Sunday, October 29, 2006

Half-Life 2 (Xbox) Completed for the 3rd Time


Last weekend I finished up a long work week on Saturday and decided to spend the rest of it binge-gaming, and the first title I finished off was Half-Life 2 (Xbox). I ended up playing, I think, the last four Chapters pretty much in one sitting, and overall had a good time.

Half-Life 2 is still vastly over-rated game, but on its own merits it is fun to play. I do find it unfortunate that my own father showed me a way to total neuter the first of the only two challenging spots I found in the game by totally exploiting the game's shoddy AI, but hey, that's Valve for you.

Basically, in "Entanglement," there a section where you drop down into a prison cell area and while waiting for Alyx to meet up with you a bunch of Combine Soldiers keep rushing in and attacking you. You can set up three Combine Turrets to help defend you, but it gets tough because for some reason the Combine Soldiers with Shotguns actually hurt at point blank range (where they didn't before).

Anyway, my father showed me that all you need to do is block up the four force field doors (that they come from but you can't pass through) with the boxes and barrels in the area, stacking them up, and the Soliders will be too dumb to get past that most basic of obsticles... and he was right.

Only one of those blocked force field doors was breached and another I ran out of boxes and it was only partially blocked; though with the turrets and such this area was now a breeze.

Anyway, the mindless shooting and simplistic puzzles were enjoyable enough, so I'll check out the continuing Half-Life 2 Episodes either on PC when they drop in price or on the Xbox 360 when it drops in price.

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