Chapter 2: Direct Intervention
TIME: 30 min ******
I love the generic energy apparatus that is in this Chapter and in pretty much all of the Half-life games. Because there is this inherent logic to the machinery, I can buy into it and figure out the puzzle even though I have no idea why I am doing it. It’s like “oh a pulsating field of energy, I will push complicated piece of equipment in front of it. Oh look an energy beam is extended to it and a door opens. Ok, let’s go.”
After being ambushed by a pack of Storm Troopers I mean White Combine Soldiers, Alex opens the hatch and we see the Black Hole Sun Reactor. She says it looks pretty far gone. I have to believe her because I have no idea what the life-cycle of an inter-dimensional portal reactor cores looks like. At the next terminal she calls an elevator to send Gordon down into the mines while she sits up in the command center working on the computer.
You can unlock the Pacifist Achievement in this area if you do not shoot any of the stalkers. It isn’t hard, you will just have to work fast because they undo of the sockets that you energize.
First Floor
The goal of the First floor is to complete all of the energy bridges and then press the red button at the control booth to access the ladder to the second floor.
- The room is basically a huge triangle with an energy socket located at each point of the triangle. Energize the first two sockets and run across the first bridge.
- Grab another two energy balls and energize the second two sockets and run across that bridge.
- At this point the two stalkers should have de-energized at least one of the sockets. Work quickly to energize the 3 sockets and then press the red button in the little command booth.
- There is a diagram on the nearby glass panel that will indicate which of the socks has been energized.
- After pressing the button the bridges will rotate to the center. Run there and climb up the ladder.
Second Floor
The goal of the second floor is to move a mysterious piece of machinery up to the core to discharge some of its energy. Here is how to do it.
- Run across the bridge and into the command center which is full of soldiers.
- Run outside again, grab an energy ball, and shoot it into the socket that is located over window.
- Out rolls something which you know is high tech because it emits its own light, has tubes and something on it rotates. When it locks into place a stream of dark energy is sucked out of the core.
- Continue through the door to the left of the high tech thing as it is now unlocked
Turn right when you get to the red hallway. You are going to have to get into that red energy spewing accelerator. God love Gordon Freeman and his willingness to jump into radioactive machinery. Maybe he doesn’t talk because his radiated lymph nodes have swelled his tongue to gargantuan proportions.
- Pull of the hatch door and carry it in front of you as you walk towards that energy ball accelerator.
- You can dodge the energy balls too to reduce damage
- Take a left as soon as you get close to the actual emitter.
- Head up the blue ramp and then follow those shinny pipes to the next door. Break through it to fight more guards.
Here on the second floor of the core you will have to run right past it as it pulsates. Cross the energy bridge and observe the pulsating core. Dash to the left when it is contracting to get to the other side.
In the second control room you will again have to power the socket with an energy ball. They can be obtained along the left wall.
Walk to the elevator to the third floor
Third Floor
In order to reach the third control room, you need to jump over the railing and onto one of the three booms rotating above the core. After rotating around about 180 degrees, jump to the other balcony. Head through another hatch and into another particle accelerator room. Hold the sprint button and dodge left and right as you get through them.
Activating the mystery machine in the third control room is a bit trickier
- Grab a ball out of the cracked glass and shoot it at the socket. Watch as the mystery machine breaks down in the act.
- Jump down into the compartment behind it.
- Look for the sparks and see that there is access to that energy ball accelerator in a hole in the ceiling.
- Using those energy balls, power the middle and the far left energy socket. Powering the third one will raise the elevator without you so don’t do it yet.
- Hold an energy ball, stand on the elevator and then power the energy socket on the far right.
- Now back in the control room, grab another energy ball out of the broken glass and power the main socket.
The core shrinks down to an oblate spheroid and retracts into the booms like a post-coital testicle. Head through the now unlocked door in the back of the room. Alyx is there and while you were out eradiating yourself she was examining the combine computer system. In a last ditch effort, the Combine was going to detonate the core to slingshot a message to the Empire’s overlords. Alex downloads the message they were going to send and says we need to get it to her father. She also finds a distress call by Judith Mossman. Follow Alex out of there.
In the next room, grab the two mines and hold them near Alyx to reprogram them to fight the Combine soldiers. Then, head for the train.
The train is packed with Stalkers who are locked into their travel cases. Alex explains that these were regular humans the combine abducted. They transformed them into these alien looking creatures. Stalkers are like los desaparecidos but instead of being pushed out of airplanes they were hooked up with cybernetics. Look at their little ball legs. Yuck. Alex is compassionate to their plight which shows, you know, like, emotion of her character. The train continues on and comes to a crashing stop. All the Stalkers are awake and start screaming like mad. Alex is pinned behind one of them. It really is the scariest part in this whole game. Pull it off her with the Grav Gun.
UNLOCK CONTAINMENT ACHIEVEMENT
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