Most creative way out of a sticky situation?

[Fishlore]

Mine isn't really creative, but the way it happened was pretty amazing.

I was pinned in a corner on Ravenholm with quite a few zombies headed my way. I ran from end to end of the street and stirred up quite a bit of action. At this point I was seriously hurting on ammo and was carrying a regular barrel with the grav gun.

As trouble headed my way I did a quick search of my surroundings. I noticed a flammable barrel on a ledge above me and up to the right. With only seconds to spare I fired my regular barrel up and into the flammable one on the ledge. It hit in such a way that the flammable one fell of the ledge and hit an object on the ground and rolled darn close to the middle of the zombie pack. I quickly switched to my pistol and shot the barrel. No more zombies.

I wish I had it on film, the way the barrel fell into play was amazing. Does anyone have any creative killings to share?

 

[SpaceRain]

Cool thread, surely someone else must have some stories.

(Yes, this is a bump.)

 

[Mountain Man]

I used grenades and the gravity gun as a make-shift grenade launcher. It gives you better distance and accuracy then using the arm method. Here's what you do: Ready a grenade, then use alt-fire (default right-click) to gently toss it on the ground, preferbly near your feet. Quickly switch to the gravity gun (G), pick up the grenade (alt-fire), then launch it at your target using the primary fire (left-click). You have to be quick, though, or else you'll end up with a face full of shrapnel.

In Ravenholm, I completely ran out of ammo, had a zombie on my tail, and there was nothing nearby small enough to pick up with the gravity gun, so I crouched down behind a washing machine, waited for the zombie to enter the room, then used the gravity gun's primary fire to launch the washing machine at the zombie, killing it.

Another time I was being chased by antlions, and there happened to be one of those Combine armored assault vehicles nearby (I had already killed the Combine soldiers), so I used the gravity gun's primary fire to bounce the vehicle at the ant lions which instantly killed them.

My favorite was using the gravity gun and a saw blade to chop no less than six zombies in half with a single shot.

I love the gravity gun!

 

[Fishlore]

I used grenades and the gravity gun as a make-shift grenade launcher. It gives you better distance and accuracy then using the arm method. Here's what you do: Ready a grenade, then use alt-fire (default right-click) to gently toss it on the ground, preferbly near your feet. Quickly switch to the gravity gun (G), pick up the grenade (alt-fire), then launch it at your target using the primary fire (left-click). You have to be quick, though, or else you'll end up with a face full of shrapnel.

Haha, nice. I'm going to have to try that tonight. The sound when you're too close to explosions is awesome.

 

[Wildhound]

I love when a grenade lands at your feet and you grab it and throw it back. You can do this with your hands as well as the gravity gun. When you just pick it up, you throw it the exacts same distance as when you prime one of your own grenades. 'tis great.

 

[destrukt]

sticky situations gone bad:

i had the propellor/blade off one of them ground spinning things, and i was using it to kill all the zombies. so i felt tough and i went up to a certain pack of zombies, and missed [no idea how] and the blade rebounded back, and killed me.

i then fired the propellor/blade @ the hanging zombie [on the rope] and it came back and hit me again, and killed me :X

 

[UKchaos2]

The ncps knocked over all my friendly turrets on the "entanglement" level, so i simply picked one up and walked around with it

 

[geowa]

A cool(ish) thing i did, was manipulate a flammble barrel, launch it intro the air, pull out usp, shoot it till it sets alight and it exploded just before it hit the ground and killed a pack of combines (it was on one of the buggy levels in a warehouse). Im currently on nova prospekt.

 

[Alieni²]

in entaglement, I had to place the turrets and survive for... something like 10 min?... well anyway I was placing them again and again cuz i died all teh time cuz the combines shot the turrets down... so after a while i thought would this be so close to real life that i can use some tactics too... well, I barricaded one entry with barrels and crates, and placed a turret behind it, then i placed one turret high enough, so no grenade hazard. The last one i placed middle of the hallway pointing at one entry, and put some barrels covering it. I myself keeped the one entry clean. It was really amazing... Combines first started shooting the barricade to take it down, then they noticed the turret wich was alredy targeting combines, and they retreated, the one at high place owned manhacks and the one pointing at one entrydid its job perfectly. I really love this game! so real... so much possibilites... im waiting for teh mods!!! (just finished it btw, nice end)

 

[Dei Castigator]

A Rocket+Gravity Gun.

I was on Highway 17 at the train bridge, and was going under it to get to the little power station. I had just gotten to the powerstation and killed everyone, I though. Just as I climbed up a ladder, a combine Soldier popped out of a door and opened fire. My grav gun had a rocket picked up because I thought there were too many rockets to not need one. I shot the rocket and it must've hit at just the right angle because it impaled the poor guy through the shoulder and knocked him off the rail. As he fell he let go of the most ungodly radio crackled scream that I have ever heard. Just my use of ammo in a different manner

Thanks

 

[Shadow-warrior]

In the big shoot out in the prison (with 3 turrets), I used the grav gun to stack boxes as steps and climbed them up to a higher floor where no combine could reach me. Then just picked them off one by one

 

[Fishlore]

Wow, some very creative solutions for sure. The fact that we can have a thread like this for this game just shows what a good job Valve did. It's also amazing how some of these things just pretty much happen so quickly without consciencously thinking about it.

Stand by a flammable barrel, shoot it 2 times with the 9mm to get it flaming (a.k.a. timebomb). Give it a push with the grav gun to that pesky combine hidden behind hard object and watch him go flying away.

 

[Nehkara]

Some truly amazing creativity in this thread!

I'm in Ravenholm right now and I was in a room just after seeing the "Father". There were 3 zombies on tables... looks like they'd been examined. Then I went to leave and about 6 or so zombies came up the stairs, there were two huge metal hooks on one table and I grabbed one with the gravity gun and kept firing it at the zombies as they came up the stairs and killed them one at a time. Soon, however, I lost the hook because it landed out of read and I had two zombies left... I looked all over the place and then looked at the table the hooks were on, grinned, and promptly picked up the table with the gravity gun and fired it at the last two, killing them.

 

[Tnid]

I ran out of ammo(on all weapons beside 1 grenade in the mp7) on the Ravenholm level...
(If the revolver and shotgun weren't so cool, may be i had a few rounds left... )

Spoiler

I was in the place that you are told that you're on the wrong side of town, only i didn't reached the roof yet

With zombies and those annoying poisonous headcrabs all around i decided to use my trusty crowbar, and running/jumping(it's faster than sprinting and isn't timelimited)...
i've just run from zombie to zombie, hitting a few times and just keep on going forward...
I've somehow manage to go up to the roof with only 9hp left...

I truely think that this kinds of moments are the ones that show the difference between a good game and an excellent game.
Every time i think that i got no chance and i should try an older save or use a cheat, i try something desperate and when i succeed it's the greatest feeling that one can experience in a game.

 

[gooball]

I too, got desperate with no ammo in Ravenholm.
I did end up using the beds that zombie'd victims were laying on to kill other alive zombies. Like most people I resorted to objects laying around to conserve ammo.

Absolutely brilliant game design.

 

[Lobster]

Spoiler

Discovering u can blast pulse energy balls back at the combine elite when they fire em was an amusing moment.

 

[UKchaos2]

in entaglement, I had to place the turrets and survive for... something like 10 min?... well anyway I was placing them again and again cuz i died all teh time cuz the combines shot the turrets down... so after a while i thought would this be so close to real life that i can use some tactics too... well, I barricaded one entry with barrels and crates, and placed a turret behind it, then i placed one turret high enough, so no grenade hazard. The last one i placed middle of the hallway pointing at one entry, and put some barrels covering it. I myself keeped the one entry clean. It was really amazing... Combines first started shooting the barricade to take it down, then they noticed the turret wich was alredy targeting combines, and they retreated, the one at high place owned manhacks and the one pointing at one entrydid its job perfectly. I really love this game! so real... so much possibilites... im waiting for teh mods!!! (just finished it btw, nice end)

Yeah! Thats exactly what i did. First few times i failed miserably due to poor turret placement, but through trial and error i managed to make a nice defensive set up

 

[Mountain Man]

Interestingly enough, you can kill creatures with mattresses fired with the gravity gun. And the "mattress physics" rock!

 

[t0v3]

in entaglement, I had to place the turrets and survive for... something like 10 min?... well anyway I was placing them again and again cuz i died all teh time cuz the combines shot the turrets down... so after a while i thought would this be so close to real life that i can use some tactics too... well, I barricaded one entry with barrels and crates, and placed a turret behind it, then i placed one turret high enough, so no grenade hazard. The last one i placed middle of the hallway pointing at one entry, and put some barrels covering it. I myself keeped the one entry clean. It was really amazing... Combines first started shooting the barricade to take it down, then they noticed the turret wich was alredy targeting combines, and they retreated, the one at high place owned manhacks and the one pointing at one entrydid its job perfectly. I really love this game! so real... so much possibilites... im waiting for teh mods!!! (just finished it btw, nice end)

I've not long done that bit, I kept getting killed aswell, so I thought i'd get a bit clever. I piled all the crates under the above walkway, then threw all the turrets up there with the grav gun, then quickly jumped up. So I had the higher ground and no one could come from behind me, I felt like a one man army up there, taking out all them combines, it was awesome how I could use the enviroment so realisticly.

 

[Maskirovka]

this turret/mass enemies situation could provide a very excellent co-op mod scenario...i hope sven co-op 2 has something like this. there are so many environments in the game that could just be copied and pasted and used as they are except for some slight modifications.

 

[mememem]

In entanglement (think so), The second turret part, wheer you get 3 turrets. I kept on dying so tried putting all the turrets outside one of the small rooms and just stayed inside with the gravity gun throwing grenades back and picking up the turrets as soon as they fell. It worked great and I hardly lost any health or ammo

 

[rammstein]

the mattress actually uses ragdoll physics!

think about it....

 

[Bleeder]

My friend was over playing yesterday and he managed to shoot a grenade with the shotty and send it back at three combine, killing them. Now he's a believer.

 

[FangsFirst]

Damn, I did something hilariously awesome once, but I forgot what it was. Bloody hell.
Well there was...

Spoiler

to get to Barney when being attacked by the sniper in the burnt out building, I crouched whilst holding a file cabinet up in front of me and pushed myself up to where he was, then hid behind the piece of wall he was hiding behind

Oh wait, the funny thing I'm thinking of was when I was in a tenement building and I smashed the hell out of a watermelon for absolutely no reason.
I swear the NPC soldier with me was looking back and forth between the blown up watermelon and me like I was completely insane...just this slight grimace and extra-shifty eyes.
My roommate was watching me play and we laughed and laughed and laughed at this, cause he just KEPT looking at the watermelon and then me, and then the watermelon and back...

 

[omnimutant]

This is Kinda of a spoiler but I'm sure most of you have done this if your this far along.

Spoiler

I Love the Upgrade Grav Gun, and my favorite thing to do with it was to grab combine and fire them back at each other... "Bowling for Combine" if you will

 

[CyberPitz]

users.joplin.com/cyberpitz
Go there for my demos of one or two creative ways to kill a few zombies

 

[Brian Damage]

Well, in that bit where you've got the three turrets and a load of Combine coming at you from about four directions... I was extra sneaky and hid in the little alcoves where the turrets are stored, luring Soldiers in and blasting them with double-blasts from the shotgun.

Eventually there was a pile of Combies against one wall...

That section is really tough on Hard...

 

[zul]

In entanglement (think so), The second turret part, wheer you get 3 turrets. I kept on dying so tried putting all the turrets outside one of the small rooms and just stayed inside with the gravity gun throwing grenades back and picking up the turrets as soon as they fell. It worked great and I hardly lost any health or ammo

I did that, only much less elegantly I kept dying over and over and my last save was in the thick of the attack, so i was stuck fighting off the overwatch soldiers. I was about to give up when i finally just grabed one of the turrets and ran for it, away from the defensive position i had set up. I saw the small jail room and dropped the turret at the entrance and then sat there with my shotgun killing manhacks and soldiers who got too close. Thats how i beat it (but i want to try to get to the second level next time i replay it, that sounds really fun)

This isnt pysics related but in the part in Ravenholm where you have to:

Spoiler

defend yourself on the rooftop while the guy sends the card accross the roof to you

i was running out of ammo and i wanted to make it count, so i was scanning for a perfect time to launch my grenade from the MP7. I couldnt find any perfect moment and decided to shoot it at the next zombie i saw, and just when i did, a zombie leaped out right in the path of the grenade, killing both it and the zombie i was aming for. It stunned me a ton because it was absolutly PERFECT timing; i doubt i could do it again even if i was trying.

Also in ravenholm, i was running low on ammo and i saw the blade from one of the traps, so i picked it up and waited just the right moment - when i let it loose it killed 5-6 zombies, it was so awesome

Also you could find car axels lying around some places durring highway 17, and i found those work really well for taking out multiple overwatch soldiers. It feels so great to clothesline the soldiers from a distance

 

[Fishlore]

From the sounds of it, I'm sure not looking forward to Entanglement. How many chapters past Sand Traps is it?

 

[burner69]

Yeah I ran round with a turret on my phys gun, thats how I killed the ant lion guard.

At one point on Ravenholm I found myself up against a bunch of zombies with a single barrel on my phys gun. Had very little ammo, so just kept alternating mb1/mb2 bouncing this barrel back and forth. Was kinda like playing tennis....

 

[Griz]

in entaglement, I had to place the turrets and survive for... something like 10 min?... well anyway I was placing them again and again cuz i died all teh time cuz the combines shot the turrets down... so after a while i thought would this be so close to real life that i can use some tactics too... well, I barricaded one entry with barrels and crates, and placed a turret behind it, then i placed one turret high enough, so no grenade hazard. The last one i placed middle of the hallway pointing at one entry, and put some barrels covering it. I myself keeped the one entry clean. It was really amazing... Combines first started shooting the barricade to take it down, then they noticed the turret wich was alredy targeting combines, and they retreated, the one at high place owned manhacks and the one pointing at one entrydid its job perfectly. I really love this game! so real... so much possibilites... im waiting for teh mods!!! (just finished it btw, nice end)

I had similar difficulty with this part but first of all, i'd already brought the 2 turrets right through the map from just before you meet up with Alyx (where you have to defend the two staircases from incoming combine) so i started this bit with FIVE (!!!) turrets rather than just three.

I set these two up on the landing between the ground floor and the first floor (so they could target both floors at once) and here's what i did with the other three.

After dying a couple of times i noticed that there were only 3 turrets in four pod-thingy's. So i took each of the 3 turrets out of their pods, turned them around and put them back in to face outwards. I then stood quietly in the fourth (empty) pod whilst the combine got slaughtered trying to get to me. The best thing was that each turret was stabilised by it's own pod and so couldn't be knocked over, so all i had to do was sit tight and fire the odd shotgun blast at any combine lucky enough to get through - i ended up only using about 2-3 shotgun shells for that part!!!! :thumbs:

 

[Wraithen]

I put the turrets back in their lockers... I still feel a little jammy about that one (which would be why this is the tird post I've mentioned it in ) but other than that, I used the gravity gun to launch one of those rotary blade things at a bunch of zombies. It rebounded all over the place, killing the advancing zombies and would have been a great moment if it hadn't come back and killed me too!

The game's also got a whole bunch of moments where you feel like you've done something impressive only to realise that you're just solving the puzzel the way Valve wanted you to.