HL2 Ep1 GRAI Diabolical Part 3
The hospital full of zombies and combine? The most iconic scene in episode one for sure. Plenty of shotgunners, AR2 troops and zombies around, it's hell in here... but you need to be fiercer and the most cunning of them all. If you find yourself in a fair fight - your tactics suck, that's the takeaway from playing on diabolical difficulty. You got rockets? BLOW THEM UP. You got spare crossbow rebars? PIN THEM TO THE WALL. You got smg grenades and energy orbs? PRESS MOUSE2. Fighting soldiers using nothing but normal firearms is never going to be fair, they outnumber you, outlive you and probably outshoot you. Using rare weapons is essential for survival!
The gunship battle is difficult as hell, breaking the roof is actually more advantageous as gunship is able to destroy a piece of cover and nail a few shots at you.
Escort mission with citizens was tough to balance, eventually shotgunner accuracy has been tweaked without affecting the firing cone, they may shoot a little bit to the left, right above or below the target, basically adding a bit of human error, the effective range at which they will not miss a single pellet will vary depending on the difficulty. SMG troops avoid using smg grenades indoors, but are happy to use them in open areas.
The game crashed at the last moment when smg grenade hit us, killing some citizen instantly right after him firing a bullet. This type of crash should be rare, as it happened only once in the whole playthrough.
Future balance patch?
-The gunships are actually overtuned in my honest opinion. They take more hits to kill and deal absurd amount of damage off stray hits.
-The zombies, specifically zombines, are made far too squishy due to recent changes to ballistics, allowing contact shots deal bonus damage. It leads to zombines dying in one shotgun shot.
-Combine soldiers on diabolical are supposed to be as tough to kill as the player is, I'm not going to change that aspect, instead I want to make small tweaks to AR2 precision as the weapon's damage is already higher and they seem to always hit their target. Sprinting does reduce the probability of getting shot, but there is not always enough space for it. Shotgunners and smg soldiers are fine as is.
-Episode one specific metrocops die quickly. They will get a significant health buff to make the last encounter with them more interesting as they are pretty much left four dead.