New Weapons
Which, very helpfully, brings me to the weapons. You already know that you get the crowbar again, handy for opening crates and doubling nicely as a brain mashing device. Also back again, is the pistol (your most basic gun) and the wonderful scoped crossbow. In fact, everything from the first game is present and correct along with their usual alternate modes of fire too. And, just as in HL, everything feels and sounds about right too. The .357 Magnum gives a hefty kick and satisfying boom, the sub-machine gun rattles of a convincing ‘brrruuup’ with each squeeze of the trigger… the empty shotgun cartridges hitting the floor even sound hollow.
New to the mix this time around is the pulse rifle, which hits hard and fires quickly but chews ammo for breakfast. It’s my favourite sounding gun though… a nice, meaty bang as you unleash a stream of fire. Another new toy is the gravity gun, which is a gameplay master stroke. As innocuous as it seems, you’ll find yourself using the grav gun more than any other weapon. With this little beauty you can drag objects to you from a way off, pick up things that you’d never be able to lift normally and, if you like, you can then fire them off at high speed to smash into your enemies.
With the Havok physics engine under the bonnet of HL2, Valve have made sure that there are using it to its full extent. The result is a weapon that can pick up saw blades and propel them along a corridor, scything zombies in half. You can pull mines up out of the ground and hurl them at onrushing soldiers. You can crouch behind cover and drag that health kit over to you while bullets ricochet all around. You can stack boxes on top of each other to access a ledge, or traverse open sand without touching the ground by laying a path of pallets ahead of you. The amount that this adds to the gameplay, and how it has opened up the game for Valve to challenge you can’t be underestimated. Grav Gun = Genius.
