General Combat Tips

Use Your Ammo Boxes

One of the new additions to Half-Life's gameplay is the inclusion of ammo boxes throughout the game world. You'll know these when you spot them; they're big, green boxes, with the icon of a specific weapon or ammo type on its side. When you open them up, you'll get a full refill for that weapon's ammo supply, and they don't run out, letting you return to them as often as you wish to keep fill up.

In the case of the SMG ammo boxes, this isn't all that noteworthy; you're going to be finding plenty of SMG ammo on the bodies of the Combine troops you kill. When you find rocket or grenade boxes, though, you can bet the developers put it there for a reason, so get yourself outfitted and start looking around for something to blow up. In the case of rocket ammo, you'll probably already be under attack by gunships or Striders by the time you find a box, so there's no mystery there; grenades are less situation-specific, but there may be something you have to blast through near a grenade box, or just a whole bunch of Combine who'll be easier to kill with explosives than your guns. After you kill whatever target the ammo's intended for, though, don't forget to return to the box and fill up again before moving on.

To a lesser extent, normal ammo drops will occur in similar situations. Crossbow ammo, in particular, is often found immediately before situations where you'll be facing off against distant troops, so be sure to max it out whenever you see it!

I Would Die For You, Man!

Your team members are only too happy to take a bullet (or a whole lot of bullets) for you.

In the later portions of the game, you'll be given command over small groups of friendly soldiers in a mechanism that should be familiar to anyone who played the underrated game Freedom Fighters. Although you don't have to rely on your squad, they can make life a lot easier for you, if only because enemies will shoot at them instead of you!

You don't have to stress out about finding extra friends to come along with you, though; they'll automatically appear as you go through the game and will join up of their own accord. If the game detects that your party is understrength, it'll actually spawn in extra party members in your path, so that you may notice soldiers appearing in different places if you replay the levels over again.

When you do have squad members, you can order them around with your squad movement key (check your key bindings to find out where this is bound). Pressing the key once will send your squad out to wherever your reticule is pointing towards; you can either use this to send your group ahead as a means to distract enemies and prevent them from firing at you, or to send them to a point behind you when you know that there's danger ahead and you wish to deal with it alone. Tapping the key twice will bring all of the squad members back to your location; as with antlions, though, they'll automatically return to your location after a set amount of time.

The most important aspect of running a good squad is keeping them healthy and giving them access to items that they need. The medics that come along with you do a good job of healing both yourself and your teammates; they have an infinite number of medpacks that they'll use, so try to give everyone a minute to rest now and again, and watch the medic do his thing. They can only give them out so fast, though, so if you need more than one medpack, you might need to grab one, walk away from the medic, then walk back and wait for him or her to give you another.

Your teammates know what they need, so try to give them medpacks when available, and use your medics or resupply stations to heal yourself.

The main thing to remember here is that your medics can't heal themselves. If you have two medics in your party, then they can heal each other, but a more likely source of healing comes in the form of medpacks that are found in the game world. If you smash open a supply crate and notice a bunch of medpacks in it, try to avoid picking them up unless you're in dire need of health. Instead, stand near them with your teammates, and anyone that needs one will walk over and pick one up.

In addition to medpacks, though, your teammates can also exchange their weapons for anything better that's lying around. In practice, this doesn't have a huge impact on the game, since they'll almost always go from SMG to pulse rifle; they don't seem to want to pick up shotguns, unfortunately. They might also upgrade to rocket launchers, when available, but these are in awfully short supply in the levels where you have squad members.

Bunny Hop-Hop

One of the oddities that seem to pop up with every new FPS game is the bunny hop phenomenon. Every game seems to have some method of circumventing your maximum movement speed (in Half-Life, you could just strafe while standing next to a wall to pick up a good amount of extra speed), and Half-Life 2 is no exception.

The technique is fairly simple, but can be difficult to pull off correctly. When moving forward, start jumping; at the precise moment that Gordon lands, hit jump again. If you can string together jumps in this manner, you should be able to pick up a good amount of extra speed, but if you don't hit jump at the correct moment, you'll have to start all over again. If you get going, you can move almost as fast as you do when you're sprinting, but without the corresponding loss of Auxiliary Power. Sprinting is still your best bet for emergency movement, as you have more control and can immediately start out at full speed, whereas bunny hopping requires a bit of start-up time.