that's obviously preferably to taking massive amounts of "real" damage from the barrels themselves. The explosions will rip open one of the nearby grates, so dash through and into the tunnel. More CP will be issuing into the canal beyond the end of said tunnel, but you should be able to slice through them with your pistol, especially if you use it to blow the explosive barrels at the base of the bridge when they appear upon it. Blow The Barnacles In order to move on, you'll have to bust through the barrels that block the passageway beyond the bridge; just pick them up and throw them down the slope beyond. If you do so, you'll notice an odd property of the Barnacles; they'll pick up any objects that make contact with their tongues, not just Gordon and other living creatures. You can use this little factoid to get past them fairly easily; just throw a barrel underneath them, wait for their tongues to bring it up towards their mouths, then sneak past underneath them. You can also get even trickier by throwing explosive barrels at them, then igniting the barrels with a pair of gunshots just before they spit them back out. When the barrels blow, it's goodbye Barnacles.

You'll come to another waterway soon enough, with this one featuring more Fun With Barrels, courtesy of your local Civil Protection forces. These guy apparently have an endless supply of conveniently explosive barrels lying around, and they'll use them to try and blow you up while you swim towards the barrier here. If you're playing it safe, just swim along until you see the barrels hit the water, then submerge and swim backwards; you should have a few seconds before the barrels explode, letting you get out of the blast radius before they do. If you float on the water, you should also be able to snipe out a few barrels of your own near the bridge, and perhaps off a few of the CP while you're at it. The second half of the waterway has a similar theme, but your best bet here is to just hit the ramp and run through all of the gunfire and explosions until you reach the broken grate. The first of a few different little physics-based puzzles pops up here; in order to get through the sewers, you'll have to find a way to raise the ramp high enough to jump to the upper ledge. The solution is somewhat implicit, in that the only items lying around are concrete bricks; stack these up on the far side of the seesaw to weigh it down, then jump across and be on your way. The 

*First Helicopter*










You'll come across your first helicopter here; as in the first Half-Life, these guys are pretty much
impervious to small arms fire, and since all you have is a pistol, there won't be much you can do to damage it. Thus, you'll have to satisfy yourself with running like a little girl; there's a blue door around the corner to the left that you'll need to reach, but you can use your sprint key to dash from cover to cover until you make it there. The helicopter's main attack is fairly easy to get a handle for; before it unloads its turrets on you, it'll make a distinct charging sound. When you hear that, head for some kind of cover and duck until the turret stops firing, then repeat. Inside the tunnel beyond the blue door, you'll have more Barnacles to deal with, but you should also have plenty of explosive barrels and other debris to feed them. Before you reach your first set of flytraps, though, you'll have two quasi-hidden caches of items; one's near the HL symbol on the wall beneath the metal walkway inside the door, and the other one is available by crouching through the small gap near the floor of the dead-end before the first set of Barnacles. If you're full up on health and ammo, you can skip them. Beyond the Barnacles, another doorway leads back out to the canal. The helicopter is still present, but you should be able to dash down to the left to reach another set of sewer tunnels. 


*Manhacks! * 











Shortly after the loading screen, you'll reach another railroad member; this one will introduce you to the joy of manhacks. These little drones are really more annoying than anything else at this
stage of the game, as they can be relatively easily avoided and swatted down with your crowbar; it's when they appear in groups of five or six that they really start to become a threat. For now, though, you'll have a friend along to give them a second target, so bash all of the manhacks down before climbing the ladder here to collect the guy's supplies. You'll have to fight through more sets of manhacks in the hallways beyond, so use your pistol liberally when you spot them, then switch over to the crowbar when they close in on you. You'll eventually come to a small exterior area; you can either blow through all the enemies here or just clear out the opposite doorway to move on, but the manhacks will follow you if you don't destroy them.

The next canal beyond the exterior area features a hidden cache of ammo. If you destroy the grate shown in our screenshot, then crawl through, you should find enough ammo to top yourself out, along with a bit of health. 

*Finally, a Real Gun * 


After dropping down, you'll get your first close encounter with the SMG, as a few CP boys wielding it will rappel down into the sewers and confront you. Although they pack a bit more punch than normal, these are still normal grunts, so get your headshots in and take them down before nabbing their weapons. You can also run into your first Crabhead zombie and get your first grenade if you head into the crawlspace that's blocked off by an explosive barrel.
After you find the underwater tunnel near the rotary filtration system and swim through it, you'll come into another small skirmish with CP forces. Deal with them as best you can before jumping atop the pipe and walking back along the hallway. You'll have to deal with steam bursts here, which are incredibly damaging, but which can be avoided rather easily. You don't just want to dash over them, though, as there are Barnacles beyond. Instead, move over to the right after passing over the first steam jet, then use the explosive barrel to kill off all of the Barnacles before moving on, and don't miss the ammo nearby. When you reach the end of the pipe, smash the wooden planks, then crawl back underneath the pipe to find another little cache before moving on. You'll come to another CP ambush when you resurface from the water; your best bet here is to charge forward and use your SMG to blow the explosive barrels before they all issue forth from the rear of the truck; if you're quick enough, you can tag the two CP beside the truck, leaving you only three to deal with around the corner. You're going to want to kill all of them, or at least the two on the ground, otherwise they'll follow you down the corridor nearby, leaving you sandwiched between a rock (the CP) and a hard place (five or six manhacks). Beyond the manhacks, though, you'll come to another devilish room, where another influx of manhacks will be paired with a truly stupendous number of explosive barrels. Since your survivability chance is minimal if you stick around near the barrels, your best bet here is to watch for the manhacks to arrive, fire a pair of pistol shots at one of the barrels to set it alight, then use the ladder to get yourself down below the water and hope that the manhacks get destroyed along with the barrels. You'll likely have to deal with at least a few of them, so keep your pistol handy. Note that the manhacks can't submerge themselves, so if you want a free shot at them, just stay below the water's surface and shoot at them as they skim it.

NEXT IS PART 4.....


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## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

*The Water Puzzle*

Find this valve and twist it to raise the water level in the room.When you're free and clear of any manhack entaglements, use the ladder to reach the pipe that spans the room and move on to the next corridor. There's a water puzzle here, and one that can be somewhat tricky to figure out. In the first area here, you'll have to reach a red valve on one of the pipes; this is more easily accomplished if you attempt to descend towards it from above rather than trying to climb up from below. It's tough to reach either way, but if you're dropping down to it, you can mash your use key and trigger it even if you happen to fall past it. Regardless, you'll need to activate it to trigger an influx of water, then return to the ladder in the first room and descend into the pit where you hid out from the effects of the barrels; you can now reach the small tunnel here, so swim through and into the second part of the valve room. This appears to be a dead end, at first; you can climb up to one side of the room, but the opposite platform is clearly too far away to reach via jumping. The trick here lies underneath the water; if you look down, you'll notice a series of planks that are holding back floatable objects. You can either use your pistol to destroy the planks or put your crowbar to its intended work; either way, you'll need to get the crates and such up to the surface of the water, then use them to jump across to the far platform. This jump can be frustrating to make, if only because the detritus in the water tends to move around as you gambol across, but you should be able to clear it eventually. 









*Get used to using explosive barrels to kill off enemies - you're going to be doing a whole lot of it throughout the course of a game.*
Whenever you see barrels hitting the water in front of you, backpedal and get clear of the blast.


*Radiation - That's Got To Be Healthy * 

After the loading screen, there are a straightforward series of sewers and corridors, populated by CP and manhacks, after which you'll come to an irradiated toxic waste area; you'll know you're there when your suit's Geiger counter starts ticking. You can hit the ground safely enough, but
you'll want to avoid any pools of icky water, as they'll instantly and severely damage you.
When you bypass the railroad conductor, you'll get your first introduction to an old friend: the headcrab. You should be familiar with these guy's basic behavior: they'll attempt to close within range of you before leaping at you. Your suit apparently protects you from zombification, but they can still cause a lot of damage when they hit you. What's more, you're on soil, which will allow them to burrow into the ground, and they don't make any of those obvious little mounds like they did in Half-Life, so you won't have much choice save to walk up to them, force them to dig themselves out of the ground, then mow them down. They're vulnerable while they're unburrowing, so your SMG should be able to swiftly kill them off. If you're paranoid about getting jumped, you can walk around with a barrel in front of you; this will protect you from any random jumps, or at least, those that come from your front side. Proceed through the little headcrab minefield until you reach the electrified wire hanging down; it's better to take a bit of damage from the radiated water than to hit the wire, so don't feel bad if you do so. Beyond the wire, though, there's a whole trailer that's got a current; you should use your pistol to destroy all of the crates inside before moving through, if only to make your traverse a bit easier. Needless to say, touching the walls of the trailer will cause damage, but you can use this to your advantage, as another headcrab missile lands just beyond the exit. If you approach it slowly, and immediately stop as the headcrabs appear, they'll attempt to jump at you, but will instead impact the trailer, the current of which will instantly kill them.
After a couple more headcrabs and zombies, you'll come to a lovely lady whom will supply you with some kind of ghetto hovercraft that you can use to jet around on the water with. To end the chapter, you'll have to boat out until you reach a barrier, then dismount the boat and use the crank near the barrier to raise it before passing on through. 

*Water Hazard*

The controls of the boat aren't too difficult to get used to; your normal movement keys control the front/back and turning, but you won't be able to strafe as you can on foot, obviously. The movement is also a bit twitchy, so if you think you're going to have problems controlling the boat, you might want to try coasting around a bit in a safe area and mastering the fine art of turning, as you'll need to do a lot of sharp turns in the level ahead. Also, be sure to keep an eye out for the lambda symbol that'll appear on walls and pillars in your path as you jet through the waterways; this still symbolizes some form of hidden cache, so you can get out of your vehicle at these points to get a little extra health or ammo. Also, for the record: you can blast through crates and other debris in your way, but you will take damage if you hit something while going too fast, especially in the case of walls. You can also pick up items that float on the water without having to leave your boat, so if you see a supply crate in your path, drive over it to get whatever goodies are inside. You can also kill any CP troops that you spot by running them down, which is a good thing, since the hovercraft has no weapons.
The first noticeable landmark you'll come to will be what appears to be a shiploading facility, marked with the lambda graffiti, and which features a cameo appearance by the G-Man on its upper levels as you approach. If you're good on ammo and health, feel free to pass on by, but if you need some supplies, feel free to head on up and look around. It appears that the underground sympathizers here were the victim of a headcrab missile, as there aren't any inhabitants save zombies, but if you walk up to the rafters and proceed across the boards that are laid down there, you'll eventually reach a winch that's been stuck in place with a barrel. Use your crowbar to pry the barrel loose to get at the goods in the suspended crate before proceeding on your way. 

*Another Physics Puzzle * 

After you get back into your boat, you'll come to a gentleman who'll drop yet more supplies to you from a bridge. Jet over the supplies to pick them up. Afterward, you'll come to another little physics puzzle; in order to raise the ramp high enough to jump across the chasm, you'll have to get four canisters of air into the little trap in the water underneath the ramp. There are two near the ramp and another two accessible through a little sewer tunnel nearby, so try to get them all into the trap without carping too much on whether Gordon would physically be able to drag them underwater. (Hint: he wouldn't, not unless he suddenly has super-strength.)

Beyond the jump, though, you're suddenly going to have to start dealing with CP troops that've
been airlifted into the waterway. Your best bet here is to just floor it and run right over them; they'll die instantly if you hit them hard enough, and you should have plenty of health from all of the supply caches before the last ramp. There is another hidden cache in a pipe near the first set of CP troops; you'll need to position a barrel in front of the pipe to climb in. Eventually, you'll come to a dead-end, so dismount from the boat and find the ladder nearby, which will take you into what appears to be a canal lock station. You'll have to fight your way through to get to the lock controls.

to be continued...

*Assault the Canal Station * 

The first building isn't too difficult; you should find plenty of ammo around, along with more grenades, including a whole box of them in the last room here, so apply liberally to irritants. You will have to bypass a manned turret after you exit from the building, but again, you should have an almost limitless supply of grenades, so feel free to chuck them at the turret and try to get the soldier to disengage; after he ceases to control the turret itself (which he will after a grenade lands near him), he'll be much easier to take down. Chuck the rest of your grenades through the door leading to the second building before heading in for mop-up. 
There's another box of grenades in the second building (as well as a SMG grenade atop one of the blue hydro-generators), so resupply before heading outside to discover that...the lock controls are busted! OH NOES! Fret not, dear reader; as they are wont to do, the explosive barrels through the
gate will help you get past the barrier; shoot them to send a convenient little ram through the gate, which will propel it open. You'll now have to backtrack all the way back to your boat, but not without some stiff opposition. The turret you bypassed earlier will now let you blow through a small platoon of CP opposition, but you can also use your neat-o grenades for the same effect, since you have so many of them available to you. After you clear out the enemies in the exterior area, though, you're likely to have taken some damage to your shields; climb into the blue dumpster nearby to grab a small armor pickup. 

*The Gauntlet * 

After fighting your way through the rest of the forces in the first building, backtrack through and grab any health pickups that you might've missed, and be sure to drain the health recharger near the second box of grenades in the first building; you're going to need a lot of health for the next sequence.











You see, as you exit the lock, you're going to be thrust into a rough little gauntlet, with CP troops rappelling from bridges as you past underneath and riot trucks attempting to blast you with their rockets as you pass by them. Even if you start out with 100 health, you're likely to get knocked down below 20 or so, especially on the hardest difficulty, but there isn't much to do about it save jam on the accelerator and try to avoid the rockets as they come to you, since they're the most damaging aspect of this whole affair. The CP fire is more of a nickel-and-dime affair, so you can safely ignore them, or attempt to run them down as they drop off the bridges. Luckily for you, you'll find another lambda cache at the end of the gauntlet. In order to reach it, get out of your boat, then remove the cinderblocks from the basket on the ground; this will reduce its weight, allowing the basket it's connected to to fall downward, letting you get to the sweet treats inside. Mmm...medpacks. You're going to need all the health you can get - again - because you've got another big challenge coming up. Eventually you'll come to another canal lock, and just from the appearance of it, you can tell that no mere ram will get you through. In order to reach its controls, though, you'll have to fight your way through - again - a phalanx of CP troops, except this time you're going to be doing most of your combat while a helicopter plies its wares at you. 

*The Compound * 

First off, though, you'll have to find a way into the compound; you can do so by approaching the door across the canal from the wrecked ship and using your crowbar to pop the lock off. Inside the room here, you'll get your first taste of some sweet, sweet magnum action. All told, though, the recoil of the magnum and the fact that your aim is thrown off every time an enemy hits you will make it kind of useless against the SMG-wielding CP troops, so stow it for now and blast through them with your own SMG. When you reach the exterior area above, which is strewn with shipping containers, the foretold helicopter appears, forcing you to hide out while you make your way through the maze-like morass of containers. You'll eventually reach an interior segment of the compound, but this won't afford you much relief, as there are CP troops all over the place, on each side of the room. Your best bet here, and it's truly the lesser of a number of evils, may be to run into the empty shipping
container on the right side of the room and use it for cover while the troops attempt to come to you. If you have a decent amount of health (there are some pickups in the container), you can also try to use the Magnum on the troops, since they're far enough away to prevent them from consistently screwing up your aim. 
After you clear out the guards, you'll have to walk up the steps here, which, of course, spawns in another wave of guards, totalling five in all. Kill them all, then retrace your path up the steps and jump across the shipping containers to reach another section of the building. If you're running low on health here, use a crowbar to bust through the crates, then bounce grenades off the wall inside and down the steps to kill off the guards. When everything's dead, you'll have access to a health and armor replenishment statistation. It's a good thing, too, because a bit of damage in this next segment is unavoidable. To begin with, leave the resupply stations and walk out into the courtyard; there's a supply box around the corner to your right, if you're interested. You'll need to make your way past the shipping containers and into the pillbox/control station in the corner of the compound, but you'll have to kill two CP cops on the ground and two in the control station before you can access it, all while dealing with the helicopter fire, against which you'll have no cover. Your primary option here is just to rush it, using your SMG to blow away the two guys outside, and then chucking a grenade up into the pillbox when you reach the ladder leading up to it.
Inside the pillbox, you'll have two turrets to use against the helicopter. Unfortunately, you apparently can't destroy it, but if you deal enough damage to it (while avoiding its periodic fusillades), it'll take off over the horizon and will trouble you no more. You can use the control station nearby to open the troublesome Gate 5 and be on your way. 

*More Helicopter Annoyances * 

Although we were technically correct about the helicopter not troubling you, we're going to let ourselves off on a technicality: we never said that other helicopters wouldn't trouble you, and indeed, another friendly heli will appear as soon as you pass through the gate. This one will introduce you to its surface charges, and we're not talking about flaming barrels anymore; these little explosives will be dropped in your path, and will run down a short timer before exploding. You shouldn't have any trouble avoiding them during the first little chase, since you'll have to turn fairly often, but after you come out through the tunnel and enter the river, you're going to have a tougher time dealing with them. Try to stick to the sides of the river; the helicopter seems to prefer dropping them towards the middle, although it will occasionally veer into your path.











So far as the river goes, just avoid hitting any wooden dams (or the bombs, of course), and you'll eventually make it to a series of pipes which will give you some cover from the incoming fire. In the covered room beyond, look around for another lambda symbol and run into the wooden pillars below it to release a couple of supply crates. The room beyond features a frankly ridiculous set of pipe jumps; just stick to the middle of the first set of pipes and try not to slide off before you reach the next tunnel. After you clear the tunnel, you'll be in a much more traditional type of canal. The key to not getting pounded here is to vary up your speed; if you just floor it while travelling here, you'll often set yourself up for a collision with a charge. If, however, you slow down occasionally, you'll force the helicopter to double back and return towards you, at which point you can jam on the gas again and get past it while it's attempting to hunt you down. You'll come to another ramp/jump eventually; this one will land you near a warehouse-type building, so steer your hovercraft into the building and use the supply crates and resupply stations to get your health and armor back before lowering your vehicle back down to the canal with the elevator. (You'll need to activate it by hand, so lower your craft down first before jumping down after it.)


to be continued..


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## mimo2005 (Oct 2, 2004)

PART 5











*Timmmmmber!*

Up next is a fun little scripted sequence involving a missile that topples one of the two smokestacks next to the river. Try as you might, you can't make it underneath the smokestack before it impacts; if you try, you're going to be crushed. 









Instead, move forward enough for the script to start playing itself out, then retreat a bit before using the crushed stack as a ramp to get by. Next up, all you have to do is get past a missile-firing riot truck and the helicopter before you
reach the safety of another tunnel. Another little physics problem ensues, but luckily it doesn't involve finding the coefficient of friction on a surface, because man those are rough. You'll need to raise another ramp by weighing down the elevator-like platform nearby. After releasing the platform (by using the small lever immediately next to it), you can start chucking barrels, cinderblocks and the like into it, but you won't be able to raise the ramp all the way until you climb up the ladder between the nearby pipes and drop the washing machine into the platform. Although you might see the little waystation up ahead and think that you're about to get out of the airboat once and for all, you're mistaken - it's actually just a sidestop, and you'll only be walking around long enough for your ride to get equipped with a turret. Still, though, it is a turret, and one with infinite ammo besides; it'll display as 100 rounds, but it'll quickly recharge after you use all of them up. 

*Vengeance! * 

As soon as you leave the waystation, you'll see the helicopter up ahead. It obviously wasn't expecting you to come along and blast it, though, because it'll pull off and retreat as soon as it takes a little damage, forcing you to follow it. The first task you'll be compelled to complete will involve a little CP ambush on you after you wade into a killzone. Your turret absolutely owns these troops, though, so you shouldn't have a problem clearing them out and moving on.
Next up is another riot truck, but this guy isn't nearly as difficult as it may seem, mostly due to the way you can use your turret to deflect its rockets in mid-air. You're probably going to run out of ammo if you just blast away at it, so a better tactic is to just pause in the middle of the water, tap out the necessary rounds to deflect the rockets, and click your fire button to whittle down the truck's health over time. This should prevent you from running out of ammo while the rockets fly. After the first truck is down, you'll have to cut your way through more CP troops until you reach another one. The second truck has a bit of help in the form of CP troops off to its left, but you can dispatch that threat by getting close and destroying the barrels near them, then retreat and do the same repel missile/fire on truck maneuver that you did before. The next small canal features a fly-by from a dropship; you can destroy the riot truck that it's carrying, but it doesn't appear to impact the rest of the level. Around the corner from that are a couple of semi-secret areas; head into the corridor to the right of the first Barnacles to find some magnum ammo, and proceed up into the dead-end behind the CP trooper to find some other goodies. Next up is a CP ambush; they'll extend a flame barrier across the water and will attempt to drop explosive barrels down onto you while you maneuver the ramp. You should be able to avoid the flames by approaching on the extreme right side, and the barrels can be easily destroyed before they reach you, or simply avoided.

One of the level's more significant challenges lies ahead, as two riot trucks will gang up on you as you enter another shipping area. These guys are annoying to deal with at the same time, so our recommendation is to scootch up to the ramp on the left side of the entrance to the area and move forward slowly until you see one of the riot trucks; if you're in the correct position, you shouldn't take any damage, because truck won't even fire at you! You can then easily destroy it and use the same tactics you used before on the other truck. When you're ready to move on, you'll have to get off of your boat and head into one of the shipping containers on the lower level. If you sneak around to its rear side, you'll note some barrels inside; destroy them to make a passageway through, then return to your boat and hit the ramp. 


*The Helicopter's Last Flight * 





Now that you've obtained a turret, the helicopter shouldn't pose too much of a threat to you. Even on the hardest combat settings, its own turret doesn't deal too much damage, and you'll be able to shoot out the charges it drops as it makes its fly-bys, or after they hit the ground, which should help prevent taking any damage from it. If you enter this fight with low health, zoom around the area and look for supply crates; there are a few scattered here and there which should help recharge you a bit before you go for the money.










So far as actual technique goes, the Helicopter doesn't require any special strategies; just keep moving while continuing to fire on it. Feel free to harass it when it's at long range, but you'll do most of your damage when it gets close, due to the spread of your turret's fire. It can't take too much fire, so keep up the pressure and hide behind the rocky pillars when you think it's about to use its turret. Whatever you do, stay out of the large body of water that's filled with explosive barrels; if one of them catches alight due to the charges, you can quickly find yourself getting blown to pieces. After the heli's down, raise the barrier to the left of the large building and head through. You'll need to get up to the helipad area, fight through the CP troops guarding the building (inside which you'll find plenty of health, armor, and ammo), then walk out onto the bridge and raise one of the gates there before returning to your boat and jumping through the dam.


*Black Mesa East*

In order to track down Eli, Alyx, and the rest of the Black Mesa crew, disembark from your boat near the lambda symbol and walk around to the back of the power station. You'll soon find yourself in an airlock, from which you'll be escorted to Dr. Vance, who promises to get you "out of that hazard suit and back into a lab coat, where you belong." Yeah, right. Eventually, Alyx will appear and escort you out to the scrapyard, where you'll get to play around with the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator, aka the gravity gun, aka the coolest. Weapon. Ever. Perfect for capturing the Incredibles, it also works great when you need to pick up an item and throw it at someone. 










Alyx will walk you through the basics of its use, as well as introduce you to Dog, her imaginatively named pet. When Dog throws items at you, move your reticule over them and use your alt-fire to snatch them out of midair. There isn't much else you can do in this segment; after a set amount of time, you'll have to book it back to Black Mesa East, where Dog will escort you to the tunnel leading to Ravenholme. The ladder leading up to the down is locked, so blast the padlock with a gun before heading up. 

*"We Don't Go To Ravenholm..."*

Time to put your new gravity gun to the test! Ravenholm is essentially a playground for its use; even in the first building, you're going to be able to pick up explosive barrels and use them (instadeath), air canisters (causes the zombies to catch alight), rotary blades (chops them in two), and perhaps our favorite, cans of paint (coats the zombies in a fabulous eggshell color). There are plenty of targets in Ravenholm, so you may want to get one of the rotary blades and keep reusing it on the zombies; you aren't going to get a whole lot of ammo resupplies here, so it pays to make use of the free kills that the gravity gun affords you.










The first part of Ravenholm isn't so tricky; there's only one real path to follow, so chop through the zombies in your way. You can use the propeller traps to do your dirty work for you; when the zombies step into the spinning blades, they instantly die. Even if a trap is deactivated (you can switch them off by ducking underneath the blades and flipping the handle), you can still use your primary fire on the grav gun to spin them up, forcing the same effect. Eventually, you'll come to a building where the madman that's been cackling at you will appear; you'll know you're there when you see the conflagration of burning zombies. This is where the puzzles begin, and they're sometimes rather tricky.

*I Love The Smell Of Burning Zombies*

In The Morning In this instance, you'll have to find a way to disable the various traps before you can move on to the next area. To begin with, find the propane tanks here and disable them by using their red valves; this will dissipate the flames, allowing you access into the building. Inside the building, you'll find a pair of generators, and a stairwell leading up. On the top floor, inside the room where the mutant headcrabs dwell, you'll find a switch that disables the electrical trap. If you want, you can head straight for the de-electrified fence; you can also climb up atop one of the generators in the main room of the building to find a small vent to crawl through. This leads to a small cache with a grenade, an SMG grenade, and some ammo. When you clear the previously electrified fence, you'll meet up with Father Gregori again, who'll deliver another little aphoristic saying before shuffling you through to the next area. Jump down
to the planks below his position to move on. Although you can drop down as soon as you enter the next building, it'd be unwise to do so, because there are four headcrabs and a zombie waiting for you down there. You can use a grenade if you wish, or use your gravity gun to throw down all of the compressed air canisters before shooting them. Outside the building, you'll come across some of Gregori's car traps; use the levers to drop the cars when they're suspended above a zombie, and watch it go splat! In order to move on, though, you'll need to drop the second car with the lever, then jump on it before it can begin rising again. You can find some health, armor, and a grenade by jumping from the car to the darkened room by the lambda symbol; afterwards, though, you'll need to jump from the car to the planks to get Gregori to introduce himself.

*Well, Actually, It's Kind of Nauseating * 

After reaching the exterior of the building you're in, stay on the platforms above the street and pop off the explosive barrels below. Zombies, zombies, burning bright, in the cities of the night! The barrels will also probably set most of the headcrabs alight, as well, which is handy since there are so many of them. You can finish off any stragglers with your pistol or with the gravity gun before descending and making your way up the ladder at the far end of the street. The platforms above street level will take you either left, into another small cache of items (guarded by one of the quick mutant headcrabs) or right, into what appears to be some kind of zombie autopsy center.








Before heading down, grab another sawblade and use it to pop through the zombies coming up the stairs; you should be able to get four or five of them at a go. After the next checkpoint, head out to meet up with some of the new and improved zombies. When the quickest varient of headcrab attaches itself to a human, the result is a zombie that's devestatingly quick, both in terms of movement and attack, and also more resistant to damage than normal zombies. You'll have to kill one of them as it approaches you; if you still have a sawblade attached to your grav gun, then that'll do the job. Otherwise, an SMG aiming at their heads should be suitable. Before you move into the building here, you'd do well to clear out the streets around it; there are plenty of headcrabs and a few zombies milling about, and they're easy enough to kill with your grav gun and any appropriately heavy item. Inside the building, you'll want to move up the stairs, but you'll likely want to use your SMG instead of a grav gun due to the close quarters and frequency of headcrab appearances. Better safe than sorry!

TO BE CONTINUED...


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