Jolly's Hardcore Mod playthrough - Hard difficulty, secret ending/level
5the 20th anniversary update to HL2 added the Steam Workshop to the game, and of course, lo and behold, Jolly's Hardcore Mod is there. i never actually got to play it properly in HL2 before since it wouldn't work for whatever reason, so i gave it a go and it was a lot of challenging, ridiculous fun!
once i did that, i decided to record a run on Hard difficulty for fun, making sure to bring the gnome all the way to the end (which wasn't too much of a challenge). this is the result of that run!
deaths have been edited out for watchability.
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mod segments, from easiest to hardest:
1. explosive barrel room - staple of the mod, and shows up in the thumbnail for a reason. however, it's ironically the easiest room since you can just love tap one of the barrels at the very start and just hide in the vent shaft you fell into the room with, taking only slight damage very consistently.
2. obtaining the crowbar - it's pretty simple. you can get tripped up by the crushing wall if you're not careful, but as long as you don't walk into the burning gas, the trek to getting your crowbar and reaching the next segment isn't too hard, even with the barrel vent jumpscare.
3. antlion fight - a...lot easier than i thought it'd be? just use up all the explosives you got from the previous room and use your shotgun's secondary fire and it's not so bad. remember to strafe past when you're being homed in on to avoid damage; you want as much suit energy as possible getting to the combine.
4. the finale/elevator fight - for the most part you can just kind of ignore this place entirely and let your antlions do the work for you. it's just a lot of waiting for the elevator outside of the room so you don't unnecessarily waste ammo and health. it takes about 3 minutes for the elevator to arrive, so yeah, just sit back and get comfy while you wait. don't forget your gnome!
5. zombie horde rooms (both the first one and the turret room) - not too bad, although a bit annoying. you can get damaged more than a bit if you're not careful, and squeezing into the hole to make it to the next room's a bit annoying. aside from that, just ignore all the zombies and hop along with your gnome into the sewers and you'll be fine. (also sprint past the crushing wall, you can't walk)
6. acid pit/sewers - more than a bit of a difficulty spike in comparison to the zombies that came before it. i'm not sure if there's some kind of specific way you're meant to do this room, but i found it easier to just bumrush it with max HP (the acid ignores your suit energy and hits you directly) to each 'checkpoint'. you need to spam jump and not get slowed down at all, but you'll barely scrape by with enough health to make it to the end. really annoying to deal with, though.
7. fan room - the second most tedious part of the game, solely because trying to properly have the first fan get stuck is a giant pain in the ass, and sometimes isn't even consistent; in some cases, the fans won't move at all and it's free. in most cases, like in this run, they spin ultra fast and you have to just pray you get it. not very enjoyable to deal with.
8. combine raid - the climax of the mod. a giant horde of combines vs. you and some antlions that don't even really do too much and just get in the way. you pretty much have to have a decent amount of suit energy and max HP to get out of here alive; having the bonus health packs and recharge stations on standby is also a must, as the constant grenades and chip damage are a nightmare to deal with.
the turrets are honestly the most annoying part, and you need to get the ones up top down with a well-placed SMG grenade (or random magic) or you'll be trapped. i've also found that you have to pray the combine clump up in a way that you can use grenades to take out a majority, otherwise it is hell to chew through them with enough ammo to make it out.
once you make it through the glut of combine up front, you can just sneak in through the left and shotgun blast the rest down from cover-fire as they try to approach you.
9. citizen revolt - the most tedious part of the mod, hands down. seriously, it's so difficult to stay alive here; needing to keep turrets up, moving them in, them not shooting certain areas, so citizens just shoot at you, meaning you have to shoot them manually, antlions knocking down your turrets if you aren't careful, the turrets shooting you since they aren't 'friendly', trying to bring turrets to other areas without them tipping over...it's such a hellish room, and definitely the worst area of the mod to deal with.
what i did here is a pretty consistent way of getting through it if you need a good idea of what to do; just be careful moving turrets around and don't get shot yourself.
all in all, definitely a hefty challenge, especially with overinflated enemy damage and HP thanks to hard mode. but, i had fun! i think? maybe.
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