A new day brings a new motivation to play and I think I made some serious progress tonight while realizing some continued shortcomings in my game play.

I'm going to start the post with my two screenshots, the only ones I was able to get. They are my starting point and a picture of a new weapon, a trip mine.





My shortcomings lie in my reaction times to fast moving enemies (i.e. soldiers & turrets). Seems like I'm always dead or seriously hurt before I get my weapon in place and ready to fire. I am playing with the keys and the mouse. I cured my desire to use the arrows many weeks ago.

At my starting point tonight, I took the advice of a blog reader and took out the turret with a grenade, I threw the grenade and was smart enough to back off to let it detonate. Fortunately it took out a soldier or two. I was able to kill another solider using my handy dandy revolver and pick up some new ammo (much needed) and health.

Moving down a long hallway I had to kill some more soldiers and that's where I picked up the trip mines. I was trying my best to brace myself around some corners in order to kill the soldiers without getting killed. After powering up again I went down an elevator and had to kill some shockwave alien creatures. Down through some stairs I found my way to a power station. I assumed this was a good things and something I was supposed to turn on, but it wouldn't turn on. Remembering what happened in Blast Pit I didn't consider this a dead end ... I just moved on. Back down the hallway was a maintenance station and some water with these little slug like creatures that kept taking some energy away. At the end was this turbine looking thing. It didn't do anything until after I crushed some boxes. It turned on and the water drained.

Back at the Power station it turned on! Guessing this was a good thing, I avoided the power surge and made my way backwards since I couldn't find a way to go forward. I stopped back at the original ladder that had taken me down. There were soldiers that kept pwning me and when I killed them and tried to go up I kept dying and for some reason it felt like I was being killed by the same trip mines that I had gotten from the soldiers at first. This is where I ended tonight.

I'm going to keep at this. When I have nights like tonight when I feel like I'm making progress, it energizes me to keep going. So expect some more game play and posts tomorrow and the next night. Who knows? Maybe I can actually clear a level in a week!

Most of the time when I stop playing Half-Life it's when I'm "stuck" at a point and can't go any further. Usually this comes with frustration and I struggle to know what exactly I was to do next. This was the point I had left off the last time.



I was scaling pipes and moving around, trying to avoid the radioactive ooze and trying not to get killed by bullsquids. I couldn't quite reach a platform that I was trying to jump on, but finally figured out that I was jumping from a lower pipe and needed to be jumping from a higher pipe. So after a nice running jump I had made it to the desired platform.



After getting some ammo and health packets I made it to another big open room with a pool of ooze and another bullsquid or two to kill. After scaling a long pipe I made it to a moving lift that took me a long distance upward. I was careful to look for falling headcrabs, but there were none to speak of here.

I can't remember the exact sequence of events but this wasn't an area where scientist were having a good time.





After rounding another corner I had my first truly "holy shit" moment of Half-Life up until this point.



After being totally shocked by another poor scientist being owned, I stopped. I haven't faced a monster like this before so I don't know if or how I will kill this one or if I can just escape like I've done so in the past. I'm currently out of machine gun ammo, but still have some shotgun shells and grenades.

Speaking of mechanics, I comfortably played with WASD and think this was the first time that I wasn't really thinking about the keys and how to move. I was just doing it and that let me focus a lot more on the game, instead of how to play it. I'm really looking forward to what's coming next.

So, it's been several days since I've gotten to play. I thought I'd get going with Blast Pit and have an easy go of it. For the most part it was. I got past some pesky head crabs and into this large open room with a platform and an elevator that leads down a large empty shaft.



As I was traveling down the shaft (um ...) I was careful to watch for falling objects. I assumed it would be like the last time and I would have to deal with falling head crabs. Luckily not the case. I did however have to make my way down a very long path that looked like an abandoned train line.



I took care of some head crabs and the bullsquids that shoot the green ooze. I was impressed that I had gotten better with my weaponry. I didn't have much trouble flipping between weapons and remembering to reload.

After what seemed like several minutes of walking I came upon a large area with a pool of green (at least I hope it's supposed to be green, the colors on my monitor could be bad) ooze that I remember from training was not something I wanted to go swimming in.




I crawled around on some pipes, moving up and down some ladders. Killed some more of the ooze monsters.



I got to a pipe and saw a platform that looked like the way out but I couldn't get over to it. So as I do most times, I got frustrated and stopped.

It was a small amount of progress, but at least it was some. I think I have the keys down, not perfect, but a lot better than it was. I still used WASD tonight and used the left side cntrl key for crouching. I'm also much better looking around with the mouse. Having the mechanics down sure goes a long way for increasing the enjoyment of the game.

As always ... a lot more to come!