Milkduds

Half Life 2 - Entanglement

I got a good solid hour and a half to play yesterday while my daughter was sleeping, but it doesn’t seem like I’ve gotten very far. I went through the prison by cleaning up the soldiers with my antlions and got to a control room where I had to jump out of a window into yet another large area, but my antlions couldn’t follow. This would, of course, mean that I’m about to face something big. I jumped out and a bunch of soldiers busted through a double door, so I started shooting at them but they weren’t concerned with me because they were running from a mother antlion. I had no rockets, but only a bunch of flammable barrels to throw at her. This seemed to only anger her more. After a lot of running around, I found a large hole in the wall that was blocked by junk. I used my grav gun to quickly move it and got through the hole before the mother could get me.

I was now outside of the prison and looking down a long alley full of rubble and junk, but there was a large steel structure on the right side. I started going down the alley and the structure started to move! A section of it raised up, paused, then promptly came smashing down on top of me, killing me. Reloaded the game and did this a few times and finally saw that I had to move a box to get into a wall that took me to the next level.

Once inside the wall, I crawled through and came to a train station of some kind and saw Alex running around. I met up with her and she hacked into the building we were next to so we could find out how to get her father. I had to escort her through the building and help her kill off the soldiers that came at us, but we finally got to a comptuer that showed us where her father was. He, and a lot of other folks, were being held in these pods to be used in experiments. She brought him down and opened the pod and he was ok, but we had to find a way to get with the other scientists to figure out how to free everyone.

Alex let me go back into the building while she helped me out through a radio in my HEV suit. I was basically back in another prison building, but this time she could open gates for me and tell me where to go. I got to a command post where I couldn’t go any further because of a large energy field blocking my way. I was able to use two auto turrets to temporarily hold off the soldiers coming through the barrier, but they didn’t last long. After about 10 minutes of wave after wave of soldiers, they stopped coming and Alex broke through the roof. She tapped into a computer and we watched a conversation between the head evil scientist and that woman I knew earlier was going to be trouble. Alex was upset, but even more determined to bring down the evil scientists. She unlocked the energy barrier and I was back into another prison area.

And that’s where I am at the moment, but this time I don’t have the help of my antlions. I am started to get tired of the game at this point. I think there should be more story of maybe it should change up the environment for me a little more. I’m really getting sick of being in dark, rundown buildings and having to be so cautious. I hope this changes.

2 comments January 9th, 2005

RSS Reader Roundup

My main reason for researching RSS readers was because I am currently in the beginning stages of deploying Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 for our company’s Intranet, and the only good information out there resides on people’s blogs. So, the best way to keep informed on new blog posts is by using an RSS reader to view all your blogs in one place. The following are my reviews of Thunderbird, RSS Bandit, Feedreader, RSSOwl, and SharpReader.

Continue Reading 3 comments January 6th, 2005

Half Life 2 - Nova Prospekt (continued)

I didn’t much time to play last night, but it was better than nothing, I guess. I started where I left off at the end of my last post, which was in a room with boxes blocking a doorway. I blew them away with my grav gun and proceeded to a balcony of prison cells overlooking what looked like a very large shower room or bath room of sorts with no soldiers or creatures to attack me. And that should be your first clue in HL2 that you are about to face either a bunch of enemies at once, or one large miniboss-type enemy. Well, the latter was the case in this situation. I jumped off the balcony with no way to get back up, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, one of those large mother antlions charged through a double door. I didn’t know how to kill it since my last meeting with one of these resulted in the resistance forces taking it down with a mounted gun. So, my gut reaction was to just start shooting at it with my pulse rifle. That didn’t do much, so I switched over to my laser-guided rocket launcher and fired away, which immediately caused the creature to pause for a second and groan in pain. I unloaded my other 2 rockets and it paused for a longer period and I thought it was dead, so I stopped running away from it. It charged at me and cornered me and I didn’t know what else to do since I was out of rockets. So, I unloaded on it with my gun and right before I ran out of health, it died. Then, it slumped over with a long groan. But I had only 3 health left! DO OVER!!! I loaded up my saved game again and tried again, but this time ended it’s life quickly.

After that was over, I found another pair of double doors that had a LOT of junk blocking it. They sure want me to get use out of this grav gun, I guess. Through the doors, I met up again with a couple friendly antlions and sent them forward with the pheropod. They found some Combine soldiers to take care of, but kept getting killed by the automatic turrets. I took care of the turrets and proceeded through the prison, picking up more friendly antlions along the way and sending them to do my dirty work. I eventually came to a point where there was a soldier with a mounted gun behind an energy field, so I just ran underneath the balcony he was standing on and just peeked out enough to lob a grenade up to him. Once that was done, I sent my antlions buzzing over the balcony to inspect the situation. And that’s where I took the screenshot and stopped playing.

Stay tuned!

Add comment January 6th, 2005

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

Half Life 2 - Highway 17 (continued)

I played for about an hour and a half and didn’t seem to get too far. I think I play really slow and cautious anyway for a couple reasons: 1) I don’t want to just rush into areas and start getting blown away, so if I can pick off enemies from a distance or one at a time, I won’t loose much health and 2) I really like the environment HL2 gives you and I like to explore all of my surroundings. After I got through that tunnel, I happened upon that glowing magnetic ball and tossed it in the ocean. As I drove up the highway, I found several areas where I could expect to find one or more of those balls and structures with Combine soldiers ready to ambush me. When I got closer to the final area, I picked up a new weapon that is basically a crossbow with a scope on it. There’s only one level of zoom, but it’s pretty decent and it shoots some sort of energy arrow that kills the soldiers with one shot.

I finally got to an area with a couple larger, rundown buildings with more soldiers and even a few headcrab dudes. I also figured out that those poisonous spiders work kinda like the headcrabe dudes. It’s a person with several spiders on his head being controlled by one and he throws all the spiders on this head at you. And he takes quite a few shots to take down as do the spiders. This area also had a box full of rockets to load up on, and that can only mean one thing - I’ll be battling an airship soon. Once I got past the buildings there was an incline in the ground that my car could go up onto a bridge, but the bridge was blocked off by a couple energy fields. I went back down and found a door that took me under the bridge.

I had to make my way across the scaffolding of the bridge to the other side. I found more soldiers, arrows, and rockets along the way and finally made it to the other side to disable the energy fields. Once I did that, a bunch of soldiers came after me and the airship came to find me. I took care of the soldiers and unloaded my rockets at the airship, but only got 2 hits. What sucks about the rocket launcher is that it only holds 3 rockets and it takes 3 to bring down an airship. So, if you don’t make all 3 hits, you have to go find more rockets to reload. I’m making my way back across the scaffolding (which is a little tricky cause you can’t just run straight across) to get the rockets I saw earlier.

2 comments January 1st, 2005