Vicrabb's Blogging Life

Okay, okay, I admit, I'm harsh when someone is harassing me when I'm playing a video game I love. And bothering me when I'm playing Half-Life 2 isn't the smartest move someone can have.

Why am I back to playing it? I never quit playing that game, it's just that I was playing mods or that I was busy with stuff like TF2 or PKV 2.

Valve promised us when the Orange Box was out that the PC gamers will have the achievements they never had for HL2 and Episode 1. Episode was already provided with them. And well, X360 gamers had the luck to do some during ALL three games.

The time advances, advances, advances. TF2 is updated, Portal gets a new achievement and no word on Episode 3...

And then Steam provides game for Mac. Portal is free for a limited time, TF2 is preparing to the Engineer update and... the 26th May 2010, Half-Life 2 and its episodes land on Mac... With a big surprise for the PC gamers: bugs, annoying bugs and... achievements (which are bugged also for some).

Yeah, you heard me, we have finally these achievements... specific to a game. Which means if you didn't play Episode 2, don't try to get Deadly Harvest on HL2 and on E1, you'll not get it.

But the most annoying bug for me is specific to Steam, indeed, players noticed that when your Steam is in French, there are two moments that your game will crash: picking up the gravity gun in Black Mesa East and the shotgun in Lowlife (E1). Also, I begin to play in French, I quit the game and I come back..... It's now in English and I'm lazy, I know the story, so I don't need French.

But the fact that I had to change my Steam in English for getting past these bugs, quit, set back to French and continue the game is really really something annoying.

But you know me and my achievements for my favorite games... and my habit to be in godmode when there is a passage I don't like or when I'm writing something. For achievements, I can't use cheats (contrary to HL2E2, when you set a cheat and then turn it off, it says that cheats were used on the session and that you can't get what you want). So, I did HL2 for the first entirely without godmode and I got some epic deaths, mainly with a bunch of fast zombies and a poisonous one, with my saw unfortunately a little too far and without HEV protection and 100% health. I had an hard time to deal with them but I've managed. But miracle, I didn't die during the assault on Overwatch Nexus with the suppression device... And yes, I survived Antlion Guards...

In other words, I've done all achievements in HL2. They're mainly story-related but I'm proud to say that I've managed to do Ravenholm with my gravity gun only, that I've managed not to put a foot on the sand in Sandtraps (I had to reload a couple of time because the objects are more slippy than before), that I've found all Lambda caches (thanks to some video on 360 but you know, I had already the majority of them since a long time), I've killed someone with a toilet and I've scored two points with Dog's ball...

I'm currently at the citizen escort in Episode One and I'm proud to say that I've killed five combines with an energy ball, that I didn't kill the two stalkers in the core and that... eeer I'll tell you when I get the one where I've a bullet free only.

For episode 2, I'm glad that I found all maggots, that I've sent the gnome in the rocket and that I killed the chopper with two mines only (after several tries). Now that I know that I can survive Striders, I'll try to have the one where you have to protect all the buildings (but it will be after getting the final one whihc I never got with my godmode).

Anyway, I hope that my hl2 achievement guide for PC will be out soon (it's already on SuperCheats but it's not formatted...).

I'm going back to my citizen escort I'll do with guns, I doubt I can manage to do without firing.