Half-Life (series)/YMMV: Difference between revisions

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* [[Accidental Innuendo]]: "If you follow standard insertion procedure, everything should be fine."

* [[Alternative Character Interpretation]]: In Episode Two, Alyx's "Great driving, Gordon!" line sounds really sarcastic if you're the kind of player who's already crashed twice.

* [[Demonic Spiders]]: The Overwatch Shotgun Soldiers added with ''Episode Two'', then retroactively integrated into the previous two games. If they manage to close in on you, they can deal huge amounts of damage by using the shotgun's double-shell secondary fire. The game loves to put them right around corners where they'll gleefully exploit this.

** Episode One and Episode Two have the Combine Overwatch Zombie. At first, it doesn't seem so bad, just a regular zombie with twice as much health. But then you realize that they can sprint, do more damage per hit, and most importantly, can whip out a grenade and suicide bomb you. That attack is nearly always a [[One-Hit Kill]], and whenever you encounter a group of zombies at least one Zombine ''will'' use it, pulling out a grenade and sprinting at you.

** From the original Half Life: Those goddamn Alien Grunts, 8 foot tall alien [[Elite Mooks]] encountered 2/3 through the game. For starters,[[Made of Iron|they were absurdly tough]]. Getting to close to them was nearly instant death due to their extremely powerful melee attack. They never, ''ever'' stopped firing their hive hands, even while absorbing an entire clip of 9mm rounds. There was absolutely no way to hide from them, hiding behind a piece of cover or around a corner was useless because their hive hands ''track you'', and do the same damage per shot as the HECU's MP5 submachine guns. They were immune to damage on the armored part of their bodies. Worst of all, they attacked in groups, and that damage adds up over time, meaning almost every encounter with them would end with you a dead and them barley scratched. The only real way to deal with them was to use an extremely powerful weapon with rare ammo (i.e. the Rocket Launcher, Gluon Gun, Magnum, or the grenade launcher), or circle strafe while firing your submachine gun or shotgun secondary fire, hoping that they miss enough shots so that they die before you do. Basically, they were HECU grunts with twice as much health and ''homing bullets''. Half Life: Source made a few changes to make them more manageable. The MP5 does more damage, they are briefly stunned upon getting hit, and they no longer completely deflect damage on their armored parts. They're still tough, just not as ridiculous as they were.

*** Actually these troper found it fairly easy to circle straft kill a alien grunt with a mp5. If you were running fast enough you could dodge the bees.

** Also, DOG. Valve responded to his popularity by giving him a major role in the intro of Episode One.

** Barney, to an extent. People have shown to be really concerned about where he is in Episode Two.

** The philosophical Vortigaunt and Nihilanth, simply because people love speculating about what they're telling you.

** Father Grigori. Appears in one level, yet is one of the most popular characters.

* [[Mary Sue]]: You will most likely be harshly criticized for saying this, but Gordon Freeman could arguably fit this. He is well-known, constantly showered in praise (both in and out of the game), seen by allies as moral boosting hero who instantly have faith in him and never doubt him for a second (even treating him like he is a close friend of sorts), can complete missions on his own in situations where most men would fail, even being able to beat military soldiers with no training of his own, and even being the greatest threat to a multiverse empire (again, where the military could not). Then there is that if you say anything about him (again, both in an out of game) that is not showering praise, you will be harshly criticized.

* [[Memetic Badass]]: Gordon Freeman stopped an [[Alien Invasion]] ''with a crowbar''. He is well on his way to doing it a second time... [[After the End|after]] the aliens in question have already [[Take Over the World|taken over the world]]. Is it still memetic if it's only barely exaggerated?

* [[Nausea Fuel]]: The barnacles in ''Half-Life 2''.

* [[Paranoia Fuel]]: Headcrabs are ''everywhere'', especially when they leap out at you from vents when you don't have your flashlight on. [[It Got Worse]] when the sequel added poison and fast varieties of headcrab. An unofficial design principle for custom maps runs thus: "A headcrab in every vent is boring; a headcrab in one-fifth of the vents is terrifying."

* [[Player Punch]]:

* [[Sacred Cow]]: Boy is it ever.

* [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]]: Aw ''man'', the first game suffers from this so hard today simply because ''everything'', '''''everything''''' it did was relentlessly copied by every single studio in the business. Modern gaming neophytes can have difficulty understanding how important it was, simply because they're very likely played a bunch of games previously which cribbed notes from what Half-Life did.

* [[Swiss Army Weapon]]: Gordon Freeman's suit. Not only does it protect from dangerous hazards, it can block bullets, generate air, it has a flashlight, it can [[Hyperspace Arsenal|hold many weapons]], allows Gordon to run faster, and has a scope.

* [[Scrappy Weapon]]: The Tripmines in the first game, the sub machine gun in the second. The tripmines were this because they were functionally useless since most enemies moved so fast, only being really useful on the last boss gargantua you face, on Xen. The sub machine gun in the second game seems powerful and fun to use at first, but later when the combine soldiers start coming in, it becomes painfully obvious that it is inaccurate and weak, not even scratching combine soldiers.

* [[That One Boss]]: The Gonarch, which also doubles as [[That One Level]]. The same goes for the Nihilanth, and really, the entirety of Xen is "That One Level". The {{spoiler|masssed Striders you face}} at the end of Episode 2, as well. Hunters EVERYWHERE, Magnusson whingeing at you constantly and the Magnusson devices seem to be a bit finicky about whether they stick or just bounce off: [[That One Level]] sandwiched right between a great game and a jaw-dropping ending. Gnnn.

** Actually, the Magnusson devices always stick; problematically, the Hunters can shoot the devices right off the body of a Strider, and they do it fast enough to be truly aggravating.

* [[Unfortunate Character Design]]: The Gonarch's egg-sack looks like a huge scrotum, which is completely deliberate. Quoth Gabe Newell in ''Raising the Bar'':

* [[Villain Decay]]:

** Striders go from being the symbol of unstoppable oppression, to [[Boss in Mook Clothing]], to [[Your Head Asplode|two-hit takedowns]] over the course of the ''Half-Life 2'' games (by the end of ''Episode Two'', their miniature counterparts are actually considerably more dangerous).

** The Combine could fit this. Considering they are a multiverse empire with technology far ahead of ours, sounds powerful, their biggest threat? An average joe with a crowbar, suddenly they sound way less powerful/intimidating.

 

[[Category:Half-Life]]