Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Episode One, and Episode Two

This finishes my playthrough of the Half-Life series.  Technically I ragequit Half-Life: Opposing Force, so maybe I'll go back to that someday and try to see what I was doing wrong.  Anyway, here's my thoughts on the three games in this post's title.

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

This is less of a game and more of a release-polished tech demo for HDR effects in the Source engine.  For the uninitiated, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and to put it simply, it deals with realism in lighting.  Having realistic lighting can make a game's atmosphere so much more believable, and in a game like Half-Life 2 which is supposed to have realistic graphics, getting the lighting right is crucial.

This game is a short mission where you work your way up a cliffside, to a church, so you can stop a gun from shelling a nearby village.  Once you've done that, you take out one last group of Combine including shooting down a helicopter, do some light platforming, and it ends.  However, you can play through it with the developer commentary on, and get an insight into Valve's design choices and the technical details, as well as any difficulties that arose.  It's pretty neat.  I recommend doing two playthroughs.  One serious, just to experience the content, and the second with sv_cheats 1 and god mode enabled, with the developer commentary.

So, if it's so short and playing through it twice is recommended, then why does Steam say I have 2.5 hours of play time?  Well, I was derping around with sk_max_rpg_rounds 100.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

Episode One is a direct continuation from the end of Half-Life 2 proper.  You see how the heck you and Alyx get out of the citadel, and then work to get away from the citadel after a brief trek back into it to get some crucial information, during which time you get the awesome version of the Gravity Gun.

In addition, I made it a bit more challenging on myself by going for, and obtaining, the achievement "The One Free Bullet", which requires you to complete Episode One while firing exactly one bullet.  Other ammunition types, such as grenades and rockets, are acceptable, as are the Gravity Gun and the crowbar.  Also, a big source of damage is Alyx, who follows you around through the vast majority of the game.  Where do you use that one bullet?  To break a lock, fairly early on.

The final area, a train station, is incredibly hectic as you have Combine trying to surround you, and a Strider in relatively close quarters taking potshots whenever it can.  It makes for quite the challenge, even if you aren't going for the one bullet achievement.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Episode Two is a bit more challenging, and a bit longer.  It houses the achievement for carrying a garden gnome from the beginning of the game to the end of the game.  It also makes a reference allllllllll the way back to the beginning of Half-Life 1, when you blow up Dr. Magnusson's lunch in the microwave.

This time around we get acquainted with a couple new Combine enemies: the Hunter, and the Advisor.  The Hunter has a ridiculous amount of firepower and only a few weapons are really effective against them.  The Advisor, well... it can telekinetically lift its prey up and kill it.  You only encounter one Advisor, ever, although more are shown in the ending.

Speaking of the ending, it's a huge cliffhanger.  Since Valve can't count to three, we'll never know how things go from here...

So, that garden gnome.  As my previous rant would tell, it's a bitch to transport in the car.  I did some poking around on the internet, though, and found that you can cheese the loading screen at the end of that segment to despawn the helicopter.  All of this would be so much better if the garden gnome would actually collide with the seats in the car, but no, it goes right through them.  So, your objective is to end up with a screenshot similar to this one.

However, since that's my screenshot, it happened, but I DIDN'T GET THE ACHIEVEMENT.  FIX YOUR GAME VALVE.

Overall Thoughts

Lost Coast is interesting.  Episode 1 is a nice addition to the story and is quite the challenge, even with Alyx backing you up.  Episode 2 is frustrating in parts and ends on a giant cliffhanger, but is still good.

Side note: ugh Valve y u no let us disable "Change weapon on pickup".

Chrono Trigger DS Stuff

So, over on the right, I've added a new little box thing in that column, titled "Chrono Trigger DS".  Right now, since I'm working on maxing out everyone's level (and getting Magus his techs, which will happen naturally once he's in the party), it's showing character levels and my current party.

It won't always show character levels, though.  It'll reflect what I'm currently doing in the game.

Once I'm done doing stuff, it'll disappear.

Since that doesn't get preserved historically very well, I'll do summary posts every now and then, such as the remainder of this post.

Geno Dome grinding is going on strong, and I've got Crono/Ayla/Robo up to level 96.  Getting Ayla to 96, of course, grants her the Bronze Fist, which makes her critical hits deal 9999 damage.

When I was doing this on the SNES cartridge, I wrote a PowerShell script to calculate how many more grinding runs are left until the next character level and tech, given the grinding location and XP/TP remaining.  It's fairly extensively documented, and I may release it here when I'm done with the XP/TP grinding.  It's aptly named ctgrind.ps1, and all of its directions use the item names and terminology from the SNES/PS1 versions of the game, which are the names and terminology that everyone's used to.  It does cater to the DS version wherever it's truly relevant, but it was written mostly for the SNES/PS1 versions.

An Exercise in Tedium

I'm playing Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and trying to get the stupid achievement for keeping the fucking gnome from the beginning of the game until the end of the game.

All is going well, but then I get a car.

Surely, there's a spot in the car where I can put the gnome and have it reliably stay in the fucking car, right?

Right?

RIGHT?

Well, no.  Valve, in all their infinite wisdom, gives you nowhere to put the gnome in the car.  This means that every time you go around a corner, over a hill, jump, or just whenever it feels like it, the gnome falls out of the fucking car.  So regardless of what's happening around you, you have to stop, go find the stupid thing, and put it back in the fucking car.

Then, after the bit with the first Advisor, of course the game spawns the Combine's car in my car, pushing my car forwards, and ejecting the gnome from the car.  So I get through the fight after the Advisor, I have to go find the damn thing and put it in the car, WHILE UNDER FIRE FROM A FUCKING HELICOPTER.  Had enough of stroking your dicks yet, Valve?  The challenge here is to keep the gnome until the end of the game.  The tedium is getting it to stay in the fucking car.  The extra source of tedium is the completely unnecessary helicopter that rains death down upon you if you stop to look for the damn gnome after it falls out of the fucking car.  Also, you don't have any weapons with which to take down the fucking helicopter, and it's an open area, so it gets all the angles on you that it wants.

Fuck you Valve.

Chrono Trigger DS: Geno Dome Time

That's right, having finished Lost Sanctum and gone around doing sidequests, I'm up to Geno Dome grinding.  On SNES/PS1, I always recommended having one character equip the Berserker while using the Rage and Fury Bands on the other two.  However, one of the additional items from Lost Sanctum is the Valor Crest, which raises a character's hit rate as well as giving them a 50% counterattack chance.  So, my recommendation on the DS version is to use that alongside the Rage and Fury Bands.

With everyone having a counterattack chance, it goes faster.  Ayla's up to level 72 and has the mostly useless Iron Fist.  I still think it'd be more useful if she got it at an earlier level, perhaps when she was still at the point where she could land the critical hit necessary to inflict Confuse without also killing the target.  Whatever, level 96 is what matters anyway, because it's all about dat 9999 damage critical hit.

Speaking of 9999 damage critical hits, I've read that one of the new items that I have yet to see is a weapon for Robo that enables him to do 9999 damage critical hits.  I don't know how useful it'll be since he doesn't land critical hits all that often, but it's interesting.

Since Robo has to be in the party the entire time we're in Geno Dome, I basically ignore him.  He'll max out eventually.  Thus, the first party is my mainstay: Crono, Ayla, and Robo.  Once they're maxed, the next party is Robo, Frog, and Magus.  When they're maxed, I switch back to Crono, Ayla, and Robo to max out Marle and Lucca from out-of-party XP, which, as I've mentioned in the past, is faster than having them in the party due to their low regular attack damage.

Once everyone's at 99, then I'll finish Geno Dome and get Robo's equipment, and then work my way through Black Omen and beat the game.  The thing with the extra equipment in the DS version is: the ultimate equipment everyone's used to from the SNES/PS1 is still the best, until you're in New Game + and have the Dimensional Vortex available.  Being that I haven't gotten to that point yet, I don't know precisely when Dimensional Vortex gets unlocked or what time period you have to go to in order to enter it.  Regardless, within is brand new ultimate equipment to play around with, as well as an extra ending.  Should be fun.

There is something new, though.  There's a sword called "Dinoblade" that you get from Lost Sanctum, that's better than Frog's Brave Sword.  So basically, when saving his penultimate sword for New Game + now, we have a slightly better option.  Also, Lost Sanctum has a successor to the Hero Badge: the Champion's Badge.  In addition to the standard Masamune critical hit rate up effect, it also halves Frog's MP costs.  I guess that would be useful if more of his magic was useful, but that's a separate rant.

Chrono Trigger DS: Thoughts on Lost Sanctum

Now that I've finished the first bit of extra content that was added in the DS version, here's some thoughts.

It would be apt to say that the Lost Sanctum feels tacked on, because, well, it was tacked on.  However, there's more to this than that.  It just doesn't feel like the rest of the game.  Even entering and leaving the place, the landing spot for Epoch is incredibly finnicky.  Particularly in 65,000,000 BC, where it looks like you have a giant area to land.

Going in and out of the area is also a pain.  You come in through a beam of light, then your characters slowly walk downwards a bit and bunch up before you gain control.  When leaving, you have to answer a confirmation prompt first.

However, it doesn't stop there.  The areas are full of unavoidable encounters.  I know, the rest of the game has plenty of unavoidable encounters, and it wouldn't be an RPG if you didn't fight things on occasion, but...  Lost Sanctum is basically a series of fetch quests, meaning you'll be going in and out of these areas repeatedly.  So you'll constantly have to deal with the same unavoidable encounters over and over again.  It's especially irritating since the rest of the game sets the example that if you avoid making contact with the enemy's sprite, you won't have to battle.

I have no problem with the fetch quests themselves, they're all fairly simple and straightforward, and make use of time travel in one manner or another.  However, you absolutely must talk to the NPCs.  It isn't like other areas of the game where if you know where to go and what to do, you can mostly avoid talking to NPCs, except when that itself gets you something.  Here, the NPCs have to hold your hand and tell you exactly what to do every step of the way.

The enemies in this area have an abnormally high number of counterattacks that trigger whenever you attack them.  Elsewhere in the game, if an enemy has a counterattack, it's a simple issue of being at proper range (Yakra), or a counterattack phase of the battle where you can just heal up instead of attacking (Heckran), or you can hit another part of the enemy to avoid it (Lavos Spawn).  But here, there's nothing to do except eat the counterattacks.

Also, this area is basically a giant plot hole.  The Reptites were wiped out of existence in 65,000,000 BC after you storm the Tyrano Lair and Lavos falls.  This is evidenced by the ending you get if you defeat Lavos before finishing the Tyrano Lair, where everyone's a Reptite.  After you finish the Tyrano Lair, defeating Lavos gives you the next ending, and everyone's human again.  The Reptites are clearly supposed to go extinct, yet this area is full of them, and they survive until at least 600 AD.  Within the realm of the story, it makes no sense for the Reptites to be here.

Last but not least, let's talk about Lumicite.  What is it?  Some sort of fictitious substance that you can turn in to an NPC and get a piece of armor for Lucca.  How do you get it?  By defeating a Wonder Rock, that's a palette swap of the other rock enemies you see throughout the game.  How do you find this Wonder Rock?  By getting extremely lucky.  Its spawn rate is ridiculously low, and it's the only thing that can ever be different about the enemy spawns in each area.  The sad thing is, on one of my first few trips through the forest area, I saw it.  I SAW IT.  But I was already tired of enemy encounters in the area, so I avoided it.  Had I known what it was, I would have definitely fought it.  I haven't seen it since.

Overall, Lost Sanctum gets you some neat loot that wasn't in the original game, and isn't too difficult even with the counterattack-happy bosses you have to fight.  It's kind of annoying to go through because of the unavoidable encounters, but the rewards are worth it.

Changing the SSID in SpillPass-Pi

Why would you want to change the SSID you're using for HomePass?  Well, the Nintendo Zone system combines the SSID with the MAC address when choosing which StreetPasses to send to you, so using the same MAC with a different SSID will give you completely different StreetPasses.  This becomes important when you're desperately trying to finish a panel in Puzzle Swap and you're not getting anyone who has the pieces you need.  Changing your SSID can get you a better chance at the missing pieces.

Since SpillPass-Pi pretty much isn't documented at all, I'll make my best attempt at describing this process.  I'll even go so far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like.

I mean, make it simple enough that you don't really need any Linux knowledge to do it.

The hardest part of doing this is connecting to your Raspberry Pi so you can make the changes.  Here, you have two options:

1. Connect a monitor and keyboard.
2. Find its IP address, and use an SSH client such as PuTTY (for Windows) or the command-line ssh client (Mac OS X, Linux) to connect.

I personally connect via SSH, but that's because my router always gives the Raspberry Pi the same IP address whenever SpillPass-Pi rotates MAC addresses.  If yours doesn't, you'll get your connection interrupted every five minutes.  It's for this reason that I'll recommend connecting a monitor and keyboard instead.  There is a rather weird issue with connecting a monitor and keyboard, and that would be that the default keyboard layout isn't the standard US QWERTY layout.  It's still QWERTY, but some of the non-alphanumeric symbols are moved around.

To log in, the username and password are the same as the web interface:

• Username: root
• Password: SpillPassPi

If logging in via SSH, in PuTTY, type root@<IP of your Raspberry Pi> into the "Host Name (or IP address)" field and click "Open". Enter the password when prompted.

If logging in via SSH, with the command-line SSH client in Mac OS X or Linux, just type ssh root@<IP of your Raspberry Pi> and press Enter. Enter the password when prompted.

If connecting a monitor and keyboard, you'll have to press Ctrl+A and then D to get to the login prompt.  From there, you can just type both the username and the password.

Anyone with Linux knowledge can tell you how bad it is to be logging in as root, but apparently nobody told that to spillmonkey.  You'll need root privileges for this anyway, so just beware: you can seriously mess things up with root if you don't follow these instructions verbatim.  Also, Linux filesystems and commands are case-sensitive.

Now that you're connected and logged in, all you need to do is edit a text file and reboot.  For the purposes of this example, we'll be using this SSID: NZ@McD1

1. At the prompt, type nano /etc/hostapd/nintendozone.sh and press Enter.
2. Look for the line that says cat > $CONFIG_FILE <<EOF
3. On a blank line just above that line, type SSID="NZ@McD1"
4. Now press Ctrl+X, and then press Y to save the changes and exit.
5. Finally, at the prompt, type shutdown -r now to reboot your Raspberry Pi.  When it comes back up, it will be using the new SSID.

The more Linux-savvy out there may realize that you don't really need to do a full reboot.  That's fine.  I just wanted to make things as simple as possible, so that anyone could do it.

What's that, you want to change back to the default?  Well, that's easy too.

1. At the command prompt, type nano /etc/hostapd/nintendozone.sh and press Enter.
2. Go down to the line you added in the above instructions, and insert a # before it.  Using our example above, the line will now read #SSID="NZ@McD1"
3. Press Ctrl+X, then Y to save and exit.
4. Type shutdown -r now at the prompt and press Enter to reboot.

The # character makes the line a comment, which prevents that one line from being executed.  In the future, if you want to change the SSID again, all you need to do is delete that character and then change the SSID.

Another trip around the sun

Edit: Well, fuck you, WMG.  Changed to a lyrics video instead.  Bonus: it's now the uncensored version of the song.