Thoughts on Gonarchs Lair length, fight stage 2 difficulty balance, music.

[emugod]

The level between the first and second arena fights feels too long and disconnected from Gonarch itself. I feel that eg. the entire water section could and probably should be moved somewhere else in Xen.

(Playing in Hard mode.) Gonarch stage 2 fight has a major balance problem with unfair feeling deaths. First (most simply), Gonarchs basic melee attacks do way too much damage - seemingly guaranteed one-hit-kill at full health and armor in hard mode. Even worse than that are the baby crabs jumping in front of your rockets at point-blank range - by far the #1 most common cause of damage (and death). There is seemingly no good defense to this, the only marginal defense being to jump clear across the arena every time before firing in hopes of evading the horde of baby crabs that perpetually pursues you. Gonarchs absurdly high health (and thus extremely long fight time) just compounds the problem.

The music is just wrong, and the most disappointing thing about the game overall since the original releases redacted surface tension. The original 'Jungle Drums' music, and how it interacts with Gonarchs own SFX, is the single most memorable bit of sound design in the original game. If there were any single track from the original game to just directly remaster/expand, it would be this one. The frantic, terrorized tone it conveyed was perfect. The meshing with gonarchs vocalizations and the stamp of its legs was perfect. Instead, in Black Mesa, the music chosen/created for this encounter is a spacey, plip-ploppy borderline background ambience piece. It's not bad music, it's just not a boss fight track.

[Schnitzel]

Completely agree. Although I thought the music for the fight was pretty okay, it would be nice to have that track remastered for the fight instead of the one they have. The complaints about gonarchs fight is completely valid and for good reason too. The chase sequences are very frustrating on your first time going through. He's too fast and his knockback is absurd and not to mention the 2nd stage of the final fight. Gonarch continuously shoots this poison acid substance all around the place and it makes it very unfair to the player for not being able to move anywhere safe and even if you manage to hide behind the pillars, the little headcrabs are still going to eat your health and armor away and if that doesn't kill you then the acid will. I'd also like to say that although the puzzle sequences to get the teleporter to Gonarch going was very visually interesting, the puzzles were not that good. The main complaint I have with the Xen update is that there isn't very good lighting to indicate where your supposed to go. I was stuck for like 30 minutes trying to get the portal to Gonarch going because I had no idea that there was another room that I had missed over 10 times that I had to go into to progress because I had no idea that it was even there because there was nothing indicating that I could go there. They really need to get inspiration from Valve and find ways to use their lighting in a way that it will indirectly tell the player where they need to go. The levels looked great. The level design itself, not so much.

[The Filet-O-Fish®]

Agreed, I'm not really sure what happened with the music. It seems like Joel Nielsen ran out of steam.

[GamerXT]

better boss music
less crabs
slower gonarch
make it slightly more obvious where to go with gonarch lair

[emugod]

Originally posted by Schnitzel:

the 2nd stage of the final fight. Gonarch continuously shoots this poison acid substance all around the place and it makes it very unfair to the player for not being able to move anywhere safe and even if you manage to hide behind the pillars, the little headcrabs are still going to eat your health and armor away and if that doesn't kill you then the acid will.

I didn't feel too hard about that short segment. Perhaps Gonarchs weakness to fire could be telegraphed a bit more strongly a bit earlier (it is clearly deliberately telegraphed at a few points in the chase sequence but I can totally imagine them being missed).

Originally posted by Schnitzel:

I'd also like to say that although the puzzle sequences to get the teleporter to Gonarch going was very visually interesting, the puzzles were not that good. The main complaint I have with the Xen update is that there isn't very good lighting to indicate where your supposed to go.

This I have to disagree with strongly. The only time I felt any lack of direction was in the big tree segment, and that was clearly deliberate. The weakness of the level design, if any, is how open and prone to accidental short-cutting it, thanks to the longjump. Not sure I would want to change that, either, though.

Originally posted by gamer:

less crabs

Or just some special consideration for rockets/SMG-nades to not direct hit explode on them. Or maybe just a fix to a genuine bug, which it really does almost feel like, at present (feels like it could be some screen-space vs world-space issue based on how the projectile is spawned).

[JW]

I must agree that gameplay between arena fights feels a bit off at times. I love Gonarch's poking, chase scenes and occasional looting of previous expeditions to get ammo. Otherwise there are many barnacles, headcrabs and ichtyosauruses which get annoying and repetetive pretty quickly. Not to mention that I was somehow low on ammo most of the time there. Water puzzle could be moved after you kill Gonarch.

BTW I loved the music.

[GamerXT]

when I say better music, Iam talking about the main boss music, not before that

[(N☆G) Jackal ★JJ★]

Well,

I like one of the devs comments about lowering the jump of the baby crabs so its easier to avoid hitting with a rocket (realistically rockets have an arming distance too which that could of been nice)

I think certain things need MMO/RPG styled CDs with gonarchs attack. I've had it spawn 5 baby patches within the course of a minute before and it was pretty frustrating. Allowing it to have X amount of spawns and then having a reset for them.

I think the acid AoE linger move in the second phase needs to have like a 2 second inbetween or something

And the instant death charge it does needs to be removed. Gonarch isnt hard to dodge but sometimes it feels like she just hits a lingering hit box when you are in mid jump and since she has an instant kill mechanic it can be brutal.

I think removing the instant kill and slowing the rate of spammable attacks would do wonders overall honestly.

[Halux]

I liked the music, but for some reason it cut off at random times quite a bit

[GamerXT]

I simply think the main boss music should be more energetic rather than sounding similar to previous Xen music

[miljoneir]

I can only agree with what the OP and others have said. The whole experience of Gonarchs Lair in its current state just doesn't work well.

[FelipeCanever]

I also kind of felt the length of the chapter and agree with the water puzzle. As for the music, BM is a reimagining of the original HL. It's another tone and I personally like it. I guess if we didn't have HL to compare to, you would have received it better.

[Don pepito]

I mean the water puzzle only takes time the first time , after that you just do it in 5 min .Its awesome when the ichthyosaur appears out of nowhere haha

[FelipeCanever]

Originally posted by Don pepito:

I mean the water puzzle only takes time the first time , after that you just do it in 5 min .Its awesome when the ichthyosaur appears out of nowhere haha

I feel after the first time it'll just be boring, because swimming isn't the most exciting thing in HL games. But that's just how I feel. It can totally stay. :) Also it looks gorgeous.