Route Kanal

The Joy Of Physics

You'll gain your first pistol shortly after you begin this level, as you'll have to take down a couple of CP bastards that're harrassing a pair of civilians. Both of them will drop pistols, giving you a bit of ammo with which to fight your way through the other CP on the stairs beyond.

Get used to using explosive barrels to kill off enemies - you're going to be doing a whole lot of it throughout the course of a game.

After jumping the train to the ruined building, bust your way into it and through it (being careful of the explosive barrels within - they make for an easy way to clear the door but can do a lot of damage if they explode near you. After you get through the house, make your way over the busted fence before crawling through the small pipe. Note the small Half-Life symbol above the pipe itself; this is going to notify you of the correct path in the levels ahead, as well as point you towards caches of itemy goodness here and there.

When you clear the pipe, drop back down onto the train tracks and start making your way through the small corridors; these eventually will lead you to the other side of the blue forcefield. Note that the force field only prevents your body from passing through; bullets can traverse it without a problem. If you see a CP cop on the other side of a field, then, feel free to bust a cap; they'll do the same for you without hesitation.

Eventually you'll come out to the end of a canal, which you'll have to jump into. This will take you another cell in the underground railroad, where you'll confirm that the big alien presence in Dr. Vance's lab wasn't just a figment of your imagination or a weird by-product of the teleportation accident; apparently the underground resistance has teamed up with the Vortigaunts. This is never really explained, so far as we can tell; weren't these guys trying to kill you in the last game?

Fun With Turrets

Most turrets in the game will give you an opportunity to use them against incoming enemies.

Regardless of that little twist, you'll have to continue along the tracks until you come to what used to be another railroad cell; it's unfortunately been the victim of a roll-up operation by the Civil Protection boys, who've set up a turret overlooking most of the canal. A little damage is unavoidable here, so use your sprint key to dash up around the corner and into the tunnel to the right; this will let you get behind the turret and take out the CP troops manning it. As you may surmise, this'll give you an opportunity to take control of the turret yourself, so plow through the incoming troops, who just happen to stand near explosive barrels or on top of wooden planks that you can destroy to force them to fall to their deaths. The real danger here will arrive in the form of a CP riot truck, which will attempt to shell you with heat-seeking missiles; when it drives up, you'll have to leave the turret and proceed down the walkway along the right side of the wall (after using the turret to destroy the wooden planks; this will drop the metal plank across the gap, allowing you to pass over it.)

In the debris-filled tunnel beyond the turret trap, you'll come across your first Barnacles. You'll remember these from Half-Life; when you step into the little flypaper tongue that they drop beneath them, you'll be slowly drawn up into their maw and devoured. You should just be able to avoid their tongues at the moment, but if you wish, you can use your pistol to kill them off; each one will require six or seven rounds to kill. (There are some much neater ways to deal with these guys, but we'll get to those later.) If you're short on health, jump over the red car near the first Barnacle to find a bunch of supplies in a crate.

After your encounter with the railroad member, you'll have to pass through a pair of sewers; the CP units above will attempt to instigate a bit of death from above with their makeshift depth charges: burning barrels tipped into the sewers from the surface above. There isn't much you can do save dive underneath the water and wait for all of the barrels to explode. You'll probably take a bit of suffocation damage, but you regain all of this health when you surface again; that's obviously preferably to taking massive amounts of "real" damage from the barrels themselves.

The explosions will rip open one of the nearby grates, so dash through and into the tunnel. More CP will be issuing into the canal beyond the end of said tunnel, but you should be able to slice through them with your pistol, especially if you use it to blow the explosive barrels at the base of the bridge when they appear upon it.