Darren New wrote:

> I take it you've never played the game.  OSHA[1] was clearly missing 
> from the equation.
> 
> There's one point in the level where you have to climb down a ladder 
> thru the blades of a giant fan, turn on the fan with the switch at the 
> bottom of the ladder, and try to climb back up thru the blades before 
> they're spinning fast enough to cut your head off.

Or the generator suspended over an infinite pit, with no ladders or 
railing of any kind. It can only be switched on by climbing up a 
treacherously narrow metal pole, flicking two switches, and then 
climbing down before the whole contraption becomes electrofied. It is, 
one presumes, *impossible* to turn it off again.

Who in their right mind would design a device like that?? I mean, rooms 
flooded with toxins due to the general carnage the building underwent 
are at least plausible. But a device, apparently undamaged, that can 
only be switched on by a near suicidal procedure, and can never be 
switched off at all, seems... implausible? :-P

How about the "surgical unit" that simply consists of a room with some 
rotating blades. What possible use could that have?

In general, the game does seem to have an abundance of machinery that is 
far more hazardous than necessary, and devices with the most implausible 
control placements. If you're crawling through an air vent where humans 
aren't supposed to be, that's understandable. If the safety railings 
have been destroyed in an explosion, that's fine. But so many machines 
seem to be entirely undamaged, and just *designed* to be leathal for no 
reason.

Similarly, it's a linear game. That's a fact. For the most part it 
manages to make it seem as if there *were* multiple pathways and 
corridors and most of them have merely been destroyed. But quite a lot 
of the time, the illusion fails. "Extreme hopscotch", anyone?? :-P

> It's a video game, after all.  No less unbelievable than an MIT PhD 
> could actually kill 3000 alien monsters and dozens of trained army 
> soldiers, all of which are looking for him.

Well... the alien monsters. How intelligent are they? I wouldn't have 
much trouble killing 3,000 grasshoppers if I wanted to. And most of the 
inhabitants of Black Mesa appear to be unarmed. But the trained soldiers?

"Let us not forget, we are not talking about some... agent provocator. 
Gordon Freeman is a theoretical physasist who had bearly earned the 
distinction of his PhD!"

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Ever run the hazard course? The instructor was clearly female.

Now that you mention it, yes. Plus, you get to see what's-her-name putting 
the sample on the cart that gets delivered at the beginning, when you play 
Blue Shift.

But you never actually *meet* a female.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Or the generator suspended over an infinite pit, with no ladders or 
> railing of any kind. It can only be switched on by climbing up a 
> treacherously narrow metal pole, flicking two switches, and then 
> climbing down before the whole contraption becomes electrofied. It is, 
> one presumes, *impossible* to turn it off again.

One would hope that's merely controls that have been destroyed earlier.

> Well... the alien monsters. How intelligent are they?

Some claim the voragants (or whatever they're called) are smarter than the 
rest of the invaders. Hard to say, for sure.

> I wouldn't have much trouble killing 3,000 grasshoppers if I wanted to. 

Even if the grasshoppers are shooting back?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Warp wrote:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J80KD4BG7M

I almost forgot... There are several things in these videos that I had 
no idea you could do.

- The switch next to the security guard. (The one that *doesn't* reboot 
the PC.) I never knew there was a switch there.

- After the disaster, the guy manages to open the blast doors and go 
back out to the train platform [which promptly collapses]. I never knew 
you could do that.

- The computer that falls over and crushes the headcrab. I've never seen 
that happen before. When I play the game, that headcrab usually crawls 
through the hole and ambushes me out in the lobby, not inside the 
computer room.

- The first two zombies. The guy simply runs away from them. It never 
occurred to me that you could do that. I died several times trying to 
kill them with either the crowbar or a pistol (if I had one). But hey, 
why bother? I mean, what are they going to do? Shoot you? Run after you? Ha!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> - The first two zombies. The guy simply runs away from them. It never 
> occurred to me that you could do that. I died several times trying to 
> kill them with either the crowbar or a pistol (if I had one). But hey, 
> why bother? I mean, what are they going to do? Shoot you? Run after you? Ha!

  Is this some kind of FPS syndrome? Everything that can be killed *must*
be killed?-)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Is this some kind of FPS syndrome? Everything that can be killed *must*
> be killed?-)

Once you play through a game once or twice, to continue to be amused, one 
must sometimes set artificial challenges. Kill every enemy, find every bit 
of loot, go the whole game without taking any damage, stuff like that.

I saw a Thief walkthru explaining how to go the entire game neither taking 
damage nor giving it. Even as a master thief, that's not easy. 
(Disappointingly, in Thief 3, that sort of play doesn't seem to be an 
option. There's even a point where to complete a mission you *must* kill an 
"innocent" human.)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> - The first two zombies. The guy simply runs away from them. It never 
>> occurred to me that you could do that. I died several times trying to 
>> kill them with either the crowbar or a pistol (if I had one). But hey, 
>> why bother? I mean, what are they going to do? Shoot you? Run after you? Ha!
> 
>   Is this some kind of FPS syndrome? Everything that can be killed *must*
> be killed?-)

There's two aliens walking towards you through a narrow corridor. You 
have to get past them to continue the game. If you were in a maze, the 
idea of finding a way round might have occurred to me I guess. But since 
there's only one route and it's blocked, I didn't think of it. (Now if 
these were two armed soldiers, you'd have no *hope* of just running 
past. But they're just slow-moving zombies. So long as you're out of 
claw range, they're actually pretty harmless I guess...)

Related: I also killed the headcrab on the scientist's head. For no 
particular reason.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Or the generator suspended over an infinite pit, with no ladders or 
>> railing of any kind. It can only be switched on by climbing up a 
>> treacherously narrow metal pole, flicking two switches, and then 
>> climbing down before the whole contraption becomes electrofied. It is, 
>> one presumes, *impossible* to turn it off again.
> 
> One would hope that's merely controls that have been destroyed earlier.

Yeah, one would *hope*! ;-) But why would you have a second set of 
controls somewhere so dangerous? Hmm...

>> Well... the alien monsters. How intelligent are they?
> 
> Some claim the voragants (or whatever they're called) are smarter than 
> the rest of the invaders. Hard to say, for sure.

Indeed. But they appear to be the exception, as far as the aliens go.

>> I wouldn't have much trouble killing 3,000 grasshoppers if I wanted to. 
> 
> Even if the grasshoppers are shooting back?

That's just it - the zombies don't. (Or at least, not until "the next 
stage of mutation", which seems to have mysteriously vanished in the 
later games... Hmm!)

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Invisible wrote:
> Yeah, one would *hope*! ;-) But why would you have a second set of 
> controls somewhere so dangerous? Hmm...

Easy. Testing.  You climb up, open the lid, fiddle with the guts, try 
turning it on to see if it works. If so, you turn it off and climb back down 
again.

> Indeed. But they appear to be the exception, as far as the aliens go.

It's kind of hard to say how smart the floaty things are that shoot yellow 
balls at you. The headcrabs are smart enough to do brain surgery on you. ;-)

>>> I wouldn't have much trouble killing 3,000 grasshoppers if I wanted to. 
>>
>> Even if the grasshoppers are shooting back?
> 
> That's just it - the zombies don't. 

For a creature you encounter before you even have a weapon, they can't be 
too dangerous. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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Darren New wrote:

> It's kind of hard to say how smart the floaty things are that shoot 
> yellow balls at you. The headcrabs are smart enough to do brain surgery 
> on you. ;-)

That doesn't require intelligence, only Intelligent Design - er, I mean, 
Evolution. ;-)

Of course, reality is stranger than any fiction. There are certain wasps 
that inject their eggs into oak trees. The grubs are genetic engineers, 
altering the life processes of the tree so that it grows a bulb of nice, 
nutritious tissue around the grub for it to eat.

But that's nothing. Another kind of wasp parasitises these things. And 
to do so, it has a drill tipped with *metalic zinc* (!!) so it can drill 
through the thick woody bulb to get to the grub inside. o_O

Many other real-world parasites perform slightly scary feats of surgury 
and genetic engineering to complete their lifecycle...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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