Half Life 2 - Ravenholm
Alex showed me how to use the gravity gun (way cool) and took me to her “dog” (huge, agile, robot) to play fetch with it by using the grav gun. We ended up in this big open area and he threw big crates and a “ball” at me and I had to catch it with the grav gun and thow it back. That was all fun and games until the “scanners” came by and spotted us. A “scanner” is the very first thing you run into in this game. It basically scans around and takes pictures of any person it finds. Once it finds you, get ready cause reinforcements will arrive. So, the best thing for you to do is shoot it down before it catches you. Anyway, we all freak out and get stuck in this air lock thing while trying to get back to the lab. I chase after Alex, but once again, we are seperated. This time, it’s a hall that gets caved in between us. So, the dog opens up this sealed off hallway that leads to a city called Ravenholm.
This is where the game starts to get scary. Earlier, on the way to get the grav gun, we walked by that hallway and she said something about Ravenholm and that they don’t go there anymore and that it’s sealed off for a reason. Well, lucky me, now I get to go there! It’s basically filled with headcrabs and people controlled by headcrabs and also a few of these spider-type poisonous things. One got on me and my health went almost to nothing, but my HEV suit shot me up with antidote and morphine and brought me back to 100. I also met a man with a Russian accent named Father Grigory. You hear him spouting off some biblical-type prose and then you meet him by teaming up with him to kill off some of the headcrab dudes. He checked up on me at several checkpoints so far and helped me out. I really need to start watching my ammo now cause I’m quickly dishing it out and not getting any back like I was by killing those guards. So, the point of Ravenholm, I guess, is just to get through it and back to the lab to Alex and Eli.
Add comment December 29th, 2004
Ok, so the rest of the air bike maps didn’t take much longer. The climax of the air bike maps pits you against one of those super helicopters. I forgot to mention in my last post that when the resistance forces put that gun on my air bike, they got it from one of the super helicopters. So, essentially, you give this helicopter a taste of its own medicine! You end up in this very large, open area (you find out later it’s a dam basin) with a few hills, lots of water, and a bunch of crates with power for your HEV suit. This helicopter starts dropping a TON of mines on you and shoots at you a lot. Once I shot down the helicopter, I had to do some more problem-solving (of which there has been a lot of so far) to find out how to get out of the large area. I opened up a few gates, killed some guards, loaded up on some ammo, then drove my plane off the dam. I found a large utilities building with a dock, so I jumped off the air bike to investigate, and find out that I’ve ended up where Alex and her father, Eli, are! I’m greeted by a woman (can’t remember her name) that says how honored she is to meet me. I meet Eli and Alex again and I get the feeling from Alex that this other woman is going to be bad news. Supposedly she keeps talking about how she should have had my job in the first game and that she wouldn’t have screwed it up like I did. Whatever. Anyway, I’m at the point now where Alex is going to show me how to use the gravity gun (yipee!). 
Played a good bit of HL2 last night. Since my last post, I traversed further through the canals and met one of the resistance force members that gave me an “air bike” (sorta like a hovercraft) to get through the canals quicker. This also helps with getting through the nuclear waste patches too. Getting the air bike puts you into the BEST video game chase sequences of all time. You have to go full throttle through these canals, which are bascially like huge trashed out storm drains, while being chased by this super helicopter that is shooting at you. Along the way you get ambushed by many repelling gaurds, armored vehicles that shoot rockets at you, and countless obstacles. Sometimes you think you are trapped, but you spot a makeshift ramp that you can shoot across on the bike. I’m playing the game on normal so I got banged up a LOT by enemies but didn’t get close to dying. I got to a point where I met up with more resistance forces that put a gun on my air bike so I can shoot back while driving.