RandomGuy

He did say that, waaaaaay back in a Podcast 17 interview released around the time of episode 12.

This is the part where I be an asshole and point out that the damage value changes either keep things roughly as realistic as they were in the original games, or make them less realistic. Anyway, GREAT episode. Maybe it's just because the boss monster itself presents a good opportunity for a lot of panicking and yelling, but I laughed several times throughout the nine and a half minute running time. This might just be my favorite episode so far; it's certainly my girlfriend's. Favorite quotes/moments: The baby headcrabs annoying Freeman. In general. "AM I FIGHTING A GOD? IS THIS WHAT GOD LOOKS LIKE!? THIS ISN'T WHAT I PICTURED AT ALL!" "IS THIS A JOKE!? WHAT'S HAPPENING!? IT'S IMMUNE TO EXPLOSIVES!? Freeman hitting his head. Twice.

They could be another form of tentacles. But seriously I lean more towards wasp/bee-like where there is a queen but the workers are largely independent or were at least before they were used as weapons of war. There has likely been some strict breeding control on the queen. which may be why gonarch's floating on a small island in the void... she seems like a pretty large animal for such a small space... freeman literally was teleported to a headcrab breeding pen that was only the most efficient amount of space to give her. --- But ya valve were thing EXTREMELY sexually when they designed the aliens in half life. Mr. Friendly which is one of the cut aliens was supposed to literally rape freeman and defiantly looks like uhhh some things.... XD on Mr. Friendly's article on the halflife wiki it says that "The sexual themes of some of the enemies were intended to appeal to the innate homophobia of 12 year old boys, the targeted audience for the game." :l halflife could of been a REALLY weird game if they had included more of the enemies they cut. Ridiculous. We all know that the Xen Tentacles are the True Combine/G-Man's employers/the Nihilanth's slavers/the G-Man's employers/Gordon Freeman from the future/Adrian's true family. They were pretty sexual, weren't they? Headcrabs are face-huggers. The Gonarch is a testicle. Barnacles are based on... well, barnacles, meaning those tentacles they use to eat are probably inspired by the real-world barnacle's extremely long penis. The Alien Grunts are dressed like strippers. The Nihilanth is a giant fetus. The Alien Slaves were completely naked except for their collars. The Controllers are mini-Nihilanths who wear only loincloths. Creepy. Anyway. I hate to be 'that guy', I really do, but I'm curious. Episode 62 came out a week ago; it was released four days after 61.5. The voice work and footage for episode 63 have apparently been done for a while, to the point that (by Ross's estimate) he finished the voice work for episode 64 several days ago. Otto isn't dead, Ross finished moving, and he apparently has another sound editing guy for back-up. But there's no sign of episode 63. Did the series run into another problem during production? Is Scott just focusing non-stop on recording and filming, so he can release them all in a short amount of time at a later date? Something else?

It's possible that the headcrabs are an artificial species to begin with. Them infecting humans and only humans seems rather suspect.

A giant testicle on a big armored spider monster spawns them.

I always thought that the Xen levels had the best art design of any levels in any Valve game. Xen is quite beautiful and eerie. It's a shame that most people don't like the last few chapters.

Why is it that everyone always has to connect everything in Half-Life to those tentacles? It's weird, people have an obsession with it. Those Xen trees? Young tentacles. Those giant pillars? Old tentacles. The Gene Worm? Obviously connected to those tentacles. A completely unrelated giant tentacle monster in another game? Just a variant of the Xen Tentacles!

He has a shitton of weapons. He should be able to survive against the authorities. The problem is that Freeman has never really taken into account whether or not aliens are teleporting to other places. He's gonna be in for a surprise. It doesn't matter. Trying to fight the authorities at all would just result in him being eventually bogged down, surrounded, and killed. The local police should be able to handle him if he's heading towards any decently sized city. The soldiers did okay, but they had to pull out because they were losing. You also seriously underestimate how potent teleportation really is when the military relies on a very specific and relatively fragile infrastructure.

Earth would be screwed. I don't think the Nihilanth could win this war, but his teleportation abilities and apparently overwhelming numbers will mean very bad things for both sides. This isn't even taking into account the horrible damage to the ecosystem that'll occur due to the Xenian wildlife teleporting over here, or the ramifications of everyone knowing about what the US government did at Black Mesa. But that's the least of Freeman's worries. No, what he has to worry about is how the fuck he expects to just escape without being apprehended by the authorities. He's a shifty-looking bearded man covered in blood and carrying several guns: two pistols, ten grenades, a submachine gun, a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, satchel charges, a crowbar, and even a portable particle accelerator that can kill tanks. He is also carrying absurd amounts of ammo for all of the above, including DEPLETED URANIUM for the Gluon Gun. His presence is going to cause an uproar at the first town he goes to, and he'll be forced to either fight or run from the police. Suffice to say, he won't last very long at all. The only way this could work out is if he really is in Europe, and has some form of proof to present to whatever authorities are there about the Black Mesa incident (alien blood? The Gluon Gun? Him just arriving there out of the blue?). They'd be extremely interested then, and probably give him asylum (the Black Mesa incident was supposed to be secret, I doubt the US government could get him before he goes public with the story). If that fails, he's screwed. If that plan works, then he's living on borrowed time. The US government is still going to be out for his blood, and can probably put a bad spin on him. More importantly, there's that whole "planetary war" thing. He may very well die during it.

I give this version of Freeman about a week before a Garg teleports on his head. He then wakes up, 10.5-11 style, thinking he had a bad dream. Then he realizes that he's in Xen. It'd be like that scene in Edge of Tomorrow, where that guy decides to not try to kill the alien leader and just leave, and so he gets as far away as he can from the battle only to get killed anyway when the invasion arrives in full force. Then the next day, he wakes up (respawns) and thinks "dammit", before realizing that he's basically being railroaded into killing the alien leader, because every path where he doesn't just results in him dying and humanity being screwed. Of course, in that case, the guy at least knew he could respawn/could respawn in-story. I've never played this map. Not sure how it would really work, though. It's very small, and it appears to be just an open space with little cover. Anyway, I can see that you're rather confident about meeting that deadline, if you go out of your way to produce extra episodes (Uplink and this) before you have even reached Xen.

Cool. You had me worried that you were going to make an untenable schedule for a second there. While the voice work for the three episodes is done, what about the editing and footage? I presume the latter comes before the voice work, and the former still isn't done?

I certainly wasn't expecting this. It was a nice trip down memory lane, though. I remember playing 1 and 2. I always thought it was awesome; it's what convinced me that free Flash games could be genuinely good. I agree with most of what you stated in the video. Speaking of the video itself: another good, solid episode of the Game Dungeon, with sufficient amounts of review material and a perfect blend of offhand funny comments. For some reason, the part that had me laughing the hardest was "Really? Look at them. Look at this guy!". So, in short, it was pretty much a standard episode of this show. [warning: irrelevant rant incoming that has little to do with the video, only the first six or so minutes. Most people probably won't care] About the zombie craze: my theory for why zombies are so popular is because they're weak. Now, hear me out. Everyone wants to imagine that they're a badass who is above everyone else and can take out hundreds of guys on their own. But then reality smacks them in the face with the knowledge that there are tons of actual soldiers, police officers, and the like that are inevitably way, way more badass than them. On top of that, the most the average person can do against most world-ending threats is "die horribly". Zombies don't follow that rule. A plague/science experiment/whatever swept over the land, turning everyone into zombies. Except you and a few other people. Because you're a special snowflake. And for some reason, the authorities can't handle it, they're all zombies too. Everyone more badass than you is likely a walking corpse. And said walking corpse is slow (usually), dumb, unarmed, and in very poor health. There's no real threat unless you get careless, or the corpse brings a truly absurd number of his friends. On top of that, everyone's dead, so there's no one around to tell you what you can and can't do, so go wild! You want that machine gun? You can have it! Wanna be king of your own band? Well there's no government around to stop you, so go ahead. Wanna slice people up with a chainsaw? Well almost everyone besides you is a parasite, and no one has a gun or anything, so feel free to do so. On top of THAT, zombies are already dead (even the technically living ones may as well be), so you don't have to deal with the obvious moral issues. Humans really don't like to kill other humans. We're hard-coded not to do it. Zombies, on the other hand? They're fair game. Abridged: the zombie apocalypse is an escapist fantasy where regular people can do whatever they want and feel like badasses by slaughtering monsters that can barely fight back, even though those monsters would die out after maybe a week in reality with no input from said regular people. In video games, they also offer a unique gameplay style, and provide an easy source of weak fodder that you don't really have to explain or expand upon. Note: this isn't to say that these are the ONLY reasons people like zombie fiction. There are a lot of other reasons someone could enjoy it. I just think that, in general, this has a lot to do with the genre's wide appeal. Who hasn't imagined themselves in a zombie apocalypse at least once? Who hasn't thought that Tallahassee from Zombieland was really cool? [the rant ends here] Also: when you were first going over the whole "buy fuel" thing, the first game that came to mind for me was Clash of Clans.

So, apparently, there will be no new Freeman's Mind episode before the new Game Dungeon episode. Unless it's going to be posted late at night or on the same day as said Game Dungeon episode. November's gonna be a really FM-heavy month, seeing as how Ross promised to get through HL1 by the end of December, and he has at least nine or ten episodes to go. Which means he'll have to produce new episodes weekly at the very least (assuming 62 is about done). I can't wait!

I'd like to change my vote to this bit in episode 57, after Freeman gets high and stops the reactor from melting down: "It's flooded. I'm a hero!" [a Vortigaunt starts attacking] "Man fuck you!" [shoots Vortigaunt before it can finish charging] "I just saved your life from a meltdown. I'm a hero! You can't zap me like that, I'm a hero!" It's mostly due to the way he says it.

1. They can cover a good portion of it. 2. I'm aware of that. But the statistic as just to show that, in general, police officers don't have to deal with rifles, since almost no criminals have them. III-A arm sleeves would therefore be highly helpful for most officers. 3. - 5. There. Simple. No amount of cursing and yelling was necessary for this. Though, I've never seen soldiers and SWAT wear armor on their arms. I just quoted you saying that III-A armor would protect against Combine pulse weapons. There's also this comment where you explicitly say the pulse rifle would be ineffective against enemies in armor: ME: "Scaled for damage, wouldn't that make it weaker than the 5.56 M249 from Opposing Force? Do you actually think it is or is that just for gameplay reasons?" YOU: "Yes, it would. To the OSIPR's credit, it is a functional energy weapon with a very small magazine that holds a LOT of ammunition and hits pretty well, but the hit effect, a small, concentrated surface blast, makes me believe it isn't a very good armour penetrator compared to a rifle and that's important to the damage scores I end up assigning... I have no doubt the OSIPR would be better against some targets, but against soldiers in padded body armour it seems doubtful it would be all that effective if it really is dealing blast damage." Wait, so you're assuming Combine future-armor is completely different from what modern soldiers would use? While that's not explicitly contradicted anywhere, I don't recall anything about it being different. It certainly didn't look futuristic, and in-game the Combine soldiers are given the exact same health as the marines from the first game (and we know that the value of a hit point is the same between games, as headcrabs, barnacles, and zombies all have the same health). You describing the Overwatch soldiers having the same in-game health as the marines ("how much health are the Overwatch soldiers supposed to have?"--->"150, same as the HECU marines"), as well as you not bringing up the "Future Armor" explanation when I asked you why 5.56 > pulse rifle shots earlier (you just said that the pulse rifle would be ineffective against armored enemies), didn't give me the impression you thought that Combine armor was wildly different. Again, we don't know if the pulse rifle deals damage by exploding. I always assumed it used teleportation technology somehow going by the effect it produces (it's the same effect produced by the mini teleporter in Black Mesa East), and the animations for most of the other Combine pulse weapons (the guns on the Hunter and Strider, as well as the energy ball, disintegrate humanoid NPCs into nothingness with the same particle effect as the teleporter). I never said it would PENETRATE, just that it would be effective against heavily armored enemies, and it wouldn't necessarily have to penetrate to do that considering how weird Combine technology is. Which is supported by the game since, well, it is. Also, I just checked HL2, and this "explosion" doesn't leave scorch marks. Just "holes", like all the bullet-firing weapons. Where did you see scorch marks? They deal less in-game damage than the Pulse Rifle, and don't actually produce more impressive effects by my eyes (the Pulse Rifle appears to produce significantly stronger recoil, for what that's worth). Assuming that pulse auto-turrets are SO MUCH stronger than the standard Combine service rifle, is there any reason why the Combine would stick these super-fuckawesome-guns on their turrets and leave their soldiers with pea-shooters weaker than pre-war firearms? The turret is not that big, it's very thin, and it produces next to no recoil, so surely it couldn't that hard to porduce something close in strength and give it to the soldiers, who already carry heavy bulky rifles? Also note that all other infantry-level Combine pulse weapons (ceiling turrets in the Citadel, autocannon equivalents in Episode 2, HMG-equivalents encountered in stationary fortifications, sniper rifle, etc.) all do significantly more damage than both the pulse rifle and the turret, so it's not like Valve just had something against the automated turrets doing that much damage. It wouldn't be at all disruptive for game balance, either. Somewhat. The pulse turret only appears to have blown something in half because of the scenery; you're in a room and hear pulse turrets firing for a few seconds. You walk into the next room and see a pulse turret sitting near a hole in the wall. You knock over the turret and see two bodies piled up plus a pair of severed legs. Walking past the legs will reveal half of a zombie hiding under some rubble. You can see a similar scene (i.e. zombie torsos separated from legs) in a couple of other Combine outposts that don't have auto-turrets, just soldiers with pulse rifles. They don't, actually. They make the .357 stronger than the M2 Browning, but that's not what you said. The two pistols are more like extreme outliers than anything else; aside from them, there's at least a bit of sense to the relative damages, even if they're not remotely realistic (e.g. HD pack assault rifle = 5, 7.62x51 = 10, .50 BMG = 20 (or 10) [depends on a couple of things], 25mm autocannon = 60; SMG = 4, pistol = 5, pulse rifle = 8, emplacement gun = 15). HL2's shotgun is another extremely weird case, but it's implied that there's something off about it and that it's not just firing regular buckshot, as Combine squad leaders are issued this gun instead of a logically-not-worthless-gun. But okay, Valve gets weird with damage values of real world weapons for the sake of balance. That's clear in several cases, mostly with the pistols and some of the vehicles. But why would that matter with completely fictional weapons? Since there are no cutscenes, or officially given numbers, or even much dialogue suggesting how the fictional HL weapons like the pulse rifle work, the relative damages in-game are one of the only things we have. While they're not conclusive by any means, they do give us an idea, as we have nothing else to really go on. You're doing the same thing you did with the thornet gun, where you assume you know the limits of a completely fictional weapon in a series that plays fast and loose with real-world science, and then use those made-up limits to ignore the game and assume said weapon sucks, even though it's depicted as being effective in-universe. The thornet gun killed full-armored marines and even HEV-suited scientists, and the pulse rifle was chosen as the standard weapon of the Overwatch rather than any old Earth firearm. Now, while that doesn't give us any specifics, it still would indicate that it's silly to suggest that the pulse rifle is significantly less effective against armor, even soft armor, than modern weapons. If that was the case, don't you think you'd see at least one Combine soldier armed with a regular rifle? 1. Every in-game source of damage draws blood (except for the explosives... I think?). 2. Where does it leave scorch marks? 3. No weapon penetrates through any NPC in any of the games. 4. Have you considered that it might just teleport away whatever it hits? It is, in fact, a different weapon system, in the same way an autocannon and pistol are different weapon systems. That means, at one point, the Combine actually made the decision to make a human-compatible pulse weapon and standardized it. My question before was why even bother if it was apparently inferior to modern weapons in several areas? The Combine show that they have no problem just giving some of their troops regular bullet hoses. There was no reason for them to have exactly that amount of health (40, as opposed to, say, 30-35), as they're hardly in the game, and when they are, they're mostly there to get one-shotted by sniper rifles, mines, grenades, etc. The full suit would've made them look MORE similar, sure, but you could still very easily tell the difference at a distance due to the accessories and differing head, leg, and foot wear. In HL2: Raising the Bar, several Valve developers also expressed disdain for impractical-looking armor. Even if it was just an asthetic thing, don't you think the art team wouldn't have the rebels just not wear very helpful pieces of armor, and just one part of it? What's the in-universe explanation for that? I'll have to do a comparison later, because I did not notice that at all. EDIT: random thing. Remember when we were talking about whether or not Gordon wore a helmet earlier? Well, I just remembered something that should give us the answer: the HUD. Gordon doesn't get one until he puts on the suit.

What about "American Psycho"? It's a pretty entertaining psychological horror/black comedy.

What reason was that? It wouldn't stop rifles? Like 90+% of gun crime is committed with handguns. You said that Combine energy weapons would be inferior to modern rifles against armored opponents, to the point that even soft body armor completely ineffectual against modern rifles would protect against them. This was reflected in both your comments and your .cfg mods, where the 5.56 in Opposing Force does slightly more damage than the Pulse Rifle. "An energy weapon that fires bolts that explode on impact in the second game. That's all your standard weapons that deal locational damage. Guess what ALL of these weapons have in common. That's right, they don't penetrate worth a shit. They'll be stopped by a layer of III-A body armour just fine, and assuming the armour of heavily armoured soldiers and scifi future-cops is at least III-A everywhere isn't a stretch at all. All these weapons will be stopped by the arms of a combatant. In real life, though, people have these things called "rifles". Funny thing about rifles, they don't care much about most forms of armour. They'll go right through an NIJ III-A sleeve just fine, out the other side just fine, and still hit the chest. Sure, the two layers of III-A armour will weaken them a lot, but they'll still go through." And I pointed out that wouldn't make sense, because... 1. The Pulse Rifle deals high damage in-game to the heavily armored Overwatch. 2. A weaker Combine pulse weapon blasted a man in half. 3. We have no idea how the weapon itself works. We don't know anything about it other than that it's powerful. 4. The Combine chose to develop this weapon system (they did not have it prior) for use by their Transhuman arm, even though they could have easily just used modern weapons if that's what they needed, as the rebels all wear III-A vests. I'm aware of that. However, I doubt that the rebels wearing CP armor (not other scavenged armor, like pre-war armor or Overwatch armor) and them having the exact same amount of health as the CPs was coincidence. They could have easily worn the full outfit and differentiated themselves via other scraps of clothing, accessories, and different pants, shoes, and head wear. Barney had uniquely colored CP armor?

There's a 1992 Belgian movie with a very similar premise (a camera crew follows around a serial killer to watch him do his thing), though with different themes, tone, and humor, called "Man Bites Dog". It's up in the air on whether that one actually qualifies as horror. The whole thing is on Youtube if you're interested. It might come off as pretentious or exploitative, but I thought it was funny and unsettling. That's not a response to your "recommend something really scary" prompt, by the way- I'm just noting the similarities. Have you ever seen "The Devil's Rejects"?

Those aren't fireballs, they're lightning balls. I'm not sure how else he should have reacted. Since it was previously established that Vortigaunt lightning bolts (which are powerful enough to kill a grown man wearing body armor in a couple hits) somehow don't do anything more than sting Gordon, it should come as no surprise that the weaker attacks from the Controllers don't do anything either, aside from give him brief bits of pain. The Nihilanth, on the other hand...

I HOPE he doesn't just bumble in to this one, just like I hope he doesn't just bumble around Xen, and like I hoped he didn't just bumble into the portal. But, I admit that's a big possibility. "No, I don't want to take your offer. Take me to Massachusetts. This thing leads there, right?" (G-Man says nothing) "I'm sure it does." (jumps in)

Okay this goes back to the "multiple breakthroughs" line again. I considered that maybe it only detects motion on a certain level, but what level? At the cellular level, who knows fast your cells are moving? Hell I think sneezes are at 100mph. Nerve connections and the brain in general must move pretty damn fast as well. I guess the thing is I don't see how you would cancel one type of momentum, but not the other; additionally I don't see how there would be technology to DISTINGUISH the two or even DETECT the difference in the first place. I really tried to think this one out and I couldn't come up with any scenario where momentum is cancelled AND you come out alive on the other end short of having some positional tracking and computational system way, way beyond anything we could dream about. Let us not forget, Black Mesa still uses giant tape reels on their computers. The answer is in the Nihilanth's brain.

I don't think I could choose just one favorite game. There's so many to pick from. The closest I could think of is either Team Fortress 2 or Fallout New Vegas. I could write essays on why they're brilliant. But again, I have no one true favorite. I could easily list my favorite FRANCHISES, though: Fallout Mass Effect Half-Life Total War

Ditto, both this reason and Box's. I'm actually dreading him getting to part two for three reasons: 1. He'll probably take a big break after finishing HL1 this year. Assuming he does. 2. There's a chance he won't even do HL2. Not a big one, but still. 3. Half-Life 2 is LONG, a few hours longer than Half-Life 1. I'll still follow it, of course, but if it takes seven or more years to finish season 2 I'll be mildly annoyed. On the other hand, in a five year old podcast, Ross said he'd have a much easier time coming up with jokes for HL2, due to the increased NPC interaction and scripted sequences. He even considered starting there at one point. So that's a positive, I guess.

"Screwed"? What are you talking about? The Seven Hour was just what Earth needed. Now all our energy is renewable, there's enough food for everyone, and crime is at its lowest rate in recorded history. It's a total U-turn.

Any particular reason? Don't get me wrong, I don't want that to happen either, I'm just curious as to why you don't.