Milkduds

Half Life 2 - Nova Prospekt

Now that I had the antlions under my control, I trudged forward through more sand and rock towards Nova Prospekt. Having the antlions is REALLY nice in open area combat, which I started encountering. The only real trick was turning off these devices along the way that the Combine set up that stomp the ground to repel the antlions. Once I cleaned out several bunkers, I made my way up some cliffs and through a sewer up into Nova Prospekt, which is an old prison.

Once inside the perimeter, I faced more towers with mounted guns, but just had my antlions take care of them. Then, an airship came at me and obliterated my antlions. 3 rockets to the airship and I was done, right? No, they needed to send one more airship my way with me having no rockets to shoot. This part was really tricky because I encountered a LOT of towers and soldiers while trying to find rockets to shoot at the 2nd airship, but after loosing much health and countless antlions I finally brought it down. I made my way inside the prision through a hole in the wall, but the antlions didn’t follow. At first I thought it was a bug (get it?), but it wasn’t.

Inside the prison, I expected to find a lot of hidden enemies, but there really weren’t that many. I would find myself trapped behind locked doors seeing antlions being slaughtered by motion sensor gun turrets. All I had to do was knock them over by any means possible (usually my grav gun) to disable them. I made my way through the maze of the prison to a room where I ended my play. A friendly headcrab greeted me there and I swiftly brought him to his demise. Looks like all I need to do is knock over some crates to get out.

This probably ends my barrage of posts about HL2 because my vacation ends tomorrow and I have to go back to work. I have been playing during the day while my daughter is taking a nap, or by staying up late to play after watching a movie or tv with my wife. Since I’ve had the rest of the day to spend with them, it’s been easy to set aside an hour or two without them. But now it will be harder during the week. I don’t know how far I am, but I bet I’m about half way done, so this shouldn’t take much longer.

Add comment January 2nd, 2005

I, Robot (8/10)

After sitting in it’s Netflix sleeve for what seems like weeks, I finally watched I, Robot. I haven’t read Asimov’s short stories for which the movie is based on, but from what I hear, it is very loosely based. The movie has the very basic theme of “what if we created artificial intelligence so good that it starts to disobey us”, and it follows through quite nicely. I, Robot is jam-packed with action and a good amount of suspense and mystery, so I can say I was fully entertained by the movie. I would say that I, Robot was every bit as good and interesting as Minority Report for fans of futuristic sci-fi.

The acting, although overshadow greatly by the action and effects, was well executed by Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan. Will even did a good almost-cry scene when he reveals the reason behind his hatred for robots. I especially liked the prop of having Will’s left arm being cybernetic because it sure started coming in handy after we find out about it. And I was glad to see Shia LaBeouf (of Even Stevens fame) getting a role in a good blockbuster. I guess the only thing that I really didn’t like about the movie only has to do with the fact that I’m a computer geek - the computer interfaces were sooooo stupid looking!!! When will Hollywood pacify us computer nerds with some realistic yet futuristic computer interfaces? Aside from that, I, Robot is a well done futuristic sci-fi that will keep the viewer interested until the very end.

Add comment January 2nd, 2005

Half Life 2 - Sandtraps

After defeating the airship, I made my way back across the bridge and back to the rundown buildings where I was ambushed by more Combine soldiers. I drove my car up a ramp to the bridge, which I found out was for trains. One train was blocking one side so I went ahead on the other. Halfway down I heard a train coming so I had to put it in reverse and haul butt. I made it back just in time to move over before the train could hit me. I went back and made it across, but there was another energy field blocking my way. I went down another ramp and up another makeshift ramp to a tunnel. I went through this dark tunnel and was stopped by a bunch of old cars blocking my way and was immediately attacked by numerous headcrab dudes. I took them all out and used my grav gun to move the cars out of my way to get through the rest of the tunnel. I got back on the open highway and made it to a Combine checkpoint where I took out a bunch of soldiers and a couple magnetic balls. Past that checkpoint, I made it to another checkpoint where I was stopped by a makeshift gate that had to be opened. I couple of dropships dropped off a bunch of soldiers, whom I took care of quickly, and I had to figure out how to open the gate. In one of the buildings there was a table with three electrical circuits with a place for a battery in each. One already had a battery, and I found one in the room to put in and, after much grav gun manipulation, I found the third under an overturned bathtub outside. With that one in place, the gate was lifted and I went through yet another tunnel.

I came to the next checkpoint with caution, but it turned out it was a resistance force checkpoint. They told me to hide my car in their garage (bye, bye, car!) and to get ready for more dropships. The soldiers came in large numbers and after they were taken out, I went into an old lighthouse to take care of an airship. Once that was done, a guy showed me how to leave on foot through a path on the cliffs.

Shortly after making my way along the cliffs, I came to a bunch of rocks and sand. There was a guy there with a hurt friend that told me not to get on the sand or the antlions would come out. His friend moved on the sand and they were quickly eaten, which left me for dessert. I took out the antlions and stayed on the rocks. There was a lot of jumping around at this point and a LOT of grav gun manipulation to move pallets and other things on the sand so I could jump on them.

I eventually came to a part in this maze where I HAD to jump into a canyon of nothing but sand and a large hole in the middle. Once on the sand, and as expected, several antlions came out and one large mother antlion pursued me. Luckily, there were resistance forces behind the canyon that gunned down the mother, but slowly. That mother knocked me around quite a bit, but I survived. One of the alien resistance force came out and worked a little magic on the mother and told me to take something off her. I then followed him into the caves where he showed me how to use this thing, called a pheripod. Apparently, I had an endless supply of them and I could throw them to summon antlions at whatever point they landed on. He demonstrated it on a dead Combine soldier’s body. Finally, he rasied a gate and told me that would be the way to Nova Prospect (where Eli was).

Add comment January 2nd, 2005