Half-Life Preview from E.C.T.S continued...

Page 2

   Ok now you've all seen the can machines in the screenshots, well these are even more impressive than first thought, you can not only "use" the can machine and get a can from it but when the machines get destroyed you can see the workings of the can machine to a similar level of detail used in the monitors when they are destroyed, not only that but the cans start spilling out of the machine and all over the floor rolling all over the place, this looks far more impressive than it sounds so just believe me on that one ;). Anyway in this instance the Barney has been following you and helping blow the crap out everything. You get to the end of the office mpeg and climb the stairs you hear a small electric motor sound and see a gun turret targeting the Barney behind you, he looks up and wildly start firing at it, your watching side on to the Barney and you hear the gun turret start firing at him. You can see the blood splattering out behind him against the wall and his body twitches from the massive bullet count entering his body, needless to say the Barney lost, and his bullet ridden body slumps to the floor. Everyone around me quietly goes wow!

   It's a week since I was there now and a lot of what I saw is being sort of forgotten :(

   Ok lets do some weapons and the outdoor areas :)

   You're outside and have the Magnum, is that its name? my brain has just deserted me, erm the revolver, its very shiny and an extremely good model, and from the way the players hands snap back, very powerful too. The player is firing it at an apache gunship which is flying overhead strafing the player with rockets and I think, machine gun fire, Robin (of TF fame) told me that the Apache is fully armored and so the best way to bring it down is to shoot the pilot in the head. After a small dog fight of popping out from rock and hiding behind wooden signs, the player finally manages to bring down the Apache sending it careering toward the mountain side and blowing up spectacularly. This isn't before the sign you were hiding behind get shot to splinters from the machine gun fire. All the time the Chopper flies overhead and the 3d positional sound works wonders as its really sounds like a real chopper is passing over. The reloading of the Magnum is quite impressive, the player up-ends the gun and knocks the barrel out on its hinges and shakes the weapon to remove the spent shells, he then uses a quick loader to put in the new bullets.

   In another outdoor scene the player is watching an osprey in the distance with some gov. troops rappelling down ropes from the osprey, you start shooting at one of the engines on the osprey as it dusts off and flies over you, you continue to shoot at it and thick black smoke starts to billow from the engine, it disappears over the top of a guard tower and you hear a massive explosion as it goes down.

   This by now is probably sounding a little jumbled up, but its just how its coming back to me as I'm typing this, so, apologies ;)

   Ok back indoors again and we are using the MP5 to assault another squad of grunts, one is already down, one is supplying fire support from a distance and the third is running around the posts in the room. The player and the grunt taking pot shots at each other as they catch glimpses of each other round the posts, with the grunt constantly trying to out-flank the player, great AI. But it all ends in tears for the grunt as the player catches him in the leg with a shot from the MP5, the grunt reaches down and grabs his leg and hobbles behind the post again, the player follows and blows his head off (not literally) with the magnum. At this point Robin Walker points out that they had to tone down the violence a little, explaining that there was originally a feature where you could blow peoples heads off leaving just their lower jaw, nice :), wonder how long it'll be before someone releases a patch to re-implement it ;-).

   So far I seam to have concentrated mainly on the weapons, grunts and other likewise things, maybe its my disposition ;), anyway there were plenty of scientist thingys going on as well. Before you get the crowbar right at the beginning of the game, you come across a hallway with industrial piping/wiring along the walls, the lights are flickering a little and there is a computer cabinet lying on the floor. As you try to walk past, part of the wall kinda blows up and a laser breaks free from the piping and starts to trace it's way along the opposite wall burning scorch marks along it's path, very cool, you evade this and try to continue as more lasers break free from the wall and start tracing scorching there way about the place. The final one you see travels through the cabinet, cutting it in two and continues through a dead Barney on the floor blood leaking everywhere. The lasers were very realistic, good job on the beams effects.