Awesome / Half-Life

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Gordon Freeman isn't a supersoldier. He's just an ordinary man who took on a giant tentacle monster... and won.

"No game has ever done the empowerment journey like Half-Life 2. You wake up as a helpless, unarmed nobody on a future Earth under brutal occupation. The first people you see in the game are masked police shouting orders at you. (...) Everywhere you go, there are video screens where a Big Brother-type dictator named Dr. Breen gives droning, pretentious speeches. When you meet up with resistance fighters, the first weapon you get is a goddamned crowbar, and you spend much of the game running for your life from occupation troops who will beat the shit out of you if you look at them wrong. Finally, you work your way up through the game, one incremental upgrade at a time, until you're infiltrating the tower of that bearded asshole. Inside, you obtain a Super Gravity Gun. What does it do? Well, immediately a big group of bad guys come running at you, guns blazing. In a panic, you aim your new gun at them and squeeze the trigger and suddenly you realize you just freaking sucked the bad guy across the room with your gravity gun and are now carrying him around like a helpless rag doll. Curious, you pull your trigger again, at which point it flings him across the room and knocks over the rest of his squad like goddamned bowling pins. You work your way up the tower, and you run into more of those propaganda screens, with the bearded asshole giving another one of his speeches. You aim your gravity gun and realize that you can rip the damned monitor off the wall with it and hurl it across the room in a shower of sparks. The oppressor is up there, many floors above you. He thinks he's safe in his tower, his boot on the neck of the peasants, the status quo forever secure. But he is not safe. You are coming for him."

— Jason Pargin, "6 moments that make video games worth it"

The Half-Life series is considered one of the best video game franchises in gaming history, with each major game in the series pioneering major innovations to the gaming industry, and at least two games winning "Game of the Year" awards. Every game in the series is filled with complex Worldbuilding well-woven into the game to merge immersive storytelling with puzzles and gameplay. Filled with everything from epic fights, breaking into enemy bases, spectacular VFX, intense and tricky puzzles, physics that act in spectacular ways, NPCs with advanced AI that makes them feel alive, to highly-detailed and well laid-out levels, a great soundtrack, Plot Twists, Cool Guns, and allies with Undying Loyalty that you'd want to have at your side at all times, all completely experienced through an Unbroken First-Person Perspective. Because the first title in the series was the debut Breakthrough Hit that sent one particular game company into legendary status and became its flagship franchise, you can expect there to be many cool scenes in the series, and what it means to be human, as you run, think, shoot, and live through an unforgettable experience you will never forget.

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Half-Life

• Basically, the whole game in a nutshell. It is a perfect example of a Character Development story, where Gordon evolves from a terrified and confused survivor of an experiment gone wrong to a One-Man Army who fights his way through an epic battle to save the world from a Fate Worse than Death, all the while he experiences the entire story as it evolves through an Unbroken First-Person Perspective, confronts NPCs with highly complex AI, while also finding friends in the aftermath who can help him along the way, solving tricky puzzles, and smashing apart crates with his crowbar, which altogether, makes an experience one would never forget. There's a reason why it was named "Game of the Year" by multiple magazines...
• The entirety of Surface Tension. Gordon Freeman finally makes it out of Black Mesa... only to discover that the Marines and aliens are still fighting, and the Marines are constantly bombing the area. So he goes through, fighting marines, aliens, helicopters, turret placements, and main battle tanks, all while the aliens and soldiers fight one another (and in a small CMOA for the Marines, they usually win). Particular highlights include the battle against the squad of soldiers, turret placements, and helicopter at the Dam, Freeman crossing a sheer cliff face crawling with Marines before fighting up and out of a large storm drain covered by an entrenched squad and two tanks, the area where the marines' Osprey continually drops soldiers to kill a group of alien grunts, and Freeman calling in an airstrike on a Gargantua. It's also worth noting that the HECU is monitoring Freeman's every move via the tracking devices in his suit, and sets up ambushes for him every 10 or 20 square feet; he kills all of them anyway.
• Even the unnamed mooks get awesome moments:
  • The very first Vortigaunt you encounter introduces himself by banging on a heavy steel door, making a huge bulge in it, and then hitting it again full force, shattering the door to pieces, before throwing lightning at you.
  • An Alien Grunt in Surface Tension punches a human soldier so hard that he launches him and breaks a concrete wall.
  • The subversion of Air Vent Escape. In Surface Tension, you're crawling through an air vent, like you've done so many times before, with the soldiers below chattering on their radios none the wiser. Then suddenly one of them says "I hear something". Cue the soldier and his buddy shooting the crap out of the vent, causing you to drop right out.
    • Another subversion occurs when you're crawling through a pipe (well, close enough to an air vent). Just when you think you're in the clear, a soldier opens the other hatch and drops a satchel in it. Better run like hell!
• In the chapter Surface Tension, you can find a tank shooting at you. If you're at the right angle where it can't shoot you, you can wail on it with a crowbar until it explodes. The funny part is that it doesn't take many hits which means Gordon swings that crowbar hard. The awesome part is that HE CAN DESTROY A TANK WITH A SIMPLE TOOL AND BRUTE STRENGTH!
• Pick any given moment from the original game out of a hat. Taking out the tentacles with a rocket, killing the Gargantua, destroying helicopters, getting past the trip mines, hell the entire Surface Tension chapter is one big ass CMOA! Gordon Freeman may have been a manipulated pawn of greater forces, but by his own merits and his HEV Suit, he became a bonafide One-Man Army more than deserving of his Legendary in the Sequel status.
• The ending has the G-Man state that the Border World is under their control, in front of a destroyed Abrams tank and dead HECU marines, implying that the US military managed to counterattack into Xen and occupy it. Humans Are Warriors indeed.

Half-Life: Opposing Force

• The Race X is never mentioned at all during Half-Life 2. Two possible explanations: 1) They were no match for the Combine. 2) Adrian Shephard stopped them from invading Earth singlehandedly.
• Not only does Shephard gain a variety of weapons unlike those Gordon had to utilize, but he also gains something that has (bafflingly) never been seen before or since... a BARNACLE GRAPPLING HOOK.

Half-Life: Blue Shift

• Barney gets a big one in Blue Shift: He gets out of the Black Mesa facility alive without the interference of the G-Man. That's something that Gordon and Adrian DIDN'T do. Not to mention that he does it without an HEV suit or any experimental weaponry but with just a helmet and a Kevlar vest.
  • Add to it the G-Man's Let Us Never Speak of This Again summary. He had plans for Gordon and Adrian, but Barney? He's embarrassed.

Half-Life 2

• Okay, so, top of the list here, folks: Father Grigori. Nothing you say can stand up to the fact that he's an Orthodox priest with a rifle and has a problem with his flock. Even better, at the very end of the Ravenholm Mines, there is a minecart trap that includes a spinning blade, which you use to kill the remaining zombies before escape. If we think about this, Father Grigori managed to swim through the Ravenholm mines, climb over fences that Gordon can't climb over, and fight the infinite horde of headcrabs, all twice just to help any rebels that come by and to tend to his flock. He could have left, seeing how close he was, but he didn't. It also counts as Heartwarming.
• The entirety of both "Our Benefactors" and "Dark Energy." Combined with the fucking AWESOME gravity gun as well as the story reaching its climax. It is just completely badass.
  • The moment you reach the top of the Citadel before Dr. Breen does and you start wailing on the dark energy reactor enabling Breen's escape, he goes from Smug Snake to begging Gordon not to destroy the reactor and to spare him.
• Any time Dog gets into a fight, an event which will probably involve much car-flinging, flailing of trashcan-sized metal fists, and excessive application of ragdoll physics.
• Alyx Vance: the scene in Breen's office. Alyx is currently held captive and immobile. She spits in Breen's face when he mentions her mother. Breen comments on Alyx's stubborn nature. Alyx: "You haven't seen a bit of it yet."
• For further illustration of Gordon's awesomeness, the first definite objective Gordon is given aside from "escape" is to infiltrate a Combine prison and rescue a high-priority prisoner, and no one considers one man doing this to be unusual (granted he later receives a Red Shirt Army of Antlions, but they don't know that). After he succeeds, the resistance takes this as their cue to begin a worldwide revolution and as soon as Gordon appears they follow behind him unquestionably, because things in front of him tend to die.
• Storming Nova Prospekt. You are entering an enemy base while having an army of antlions at your hands. Plus, Apprehension and Evasion play at the right time.
• The very existence of Gravity Gun.
• If you want to give yourself a CMOA, it is entirely possible (through a combination of agility and persistence) to kill an Ant-Lion Guard with a crowbar.
• It is possible, albeit extremely difficult and tedious, to keep a Resistance fighter alive following you through almost the entirety of the "Follow Freeman!" chapter. Also a Heartwarming Moment and example of Videogame Caring Potential.
• The HEV Suit itself. Endurance is measured in days (the reactive armor system seems to run off a separate power source in-universe), providing (probably) enhanced physical strength at the least, as well as greatly boosted stamina and speed, and ability to function in the face of severe injuries due to a built-in medical system capable of diagnosis AND treatment. It's capable of easily going toe-to-toe in a combat environment with mil-spec equipment using the same armor technology. As powered armor goes it's almost form-fitting given how sleek and compact it is and it is STILL just as effective as it was during the initial Cascade 20 years later, against an opponent with far more advanced technology in general than its creators.
  • As a given, the "diagnosis and treatment" is massive doses of painkillers and the structure of the suit taking pressure off of broken bones, but...
• After spending a large portion of Route Kanal and Water Hazard in an unarmed airboat and being pursued by a Combine chopper, Gordon finally gets a repurposed chopper pulse gun mounted on his boat. When you come tearing out of the tunnel and the chopper positions itself to ambush you, it reacts to the sudden hail of energy bolts by panicking and flying away for several minutes. It's an amazing way to make the player feel the power they've gained and how much the odds have been evened.
• A more subtle one that's also worthy of note is how Gordon starts his crusade proper: he comes across a typical scene of Police Brutality, and one of the Civil Protection units comes up to him with the stun baton they oh so love. It does fuck all to Gordon, and the bastard is quickly bludgeoned to a flatline. His pal follows soon after. After this, the stun baton, practically a symbol of the CP oppression, is never seen again.
• The moment in "Dark Energy" when Judith turns on Breen and frees the heroes. It's so satisfying watching him squirm like a Dirty Coward he is.
  • Breen: Judith, what do you think you're doing?
  • Judith: We're doing what I could never do alone. We're stopping you!
• It doesn't last long after Gordon gets his HEV Suit and weapons back, but what little is seen of the Combine control over the City 17 civilians is both terrifying and impressive. Once someone steps off a train, a Scanner gets nearby and takes a photo to verify their identity. If they can't be verified, they are either taken to Nova Prospekt or beaten to death and if that doesn't happen they are immediately labelled as wanted. In the first game, the Marines take at least three chapters to start deeming Freeman a threat rather than just someone else to silence. The Combine? Not even a minute after Gordon gets placed on the train, they already want him disposed of.

Half-Life 2: Episode 1

• Gordon and Alyx cross a strange hospital to reach City 17's train station, the resistance's exfil point. A gunship follows you from outside until halfway, where, in an abandoned wood barn, you can rocket it out of the sky for good. You have to take the gunship out while the gunship fires at you and blows entire portions of the ceiling, slowly revealing itself while you try to find a good spot to fire; it's a hard and amazing battle. Alyx seems very impressed with the feat Gordon pulls at the end.
  Alyx: Jesus, Gordon... you're a real terror!
  • Then you're rewarded with a special gift: shotguns for you and Alyx, and a sweet walk through the hospital while blasting Combine soldiers and zombies. All are accompanied by a badass track. Happy fighting!
• The Vortigaunts temporarily free Freeman from the G-Man: Up until that moment, the G-Man was a Magnificent Bastard with no apparent weaknesses, in constant control of the situation, and most of the cast didn't even know he existed. The expression on his face when he realizes he's lost control: priceless. "We'll see... about that."
• From the perspective of the other characters, Gordon is a walking CMOA. Alyx would name the defeat of the gunship and then later the Strider as Gordon's CMOA.
• At one point, you can hear chaos erupting in a nearby room including the sound of Alyx's new shotgun. When you meet up with her again, she says "Sorry I'm late, Gordon. I got a bit swamped." When you enter the room she just came from, you find a bunch of dead Combine soldiers & zombies in a hall with no nearby objects to use for cover. One of the zombies was cut in half, one of the Combine soldiers was crushed by a vending machine, & everyone somehow died in the same tiny spot. She did all of that with a shotgun.
• Near the final part of the game, there is a moment where you meet Barney near the train station. He orders the player to quickly move the remaining refugees through the train station to the train in which they would evacuate the city. But then, the Combine forces show up, and it becomes a Hold the Line moment where the player has to defend the unarmed refugees while fighting off Manhacks, Combine Soldiers (And of course, Elites.), an APC, Metrocops, and a sniper.
  • When the refugee train does leave with Barney on it, Gordon and Alyx prepare to leave. Alyx is the first to reach the other side of the door, but when Gordon is about to finish rolling up the door between him and the getaway train, a familiar stomping can be heard, rapidly getting louder. Moments later, Gordon is attacked by a Strider, and this one is notable for its sheer unfiltered fury, thinking of nothing but of the goal to prevent Freeman from escaping City 17. It shoots much faster than all other Striders previously encountered and uses its warp cannon to destroy the environment around where Freeman is hiding. In one segment, it'll even rapidly blast a cargo container Freeman is behind in an attempt to crush him. Gordon eventually reaches a rocket box, and uses it to fight off the Strider, while it goes down fighting, blasting him with as much as its pulse gun can handle to take him down to the grave with itself. If Striders had their equivalent of a Warrior Heaven, then this one deserves to be welcomed there.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

• While it's unfortunately never heard in the game, Eli has an epic line in the first teaser trailer (the one that originally played at the end of Episode One):
  Eli: We're done running. This is our chance to take back our world. We're not going to lose it a second time.
• The first Hunter battle. Alyx hears the Hunters outside and gets all scared, having almost died from her last encounter with them, only to turn around and take a badass pill before commencing to slaughter them all.
• Dog fights a Strider. He not only wins but tears that building-sized heavily-armed monstrosity into pieces. By which we mean DOG tears the Strider's BRAIN out.
• When about sixteen million Antlions come pouring into the chamber where Alyx is being healed. Just when you're running low on ammo, the turrets are frazzled and the mines have run out, three Vortigaunts bust through the ceiling. One of them murmurs, "We will quiet them," and they turn to face the Antlions, revealing that for all their enigmatic proverbs and general butt-ugliness, Vortigaunts are fucking badasses. "Vortal Combat" plays during the segment while they proceed to unleash all manner of green-lightning-fueled fury on the Antlions, stunning them with bolts of electricity, frying them with concentrated beams, even judo-throwing them to the ground and exploding them with balls of energy.
• The G-man gets back at Freeman with his own CMOA. ("Doctor Freeemaaan. I realize this moment may not be the most convenient for a 'heart-to-heart', but I had to wait until your... 'friends' were otherwise occupied."), topped only by his Take That! to Gordon regarding his actions in Half-Life ("There was a time they cared nothing for Ms... Vance; when their only experience of... 'humanity' was a crowbar coming at them down a steel corridor".)
  • Not only was of Freeman but of the Vortigaunts as well. G-Man's Episode Two speech is a whole cutscene of awesome. The Vorts knocked the Smug Snake down a peg at the end of Episode One. What does G-Man do? The second he can pass the Vorts unnoticed, he gives his badass speech, reveals how he was the one to save Alyx from Black Mesa and wants Freeman to pay up for his survival by bringing Alyx to White Forest, and gets her to relay a message of doom to Eli as a form of Take That! from the man's own daughter. The closest G-Man comes to losing his cool is the occasional tone of anger expressed when enunciating.
    • Hell, it's even a Take That! to the player - the message he uses Alyx to deliver is a Title Drop of the first chapter title of Half-Life 1 after the Resonance Cascade.
• Mowing down hunters while killing Striders WITH A PISTOL.
• Gordon and a Vortiguant are infiltrating an Antlion hive. The Vortiguant feels the need to specifically tell Gordon not to kill the Antlion Guardian, an insect monster the size of a truck that can throw cars around and laugh off grenades. And the glowing green stuff on it? That's a neurotoxin. About ten minutes after they get what they need from the hive, Gordon gets the go-ahead and kills both it and a standard Guard, with little more than a shotgun and the trash that was lying around the valley.
• It is perfectly possible to kill a hunter with a crowbar and not take damage.
• The Battle of White Forest. Accompanied by some of the most Badass music of the entire franchise, Gordon Freeman nigh-single-handedly goes against an army of Combine, including several Striders and Hunters, in a last-ditch effort to defend the Rebel headquarters. He kills them all and wins... until a pissed off Advisor arrives.
• When Gordon and Alyx are completely immobilized by the Advisor ambush at the end of the game, Eli is the one to rush in and promptly begin attacking the creatures personally, knowing damn well it was pointless to try but not letting that stop him. Although they're too late to prevent his death, D0G keeps things from getting worse and even sends an Advisor fleeing in pain and terror.

Half-Life: Alyx

• The game's existence. Compared to their other franchises, Valve has always thought of Half-Life as a game series that would "set the bar" of what's possible in their game engines with every major release. Alyx does just that not only for the Source 2 engine but for VR gaming in general.
• At the end of the reveal trailer for Half-Life: Alyx, there are several seconds of silence, and then you hear footsteps coming closer... two bright eyes emerge from the shadows, and for the first time in 13 years, the G-Man is staring holes into your soul once again. He smirks as the screen cuts to black with the release date; stealing the show all without saying a word. Admit it, you got goosebumps thinking about it again just now.
• The train-rerouting sequence, which sees Alyx diverting the Nova Prospekt-bound train into a dead end. Scenery Gorn ensues as pieces of concrete and metal and clouds of dust fly about the player's head, as the train destroys an overpass and sends a tall smokestack careening into the ground.
• The final chapter in the Vault includes a sequence echoing the supercharged Gravity Gun sequence from Half-Life 2: Alyx uses her gravity gloves to grab and hurl bolts of green energy to mow down the Combine forces that stand between her and the cell. Even better, that energy was stolen and harnessed from captive Vortigaunts, and each release is like a lightning blast—you're channelling the power of the Vorts and ripping the Combine a new one! In VR! With your own hands!
• And the ending. Jesus Christ. It completely upends the cliffhanger the fandom had been left on for more than a decade, with the G-Man undoing Eli's death at the end of Episode Two but taking Alyx along as a new "employee" of his to replace Gordon, leaving us with a confused messiah and a vengeful father. No one, not even the most diehard of fans, could have seen this one coming, and it's a testament to how expectations can be exceeded and twisted at the same time.
  • The power of either G-Man's cell or the G-Man himself is so powerful it's able to outright kill an Advisor in one hit. In Episode 2, Advisors are extremely resilient to most weaponry that Gordon can use. And yet, whatever power Alyx handled is enough to kill it.
  • It may only be a shadowy glimpse of an illusion created by the G-Man, but players finally get to see a modelled Gordon Freeman with their own eyes.
  • What makes the post-credits stinger hit even harder is Eli's reaction, cussing out the G-Man in earshot of the latter. Given his sentiments regarding the Borealis in Episode Two, and his daughter's life suddenly hanging in the balance, one must wonder how willing Eli is now to "start another Black Mesa incident" just to get her back.
    Eli: Son of a bitch and his "unforeseen consequences!" I knew it! When I get my hands on him, I'm gonna... I'm gonna kill him...!
  • This is all capped off by the fact that — in this final scene — you play as Gordon Freeman again for the first time in more than a decade. As the credits end, you hear the HEV suit's critical-status message, then Eli urging Gordon to wake up... And the camera fades to you looking at Eli urging you to wake up and that Alyx is gone — yes, Eli urging Gordon Freeman, a.k.a. you. It may be only a few seconds, but it's a moment of dawning realization that means everything to the fans. Bonus points for having D0G show up to hand Gordon his iconic crowbar.
    Eli: (handing Gordon his crowbar) Come on, Gordon... We've got work to do.
  • Eli hands Gordon (You) his crowbar to grab ahold of, which feels like such a significant gesture and moment in VR. When you do so there is a deep echoing metal sound to signify this.
  • Perhaps the single most mind-blowing thing is that, after over a decade of the most extreme Memetic Mutation, fans losing their minds to desperation just waiting for the day it would finally come, many losing hope in the series at large after so much time has passed...it has finally come true. Say it with us: Half-Life 3 CONFIRMED!
• Villainous example: the Combine managed to capture and imprison the G-Man for a substantial amount of time, right until Alyx frees him. Given that the G-Man can stop time on a whim, one has to wonder how the Combine managed this incredible feat.
  • Perhaps the G-Man simply let himself be caught? Even for a Humanoid Abomination, that takes a great deal of guts.
  • There's also the fact that despite his seeming imprisonment, the G-Man just calmly stands there, waiting. It begs the question of whether he already knew he was going to be recovered, or if he specifically got himself caught just so that he could "employ" Alyx to alter the timeline, knowing exactly what she would want and do.
  • Add onto that, this takes place around five years before Half-Life 2, so we know he's been walking about after the events of Alyx. It's entirely possible he allowed the Combine to imprison him so he could take advantage of his "investment", knowing that she'd play a valuable role in the future. He may have been "imprisoned", but he's certainly playing both sides to his advantage.
    • Given the ending however, it is implied that he experiences time non-linearly, as he alludes to Gordon no longer cooperating with him following the events of Episode 2 (a Take That Us at Gordon having had nothing to do since that game), and his imprisonment did not originally happen in the original timeline, but he inserted himself five years before the events of Half-Life 2 to recruit Alyx, giving her an assignment to "prove" that she is worthy of hire, and tricking her into accepting the contract in place of Gordon.
• The most impressive thing is probably Alyx herself. Nineteen years old, carrying at most a weighty backpack filled with three somewhat weak weapons and their ammo, two extra pockets for smaller gear, a headset, her own Gadgeteer Genius multi-tool device, and Russel's homemade gravity gloves, she can't even harm a zombie or a Combine soldier with a piece of plywood or a fist. Despite this, the game establishes her badass credentials five years before Half-Life 2 by making you survive and improvise through numerous threats and puzzles all around as a genuine Action Survivor who doesn't even have the equipment and training of Barney Calhoun or Adrian Shephard, and earn the respect of the G-Man enough to replace Gordon Freeman as a valuable asset.
• The Combine is utterly paranoid about anyone finding out about the Vault, to the point of eliminating anyone who went into the Quarantine Zone and everyone they've been in contact with afterwards. Yet, Larry, somehow managed to live in the QZ (or at least frequently come and go from there) for years.

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