So, Focal Point is horrifying; I don't understand how good the first chapters can be that this is such an awful mess. Another poster calling it terrible, annoying and irritating has only got the half of it. Let me go through this chapter as much as I can remember it, because it is so bad, my brain is actively trying to forget it; and there's so much of it, than on annoyance represses the next one.

So, it starts out good; it's Xen with some neat additional puzzle things; the sticky bombs are fun to use. Then it goes down hill when you reach the main base in the chapter (there was probably bad stuff before this, but this is where a severely annoying "puzzle" finally broke whatever immersion I still had left), what is thing? The way to get into the base. I did everything in the nice little area before, except for the last step. I looked around the area like 10 minutes before I finally gave up and went to a walkthrough. How to do it? Get on a fleshy launching pad, one you've already used, then watch it launch you 10 times faster than any pad as launched you before and 5 times further through the remains of broken glass window. It's laughable enough that if that pad actually launched you that far that fast it would have launched you, it would have launched your corpse where every bone facing the pad would have broken if not fully shattered on impact, and if you weren't dead then, when you go head first through glass you die then; but it's just plain bad game design. If pads have only ever launched you at a certain speed and a distance in not just BM:BS but also every Half-Life and Half-Life adjacent game out there; it's very bad to suddenly make this pad launch you much further and faster.

So, the main base... hey look, a silhouette of a Grunt, it walks off to the left. You reach the tiny corridor, and... it's gone... there's closed doors; it literally couldn't go anywhere; not without leaving a grunt-sized hole. It didn't teleport, there was no teleportation sound, nor anything resembling a tell-tale green bolt that accompanies teleportation. Even if was teleported, why would Nihilanth do that; it was in a tiny corridor; where Barney has no cover, and it's too small to use explosives - he would blow himself up; teleporting the Grunt out of there would be a stupid move. So the Grunt just, vanished into thin air appaerntely. Throughout this base, this happens two or three more times, each time the grunt just vanishes not leaving a trace and there being no path for it to go; and no sign or sound of teleportation. What the hell man? My immersion is throughly destroyed.

So the base... why the hell is it so big? I remember the base I go through a Gordon in Black Mesa, it is tiny by comparison. The size of this base makes no sense. Espially with the fact that the visual storytelling versus the lore of the main game, the claims of Roseberg, and the story on the board contradict themselves. Half-Life and thus Black Mesa has the humans be surprised by Nihilanth and his forces, showing the only encountered the animals of Xen before the resonance cascade; which also means, that the humans must only have a small footprint on Xen, which is what Black Mesa showed. Now there is a massive base that's been here for more than a decade? Of course, both Rosenberg and the text on the same board's that tell us they've been here for more than a decade, tell us the place was abandoned. So why are there so many headcrab zombies, both alive and dead in the place, and lots of dead corprse on top of it. That's not a base that was abandoned, that's based that got overrrun. If the place was abandoned, then you wouldn't find any corpses and headcrab zombies, even if someone died, they would have brought their body home for a funeral.

Well, at least this is the end right? We found the base, the focal point has to be around here; final good battle, let's go.... oh, no, it keeps on going; starting with an annoying platforming section, that's with rail section on a tiny platform where you have to doge bursts of instant death energy bolts, while at the same time fighting a bunch of bullsquids that are teleporting in. The platforming section on the rails of the train is neat... if it weren't for the fact that you have to avoid more timed discharges and this puts urgency in your step... and then randomly offer you only one way to go without falling to your death that requis you to slow all the way down and crouch. A lovely rock outcropping covers most of the rail you have to get on, and jumping always means you die.

So in the next part we get more platforming, a lovely platform forms after a Manta destroys a section of floating Island. The obvious place to jump would be on the Island, the small crystal portruding on the left has never been used as traversable terrain, right? Wrong, you can't make the rock of the island and you fall to your death. What about the crystal outcropping you ask? Well, just a bit more to the left than where you should go and you fall to your death. You go a little bit more to the right and you will come against the rock face and you fall to your Death. If you try to run and pull up your legs to avoid the rock face you sail over the crystal and fall to your death. You have to effectively make a pixel perfect jump. Oh, you have to make this jumb several times, because you circle back and come across this jump. Oh, by the way, that you have to do this jump while under fire? Yes, the second time a bunch of grunts are around firing at you... with their homing insect launchers, so not even something you can easily avoid.

This whole section is filled with this kind of crap; difficult to judge distance jumps, the same under fire, or covered by floating cloads that are harmful, knock you back to your death, and explode, having to shoot explody plants under water in a cave running out of air and putting an electric eal type of fish that attacks you in the way; nothing actually difficult that requires skill, once you know what you're up against it's pretty easy. No, it's nonsesne designed to kill you on a first encounter no matter how good you are, if you don't have fore knowledge.

So, now we reach a facility - in between the main base the focal point thing you're going for.

How!?

What; did the humans not notice them? Did they just randomly go aournd them without ever laying eyes on them? Did the aliens built it afterward; what for? This base is already abandoned! Anyway more Grunts to kill; and Vortigaunts - Vortigants running away from you behind a shield you need to get through. Vortigaunts not attacking you... but Vortigants that keep the shield up. Why? Either they should be attacking us, or they should lower the shield for us. When Gordon didn't kill the free Vortigaunts the Vortigaunts helped where they could, so why aren't these doing the same for Barney? Does Barney have such bad luck he gets the dumbest, braindead buffons of the Vortigaunt species? Anyway, you take down the shield, and nothing.... That's what's behind the shield; no more Vortigaunts; just cave. Hell, it's not even a cave, it's an indent; there's a hole that leads down into an actual cave, where theres is water and a new biome, a new area, but that's it. So what's the shield for!? Why do your best to keep up when you're not outright being mind controlled...

Also, the Vortigaunts that were behind the sheld are also nowerhe down in the cave and beyond, and again no telltale signs of teleportation, so more vanishing aliens I guess.

So we reach a place where we need to put more explody green bals into green power outlests to destroy them... but the game devs decide to now put one up a narrow ramp with Xen growth protrusiosn that Barney can easily get stuck behind like it's an invisible wall, grand design.

Anyway, after more platforming crappola, we finally reach the focal point. By this point, i was thinkg, "Thank got, this is finally over; turning this thing on, a final battle, and we can get out of here." It wasn't over. Some green energy streams "jam" an emitter. I walked around that site for 5 minutes figuring out what to do. After all, after this insanely long, tedious and annoying chapter, you could possible think of dragging out this any longer, right? It was then that I finally realized the green streamers weren't a pretty artwork, but the thing that was jamming the emitter; I know noticed the shield was down; walked toward it, and there was only one thought screaming through my brain: "I'M STILL NOT DONE!?"

Anyway, so I go up the growth to the crane, move it about a bit; fight another horde of controllers, and notice that we're doing ANOTHER round of ridiculous platforming; make the crane move THEN jump on the now moving platform... holy crap, as if hadn't enough of this! Hey look, there's a platform down there that I hadn't seen yet. Oh, thank god, perhaps I don't have to do this jump right now after all; maybe I only have to do a more sane jump on the way back... nope, just an item... the platform on which it says falls away and I fall to my death...

WHY in BLAZING HELLS would you put an instant death trap item AT THIS POINT IN THE GAME AFTER WHO KNOWS HOW MANY BULLCRAP PLATFROMING AND RESULTING DEATHS!

At this point I'm actively hating the developers; like holy hell man.

So, load back in the game, go try the crappy jump; fall to my death. That was it, I was done, I turned the game off, and went to watch walkthrough to see what was left, and what was left... a GIANT ALIEN FACILITY! Just two steps away from focal point; what did the humans not bother to take the two steps and find it? Or again, did the aliens build it after the humans. If so, WHY!? We come to a possible (really stupid) answer when we get to its top of this facility; stay with me for now.

So here we go agother, another tedious platforming section including more places where you have stand still and wait for the right moment or you are dead, as if we hadn't had enough of this stuff already to make us want to throw up. Anyway, we go into facility... only for ANOTHER platforming section where we have jump up energy platforms with times beyind a weak shield we can just grab out of it.

As if the previous green ball in a green power outlet isn't bad enough, now we get it again, while grunts come out of cages and at us and I believe some conrollers as well, and oh, yeah, the power outlets are too far away, we now have to throw the green balls against green energy screens with nothing to draw your attention to them, after which the balls nearly explode, but don't and then last longer after you pick them up off of the floor... even though there is nothing to indicate anywhere that such a mechanic exists.

So we finally reacht the top; and lo and behold a giant energy ball, green. Why is this here, remember? The only other Nihilant orces that had such a ball of energy, perhaps even black hole, was Nihilanth's fortress itself. None of the other buildings have it. Which implies that this whole facility and its power ball, was built specifically to prevent the use of the focal point. WHY!? When we want to activate the focal point, we got it almost all the way to active status; a few moments more and we have been out of there; the controllers and grunts only got their in the nick of time. So this giant facility seems to have been builto to stop the use of the focal point, and it's not even a guarantee it will work; and all you have to do to prevent its use is just destroy it! Why is Nihilanth waisting all that man power and resource on such pointless facility?

But it doesn't stop there. You have to blow up the ball, with a cannon that is pointed straight at it. And given the narrow and high up place we are. that's pretty much all we can fire at with it. Maybe a little to the left right and up is barely an option, but only after what you are going to fire upong has already passed the energy ball, giving it/them an open shot at firing on the ball; who builds a cannon that exists seemingly to only destroy your own power source?

You go do it, takes three shots, after every shot a wave of enemies comes in... including mantas. The Hell!? Since when are they part of Nihilanths forces!? Anyway, they attack you and the cannon and you can shoot them down wiht the RPG launcher. Their attacks do not destroy the cannon; even though earlier in the chapter there was another such canon and it DID get destroyed by a Manta's bombardment. Maybe somebody on developer team said, "You know after all that tediousness, if we let the cannon get destroyd and make them start this section over, our players are either going to kill themselves, or hunt us down and kill us," and those words managed to cut that part.

So we're finally done, right!? We're at the portal now finally; nice and blue... all we have to do is jump in? OF COURSE NOT; after this chapter has already lasted way longer than it should; even more controllers show up; and then, finally this crapshow is over.

This chapter feels like it is longer than the previous champters combined; it has bad plathroming, and what it tries to do with lore is crap. Level design is bad; outright contradictory. For this chapter to have a chance at being good, it neads to be about half the length, Barney can't be facing Nihilanth forces, the main base needs to be a LOT smaller, and it can't be contradicting what came before.