Half-Life 2 - Episode 2 - Unfamiliar Ceilings

[Awoo]

Oh, man, is it time already? Released back in 2004, Half-Life 2 is one of the most renowned games of all time.

Super looking forward to seeing this play out. Good luck, raocow!

Half-Life 2

• Half-Life 2 - 1 - Hi. I've never played a modern FPS in my life.
• Half Life 2 - 2 - Hey friends, I know none of you
• Half-Life 2 - 2.999999 - Licked up by a gross thing
• Half-Life 2 - 4 - Beware the obvious puzzles
• Half-Life 2 - 5 - Bombs with screaming chickens
• Half-Life 2 - 6 - Cruisin' on the riverbed
• Half-Life 2 - 7 - No time for heli-chan
• Half-Life 2 - 8 - Okay, senpai noticed
• Half-Life 2 - 9 - Friendship in rivalry
• Half-Life 2 - 10 - New act begins
• Half-Life 2 - 11 - Navigating party town!!
• Half-Life 2 - 12 - 'Mgnn gnahh aoohhg !!' (local quote)
• Half-Life 2 - 13 - Always in my heart you will remain
• Half-Life 2 - 14 - Silence! Conflict in progress
• Half-Life 2 - 15 - Puttering forward
• Half-Life 2 - 16 - SCIENCE!!
• Half-Life 2 - 17 - Clearing the bridge area
• Half-Life 2 - 18 - Around the gate in 80 days
• Half-Life 2 - 19 - Kill or be killed (or just run away)
• Half-Life 2 - 20 - Cavalry, the
• Half-Life 2 - 21 - Science of war
• Half-Life 2 - 22 - Tiny bit of an increase in difficulty, maybe
• Half-Life 2 - 23 - Vive la famille!
• Half-Life 2 - 24 - Creative use of washtubs
• Half-Life 2 - 25 - "Mnmnmnmnmn" (quote from my turret buddy)
• Half-Life 2 - 26 - Fellas, chill out a bit okay
• Half-Life 2 - 27 - Commander Doctor Freedom
• Half-Life 2 - 28 - Nice going or whatever
• Half-Life 2 - 29 - Custodian's gonna hate me
• Half-Life 2 - 30 - 'Znnnnnnnn' (sound of wall juice)
• Half-Life 2 - 31 - Gallant and goofus share one body
• Half-Life 2 - 32 - Geography of the dead
• Half-Life 2 - 33 - Ask about my spatial navigation skills
• Half-Life 2 - 34 - Seriously though
• Half-Life 2 - 35 - Bravo Dog, good boy
• Half-Life 2 - 36 - Kraken release
• Half Life 2 - 37 - RBI Baseball King conquers once more

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

• HL2 Lost Coast - 38 - Sr Olga's funtime cliffside church event

Half-Life 2: Episode 1

• HL2 Episode 1 - 39 - Your average typical everyday retcon
• HL2 Episode 1 - 40 - Zrzrzr zrzrzr
• HL2 Episode 1 - 41 - NBA survived the invasion, probably
• HL2 Episode 1 - 42 - More darkness, more family issues
• HL2 Episode 1 - 43 - Tchotchkes for sale, slightly crunched and/or blown out
• HL2 Episode 1 - 44 - Running around downtown
• HL2 Episode 1 - 45 - Rhinoceros-sized hole in my head
• HL2 Episode 1 - 46 - PDWE is a real acronym for a real thing that has nothing to do with the episode
• HL2 Episode 1 - 47 - Aggressivity will be met with equal measure

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

• HL2 Episode 2 - 48 - CD 3 inserted; loading...
• HL2 Episode 2 - 49 - Inside the nest
• HL2 Episode 2 - 50 - Snack time for ants
• HL2 Episode 2 - 51 - Sbemail 45099. physics
• HL2 Episode 2 - 52 - Terrible fearsome antbull !!
• HL2 Episode 2 - 53 - International bull-fighting championship
• HL2 Episode 2 - 54 - Xenomorph moment in the sewage cabin
• HL2 Episode 2 - 55 - CS-adjacent adventures
• HL2 Episode 2 - 56 - Battle of the junkyard
• HL2 Episode 2 - 57 - Last chance for gas
• HL2 Episode 2 - 58 - Celebration
• HL2 Episode 2 - 59 - Private silo tour
• HL2 Episode 2 - 60 - NDA regarding these events forthcoming
• HL2 Episode 2 - TO BE CONTINUED - 61 - PM, exact time unknown

[raocow]

good morning mr. awoo

[SAJewers]

Just wanted to congratulate Minna for being the first Royal and selecting this as the first Royal game.

Excited to see where this goes :D

[thatguyif]

Out of curiosity, what were Minna's other two choices?

[SAJewers]

Out of curiosity, what were Minna's other two choices?

IIRC Bioshock and Mass Effect

[thatguyif]

Ah, good to know

[WinterSweater]

Rise and shine...

[Kilgamayan]

whotf is minna

[thatguyif]

The first Royal, Kilgamayan

[Grounder]

some good training for sonic 06 today

i'm guessing that it's loading all of the area at one time, rather than in chunks relative to player position?

[thatguyif]

Anyway, that was a beautiful start

For what it's worth, I played this once, to completion, oh...when it launched over 15 years ago? I have no intent on going back to that game, but it's going to be fun watching you play this with such...wonder

Also, Grounder, it's loading in chunks. But the way it was coded back then meant that even now, it would be slow to load the map.

[Crow]

Man, I forgot how weird the megaman games got in the 2000's

[Grounder]

Also, Grounder, it's loading in chunks. But the way it was coded back then meant that even now, it would be slow to load the map.

A better way to say what I meant is that it's loading area by area statically, rather than dynamically, as would probably be done now.

[Reecer7]

this is blowing my mind.

it's a matter of preference, and obviously you have very little predefined preference, so it probably doesn't bug you or anything, but if you feel like moving your head is too slow and might hold you back with the quick twitch-button shooties in the future, def fiddle with mouse sensitivity in the options. i only say because i tend to play fpses as if i've had my neck replaced with a ball bearing :V

so wait, is how it works that a ℛℴ𝓎𝒶𝓁 just gets to pick 3 games out of the aether of their own volition, and then raocow must pick his poison of critically acclaimed fps released at least once in 2007? because that's pretty cool!

[Crow]

raocow has said that if your picks are all trolling or otherwise unreasonable he can veto them and you will be skipped, but yeah basically that's it
it also can't be "here's one game i really want you to play and two absolutely crap games i don't actually want you to play" because raocow will then pick one of the two absolutely crap games or something like that

[Blivsey]

oh wow these faces are incredible

[AlchemistHohenheim]

This will certainly be interesting to behold.

Like I'm not gonna lie, I have some concerns about how raocow's general commentary style will mesh with a more cinematic thing like this, but I'm interested in seeing how it turns out.

[Leet]

I was disappointed at first that raocow skipped the first arc of Half-Life but if he's seen it before that's ok.

But regardless,

- THE STORY SO FAR -

Gordon Freeman was a scientist working at the secret science company Black Mesa which was contracted by the US government to make science for them. Mostly he wore a hazardous materials suit and observed tests. Secretly though Black Mesa had made contact with another dimension called "Xen" and was retrieving objects and organisms from there to test them. One day they try to shoot lasers at a crystal they got from Xen, but it all goes wrong and triggers creatures from Xen to begin teleporting into the facility en masse.

In the aftermath of the accident Gordon Freeman tries to fight his way to the surface and help his fellow scientists (who were all just generic character models, but apparently included characters we're seeing in HL2 like Kliener and Eli). He fights creatures like the parasitic headcrabs and the slave race vortigaunts. The scientists have sent a request for help to the government and are hopeful that when the military arrives everything will be dealt with. PSYCHE! The military has actually been ordered to kill everyone on the premises to keep everything under wraps, so on top of the aliens Gordon is also being hunted down by his fellow man.

Gordon rendezvous with scientists at the Lambda Complex who are going to teleport him into Xen where maybe he can stop whatever is commanding the aliens. It turns out to be a giant H. R. Giger baby called the Nihilanth. Gordon murders it singlehandedly. After this victory, however, he is approached by the mysterious "G-Man" fellow who he's been seeing around the facility, who says he works for completely unknown higher powers and that they will be in need of Gordon's services again in the future. Gordon is placed into a kind of stasis, in which he remains until the events of today's video (so yes, he has no idea what's going on and thus neither does the player).

Also, the military themselves were taken out by even higher-level US assassins (except for Adrian Shepard, a guy who was also put into stasis but he isn't important) and Black Mesa was nuked. Also, Gordon had a security guard friend named Barney who also did some other stuff.

Final note: The Nihilanth was seen to speak to Gordon at times. Between the used clips and some unused clips, he seemed to warn about not trusting the G-Man, as well as referred to a mysterious "they" who had enslaved his people.

[tangy]

My power grows, Gordon.

[Piesonscreations]

I'm sure the enviroment artists would be pleased watching raocow play and interacting with everything.
This let's play will be interesting on like, a historical basis. There aren't many people raocow's age, who have been playing games for as long as he has, and with as little experience is this genre as he has.
Also, in a way, raocow seems to react more like how I'd expect a scientist to react to these situations that he's being put in, than what Gordon actually does. Then again, Gordon's been through some shit already.

[xnamkcor]

Set Filtering Mode to the lowest setting or "off" AKA, Point or Nearest Neighbor.
Turn on Wait For Vertical Sync.
You can turn off High Dynamic Range. It want even really used in the release HL2. And if they added stuff in, I'm not sure it helps much or adds to the game.
You can turn off Color Correction.
No idea what Windows Aero has to do with a fullscreen game.
If you want to waste some time, get out your favourite protractor and observe the angle from your eyes to the side edges of the monitor you're using.
That would be your optimal Field Of View.

The guy said to avoid checkpoints, but isn't every autosave a checkpoint?

[TiKi]

What's a royal?

[Ditocoaf]

What's a royal?

Part of the new Patreon game-choosing system. Every other patreon-chosen game is a "public vote" and every other is a "royal pick". For the public vote, raocow offers five games and every patron gets to vote among them. For the royal pick, one randomly-selected patron gets to propose three games for raocow to choose between.

Minna was the first randomly-selected patron for the Royal Pick, and HL2 was one of the games he offered raocow. (The first voted game was "Mystery Box", which turned into Waku Waku 7.)

[WinterSweater]

That advice about turning corners while sidestepping is really good. I think I heard it too while playing Wolfenstein 3D

[Petzi]

Oh my GOD, I am SOOOO hyped for this, you have no idea! When I saw "Half Life 2" on the COMING UP NEXT list I thought "Naaah there's no way that's THE Half-Life 2. Look, it's even written without a hyphen! Must be some mario hack with the same name."

But yet, here we are. This is unbelievable and it's going to be unbelievably good. Once I've watched raocow let's play Half-Life 2, I will have seen everything.

Anyway, raocow, of all the FPS games you could have chosen as your first one, this is probably the best choice. There is just so much good design here, starting with the tutorial.

MAN, this is gonna be great!