F*** Half Life 2:Episode 2

[Robert Ewing]

Luckily for me, I did it first go by the skin of my teeth. So now I have an excuse to never do that mission again.

I can see myself rage quitting if I had to do that mission again, srsly, so punishing.

 

[karoliso]

What I liked about that part is that it wasn't just your typical "final boss". They tried avoiding such things.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Yeah, that bit was probably the worst part of the game (and this is coming from one of the people who consider HL2 one of the best FPSs ever). I had a tough time of it my first go as well. Still, it is pretty worth it for the sweet ending.

 

[SayHelloToMrBullet]

TBH thats actually my favourite part of the whole game. I found it really tense and enjoyable. Usually I would kill the hunters first and then deal with the strider that they were protecting.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I was about halfway through my second playthrough of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, on Hard mode, trying to get the gnome achievement. I got to a building, placed the gnome carefully on the car, and set off into an abandoned house to open a gate or something.

Walk in, hear a noise. The hunters are here. Equip shotgun, and start blasting away. Two hunters down, out of ammo. Quickly slam 'G' to pull out my Gravity Gun, and pull out every explosive barrel I can find, hurling them at the aliens. Run out of explosives, dash back into the house, chug some health packs, and hide, thinking.

Split second decision. Whip out SMG, and run through about 3 of the guys, occasionally peppering them with bullets. Get out of the warehouse, and look at car, the gnome still perched on the boot. Smile. Jump in, reverse, watch gnome fly over windshield, and face hunter a couple of meters away. He fires flechettes, I slam down on the accelerator, the darts blocking my view, and drive straight into the combine freak. He tumbles over the car, falls lifeless, and I dive out of the car just before the flechettes explode. Then I turn around, and look at the other hunters.

I get back into my vehicle.

...And that is the ridiculously awesome tale of how I learned you could one-shot hunters!

B-b-b-but, what about David? (The Gnome!! 100pts if anyone gets the reference 1st hand!- not google!) Did you get him?

 

[Nopodop]

I just gave up. I haven't played it in 3 months because of THAT ONE BIT. It would be easy without the hunters.

 

[Sinister Minister]

I don't understand how people find it punishing--if you're paying attention and actively trying to destroy the Striders, you shouldn't have that much trouble. Hell, you'd really have to be ignoring the Striders big time to really fail the section. I even saw someone mention lack of ammo--did you not see the several houses you drive by? They have craploads of ammo inside, not to mention health and suit batteries.

The Striders don't actively shoot your Magnusson Devices, but the Hunters do. And if you're trying to toss that thing onto a Strider with two or three Hunters firing at you and the Device, just...stop, and kill the Hunters. Use the Pulse Rifle energy cores, SMG grenades, rockets, double-barrel shooting with the shotgun, throw logs with the gravity gun, crossbow, .357, run them over...you have way more than enough to deal with them.

And if you're not using your vehicle to pinpoint the locations of Striders as they arrive or just to locate any you missed or just not using it at all, you are Doing It Wrong.

 

[jacilon]

yeah i remember that!....

The house exploding looked cool though right?

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I hated that fucking part. I played on Easy and used the gun on the vehicle (I think) to take down the little ones but I was nowhere near the achievement where you protect all of the houses. That just seems insane to me, more so than the garden gnome thing. Don't really care for the Half Life series though.

 

[Ekonk]

Really? I thought it was fucking amazing. It's really a final, desperate battle and it shows. It's hard, yeah, and a little panic inducing if you have to get bombs again, et cetera, but I think it's one of the best parts of the Half-Life series.

 

[Lilani]

Once you get it figured out it's not so bad. You run the hunters over with the car (shoot them only as a last resort) and only then can you take the striders down. Otherwise the hunters shoot down the bombs. It did take me a few tries, and I was rather frustrated, but in hindsight I rather enjoyed the challenge.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Oh and I'm playing the 360 version because this is before I had Steam (which is awesome) and therefore cannot use cheats and also I'm on the hardest difficulty.

Well then turn it down. Duh.

Also you know that there's mini-dispensors in each of the forward shacks, right? You don't need to go *allll* the way back.

 

[Ditzydoo]

Took me about 30mins of dieing and reloading before figuring out "My car kills hunters, LOL!" and thus making it easier, granted it dont make it a cake walk, but it does become easier if you just run hunters over and then get behind the striders

But yeh just relax, eat a muffin and then go back and kick some flank!

 

[Owlslayer]

I got it on the second time, tho i did fool around a bit on the first time. But yeah, i just ran over all the Hunters or whatnot, wasn't that difficult. And once you get behind the striders, they don't really give a shit what you do.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Ok, seeing that this thread is still floating about I will add some tips for you.

1) Hunters are hard to bring down with conventional weapons as stated by Valve's developer commentary. However the commentary also states that they are weak to physical impacts aka your car, a large log/random piece of scenery thrown by the gravity gun. (Try to get some flechettes that the hunters fire on your object you are going to throw, using an object with then imbbeded on it will score you an instant kill if it connects.)

2) You can yank out more than one Magnusson Device at a time, just move them out of the building and you should still be able to grab them even after a strider kills the teleporter. (note: pulling out over a dozen bombs and leaving will not work, the game will just deleate them when you leave, just pull out three or four.

3) Alt-fire for the SMG and the pulse rifle are good choices for Hunters as well.

4) Get behind the Striders when launching the bombs, they do not attack targets behind them unless you just planted a Magnusson Device on them from behind.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

It's easier when you kind of mix up your arsenal. Once I realized three rocket hits were still enough to take down a Strider, that whole battle become less grueling and more intense enemy and space management and control. It's a really well-designed level, it gets quite emergent quite fast despite its wave-based nature, and makes me quite excited for if Valve ever decides to push themselves to make non-linear games.

 

[Pakkie]

LOL change the difficulty to easy dude....
BTW I finished this first try, on hardest difficulty on PC.
The HL2 ports to consoles weren't done with the best care and had no actual balance done to them to make them work better for consoles, it was just a direct port, imo you'd be better off having the "intended experience" and switch to PC. Or go on an easier difficulty...

 

[Aeryn Seoung]

I highly anticipate the time when I have to do that part. I can only imagine that I'd be hyper and excited through the first couple of deaths, and then go on to rage. ^^;

It just looks like... so much fun.

 

[Gauntes]

guess saying that I had little difficulty in that mission wouldn't really contribute too much to this thread

 

[XMark]

I played it in hard mode - I do remember getting quite frustrated and dying a lot, but I made it through eventually. Just try to learn something each time you die