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<rant>At the end of Episode 1, we faced one Strider. Has anyone counted the Striders in EP2's last battle? I gave up the fair fight after the dropships arrived and switched to god mode. After all the fun and rather well balanced previous fights, I was sorry to see the onslaught of Hunters and Striders spoil the last fight of the game.

My specific beefs about the fight after the dropships' arrival are:

- lack of infinite RPG rounds or crossbow bolts or grenades to take out the packs of three to four Hunters from a reasonable distance. I was out of these items by the time the dropships arrived.
The logs are fine and dandy for close combat against one or two Hunters. However, unless you are a master/mistress of long distance grav-gun fu, you need to wait to be well in range of the flechette attacks.

- insufficient amount of HEV batteries

- lack of adequate support from the NPCs. The biggest group was wiped out by the very first strider and the two Hunters. I'd like more support from the NPCs. They should be able to :
1. take out at least one Hunter in each group.
2. activate the Magnusson device planted on the Strider

There. Let me know if I should reload and try again or if you found the last section of the fight overwhelming.
</rant?

I think you'll find, Locworks, that you may have neglected your most powerful anti-Hunter weapon in that fight.

Yeah lol, think roadkill. (Although I would have much rather fought a few big waves of Combine foot soldiers first to spice it up.)

Who else here hates the get some grub achievement? I was TEN ******* GRUBS OFF! That is SOOOOO frustrating.

Actually, I was disappointed by how easy the strider battle was, even the first time through on "hard"! :p The base was only blown up once, and even then that was more an experiment to see if the RPG-launching NPCs would be able to take down a single lone strider (I'd taken care of the hunters already). Sadly, I was off trying to get the next strider,looking away from the base, so I don't even know what the fireworks looked like! :x

I like the achievements and documentary - I doubt I'd have played it through twice more without them, and I'm waiting for Valve to update HL2 and EP1 with them before I play through those again as well. But I can completely relate to wanting the option of turning the achievements off, say via a checkbox in the options dialog. I also wish some of the achievements weren't so lame - kill an acid antlion? Like one has a choice! :x

The option should be to disable those "achievement gained" popups.

And, yes, game progress achievements do seem rather... daft. But then, Steam Stats says only 44% of people that have played Episode 2 have completed it, so I suppose those achievements do have a place in telling your friends how far you've got.