Well I started playing tonight thinking I was going to breeze right through the first couple of levels. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and I was going to remember everything.

Here's what I remembered:
- You have to have a guard follow you to give you access to get down to the test chamber.
- You have to push the little robot man into the middle of the thing going on in the middle of the test chamber to cause whatever to happen to happen
- You don't lose any health during the explosion in the test chamber.
- When leaving the test chamber you have to have a scientist use the retinal scanner to let you out.

Things I didn't remember trying to play tonight:
- How to get the crowbar. I got owned by my first head crab and felt stupid about it.









This does not look good.

First off, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but a lot of the screen caps I'm trying to take turn out all black when I go to retrieve them from the file. I was able to get one screen capture, which is where I started off play tonight.



As I noted with my last post, I haven't really been using the correct keys for my movements + weapon usage. My first encounter with the soldiers saw me quickly die a few times at the hands of their guns and grenades.

So I ran ... yeah I know that's not going to get me out of every situation in this game, but with this particular obstacle it helped. I was able to shoot and run, but I'm just not good at aiming and shooting, and figuring out which weapon is best for which enemy.

After passing the first block of soldiers, I did kill some with the rifle. (and if I mis-name some of the weapons, please ignore) I recognize the pistol of course and the shot gun. So I assume the other weapon is the rifle.

After moving up some stairs I navigated two moving tracks. I thought they would be harder to move on, but the were easier than I thought. I passed some scientists running around, and along the way I picked up some much needed health and ammo.

I left off in another section with more soldiers and platforms.

I know I have to get better with movement, aim, weapons selection, and shooting, if I'm ever going to get through this. But I'm confident as I get further along that it will begin to come more naturally.

Thanks to some good hints I was given by blog readers, I did manage to make it out of the area that I was previously stuck in. I was able to get one of the scientists to follow me to access the door that kept saying "access denied". While I'm very thankful for the help of shackers/blog readers, makes me wonder how long I would have gone around and around before figuring out that one on my own.

Soon after getting through the door I was zapped by a laser and picked up a crowbar. The laser taught me my first lesson, I need to learn how to duck and jump and be prepared for the unexpected. Not that it wasn't obvious already, but I guess I thought I was moving along at a snails pace and then all of a sudden my health number dissolved to 41 in a matter of a second.

The crowbar helped because I was able to get through another door. When it didn't immediately open I started banging on it. When that didn't work, I figured out how to crouch and break glass and move through that way.

Soon afterwards I see an alien wipe out a security guard (weapon acquired!) and I got to shoot my first enemy with his gun! I believe at this point I climbed the ladder on the elevator shaft, shot some more aliens and then ran out of ammo. I was able to access some more rooms via the crow bar and even killed some crab looking animal with the crowbar.

That's about all I got through last night. As I realize this doesn't seem like a lot of game play, I feel like I made a few accomplishments by acquiring weapons, getting through passageways through unconventional means, and learning to avoid hazardous obstacles. What I still need to learn is how not to waste my ammunition so fast just because I have a gun and how to acquire more ammunition. Also I need to figure out some more ways to get in and out of rooms other than doors, how to access a medic station to re-charge my energy, and whether or not you eventually run out of lives in this game or can you die an infinite number of times.

Thanks as always for reading. While the game hasn't completely blown me away "yet" - little things like picking up weapons and figuring my way out of situations on my own are rather exciting. I've started using headphones, so I can always have the sound up and not miss anything.

More to come ...