I just finished Episode 2. Overall I thought it was awesome. I enjoyed it more than the original HL2 I think.
But let me just say that I have never hated an ending “boss battle” more than I hated that ending. After trying to fight the first few striders and just getting slaughtered out of hand, I finally turned on god mode. And that’s when I found out that…
THE BOSS FIGHT IS HARD EVEN IN GOD MODE!!
Most of Ep2 was relatively easy and fun…what is it that makes you Valve people think that a game should have one level of difficulty for most of the game and then ramp up to “insane” difficulty for the last fight!? It’s like Half Life 1 all over again.
Yeah, the Hunters put a very difficult twist onto things.
I remember it being a lot easier (the end part of the end, when like 5 or 6 come at you) once I started going Carmageddon on the hunters before attempting to take out the striders.
You’re mad. The ending was the best part. And, uh… I didn’t think it was that hard. I died once or twice, but never let them get anywhere near the base.
Yeah, I’d say the ending of Ep 2 was the best action sequence from any game I’ve ever played.
It was frustrating as hell, causing me to quit the game, curse Valve and everybody who works there for 20 minutes until I calmed down and started it right back up again. Once I realized jeffd’s point (2) above and just started going Carmageddon on the Hunters, I was able to finish it.
Edit: I swear to God I hit reply before reading nKoan’s post. It’s just a coincidence we both said “going Carmageddon on the hunters;” I wasn’t plagiarizing.
Yes, it definitely gets easier when you use the car as a weapon.
At one point, I came running out of the building with a sticky bomb to load onto the rack of the car. A hunter was a few yards behind the car, and shooting those pesky flechettes. I dropped the bomb in the hopper, jumped in the car and punched it straight backwards. The dying screech of a hunter was music to my ears.
Running the hunters over with the car was the first thing I did, but I still didn’t find it entertaining if only because I really don’t like the way vehicles handle in the game.
Eventually, I just gave in and did the god mode trick, which far too many people seem to have done as well for there not to be something less than perfect about the level.
Well, I loved it, and didn’t really notice any imperfections. But then I also quite liked the ending of Episode 1, and no-one agrees with me on that, although some people managed to break the scripting so I guess that’s understandable.
After two or three minutes of getting out of the car and shooting at the Hunters, I also went the Crash Corrigan route and just started running them over. It’s still challenging that way, but more managable.
I also loved the last fight in Ep 2, I thought the scale of it was excellent and actually through the difficulty was quite well balanced. I died a few times but never got to the point where I was ready to give up on it.
What I’d like to know is what the fuck method of killing the Hunters is effective BESIDES running them over with the car? None of the guns really make a dent, it takes upwards of a dozen shotgun rounds, at least 10 magnum rounds, or at least 2 rockets to take down a single hunter. Are you supposed to be grav-gunning the flechettes back at them or something?
What’s the quickest and most effective way to kill a hunter besides the car?
In another thread some people mentioned that using the gravity guy to throw stuff (rocks, logs etc) at them worked well. When using a log the flechettes shot at you would get stuck in it and apparently cause extra damage. I tried this a bit and it seemed quite successful.
The energy ball alt fire on the good machine gun thing (no idea what it’ss called) kills them in one hit.
I dunno if this is ever mentioned in the game, but in one of our previews, it was explained to us that they Hunters are extremely succeptible to physical damage. So you want to hit them with barrels, logs, whatever you can fling at them with the gravity gun.
But running them over the car is a lot more efficient. And fun. :)
I finished it and I thought it was really …fu…rustrating. I mean serisouly… I’m stuck on an ice covered rock, these at-at and at-st walking all over me, and I’m defending the damn defle… or wait, wrong game.
The only thing I found really frustrating was the fact that the people on the ground that were supposed to be helping me weren’t actually doing anything. It seemed like they were shooting spit balls at them, while I was the one doing any real damage.
It took awhile, but I finally beat them all down. It was fun at first until I relaized the freindly AI was just an animated backdrop.
I lost a couple of the buildings, which turned out to be a good thing because when the striders got close to the base, the AI soldiers did a good job of suppressing/killing the hunters while I took out the striders. The big swirling melee was a blast.
