Highway 17 (Chapter)

=Walkthrough=

As you exit the door from the previous chapter, you see the buggy waiting to be picked up by a big electromagnet. Enter it and wait. Just as you prepare for the ride of your life, the electromagnet unfortunately fails, and the car tumbles upside down on the ground.

Quickly use the manipulator to turn it back up, get into it and drive away. Don't bother wasting time on the ant lions, as they will only continue appearing in bigger numbers, instead drive along the slightly dark dirt road and follow it up a hill. Here you'll see a bump on the end of the road, and when the game informs you to use the shift key to boost, press it and leap with the car across the gap. Once you land, drive upwards to the right and follow the paved road into a tunnel.

You exit the tunnel and choose between taking a fall by driving straight down the destroyed bridge, or carefully driving downwards the hill to the right of it. Drive past the ant lion nests, up the grassy hill and to the mechanical Combine stomper. The ant lions are afraid of the vibrations created by this machine, so stick close to it if you are overwhelmed by the critters to take them out easily from a distance. Here you can choose to just continue driving or fetch ammunition by getting into the cellar of the building marked with a skull. Remove the garbage to the right of it, and destroy the horizontal wooden door, revealing a stair downwards. Be careful of poisonous headcrabs as you retrieve the grenades from the army green coloured box. Make sure to destroy the crates around it to get some extra ammunition as well, and once you're back in the car, just drive through the wooden fence.

Drive along the beach until you see another Combine stomper and a pair of buildings containing ammunition and medical packs. Sneak up on the ledge into the white house and kill the combine soldier looking into a binocular device. Another soldier is hiding in the room behind you, dispatch him and wait for another trooper to enter the building the same way you went. Once you are done, you can safely check out the binocular device for a rather interesting surprise...

Return to the vehicle and continue driving to the next Combine stomper. A group of Combine soldiers are fighting ant lions in this area, you can either take them out from a distance using the gauss cannon mounted on the buggy, or simply use the boost and run them over! You may want to pick up the ammunition dropped by them. Continue cruising the beach until you see another Combine stomper and a hill, drive upwards it and into the small village. Don't worry about any enemy soldiers here, this village is under rebel control. Unfortunately it may not be for long, due to a combine gunship approaching it. Walk down the stairs of the building to the far right, and you'll run into a small group of rebels. Here you will meet Cubbage Odessa, explaining how to take out a gunship with the RPG launcher he is holding. Wait for him to finish the speech, and he'll give the RPG launcher for you to use. Hurry back up the stairs and prepare your launcher...

The combine gunships are very powerful and take several direct hits to take down. The most effective way to do this is to lead a fired RPG around it and hit it in the rear propeller. If the gunship sees the RPG, it will try to shoot it down before it hits, so make sure you fire from a good angle. Stock up on rockets at the ammunition carrying rebel or the nearby ammunition box, and fire a few more shots at the gunship until it is destroyed.

Once you're done with this, you should wait for the rebels to open the gate and drive through it, following the road to a grassy slope. Drive past this area, avoiding the ant lions until you encounter a group of combine soldiers fighting them. Park the buggy somewhere close the Combine stomper as this is a good area for you to later pick it up with the giant crane.

Kill the soldiers and run up the wooden planks, eliminating the other two soldiers hiding around the small white house, and watch out for a third one on the ledge above you. Climb up the stairs and run towards the the crane. A combine soldier is hiding on it, so you'll have to shoot him down once you get close enough. Climb up the stairs and enter the crane, control it using the displayed instructions to pick up the buggy. Turn around and drop it near the Northern Petrol building, and pick up the big objects lying around the area to smash the combine soldiers. Before you go down, you'll have to tip over the vertical bridge so you can get over there by foot.

When you get to the entrance of the building, watch out for a squad of enemy soldiers hiding inside. Once you have killed these, get to the far end and press a button opening the garage door. Get back into the car and drive through the garage door and up the ramp. There are a few soldiers holding this area, but you don't necessarily have to eliminate them unless you want to, just drive past them and up the narrow ramp through a window. When you have landed, drive to the right and follow the road to a gap on the bridge, you'll have to use the car boost to get across. A combine gunship will attack you by now, but just avoid it until you get to a group of car wrecks where you'll have a higher chance of taking it out while staying alive. The white van contains ammunition for the RPG launcher, which you must use to destroy the gunship. When all that's left of the elegant ship is colourful pieces of junk, equip the manipulator and clear the road of the cars to be able to drive through. There's another van a small distance away containing medpacks in case you need extra health. Keep driving along the road and through the tunnel, where the game will pause to load the next area.

Continue on the road, but not too carelessly, as you'll soon run into a couple of rollermines. If you have seen the E3 demonstration of this area, you will know what to do; simply use the manipulator to push the rollermines over the cliff and drive to the pair of houses. This area is heavily guarded by combine soldiers and a few more rollermines burrowed in the ground, so use the cover lying around wisely and clear rooms with grenades or your shotgun. When you have seized this area, continue to a roadblock further down the road, where you have to push away the vehicle blocking the road by igniting the barrels, or with the manipulator, before you continue driving.

You'll get to another area blocked by car wrecks. Stop shortly and destroy the crate near the tree to get the beautiful crossbow. This is an extremely lethal weapon firing heated rods, capable of sticking an enemy soldier to practically any surface! Use it if you want to take out your foes from a distance, or simply need to dispatch someone with a single shot. Fire up the manipulator if you don't manage to drive past the cars, and continue towards the village, however, your access to it is blocked by an energy field generator. The only way to get through it is to disable the energy fields electricity source, which is found on the other end of the village. Get out of the buggy and go past the side of the energy field. Be careful of enemy soldiers in the vicinity, and make sure to kill the one up on the billboard. When the area is cleared, follow the power lines leading from the energy field to a combine APC. This is obviously what's supplying the energy field with electricity, so use the manipulator to blast the APC away, which cuts the cable and disables the energy field. You can now pass through the village with your vehicle, drive into the tunnel up ahead and wait for the game to load the next area.

You are now approaching the final area of Highway 17, consisting of a village and a huge railroad bridge which you will pass, but not in the way you probably expected!

Drive along the road to a small house, a single combine soldier will rush up on the road and attack you, but you can easily run him over. Continue down the road and to the right into the village. A group of soldiers will rush out of the houses and charge you, take cover behind and eliminate them one by one, or run around the house to the right to kill them from behind. Once you are done, you may want to go into the high white house to the far right, as the highest floor contains a crate with more crossbow ammunition. The stair is wrecked at the lower part, so you have to use the manipulator to use a nearby object like the table to get up. Before you rush to get the crossbow, use caution as a poison zombie is hiding in the smallest room! It is very slow, so a good tactic would be to drop him a pair of grenades, or use the previously picked up crossbow with which you may get a one shot kill if you're lucky and aim at the body. Make sure there's no poison spider around to ambush you, and retrieve the ammunition.

If you have tried to get up on the railroad bridge, you will notice there's an energy field blocking your way past it. The only way to disable it this time is to shut down the power in a nearby control station, which you have to reach by going under the bridge!

Enter the partially wrecked house to the far left in the village, and dispatch the enemy soldier hiding there if you haven't before. You'll see a piece of the floor missing at the far end of the house, carefully jump down on the pathway below it and kill the poison zombie to the right. Follow the path upwards to the left into a green door and continue forward. You are now in the under works of the bridge, where you'll have to carefully walk the beams and the pieces of the catwalk lying around. The soldiers you encounter are easily disposed of with either the crossbow or the RPG launcher, which you may choose to use since there's plenty of ammunition around for it. The first shack you reach contains medpacks and two headcrabs, continue onwards to the next containing plenty of supplies. Make sure you shoot down the soldiers further ahead before you continue. Once you get close to the building on the far end of the area, the upper right catwalk is much easier than jumping down the beams below.

Continue on the path to the station, but watch out to the right as several soldiers attempt to shoot you down. Once you've killed them, enter the first room, shoot down the soldiers and go around the fence out on the ledge. Climb up the ladder, enter the room and kill the soldier hiding to the left of you, as well the one rushing in from the left door. Go into the right door, up the stairs and be prepared to kill the two soldiers hiding. Use the manipulator to pull the plug, removing the small energy field in the room which enables you to press the small button on the left of the Combine computer. This disables the energy field on the railroad, as the computer informs you, and you're all set to go back! One problem remains however; you've raised hell and attracted a combine gunship. Get back down to the small concrete path between the building and the bridge under works, kill the two soldiers and hide behind the doors while you shoot the gunship with the RPG launcher. If you run out of ammunition, you'll have to get back to the middle shack under the bridge, which contains a green box with infinite RPG ammunition.

Go back to the cliffs, shoot down the zombie and follow the path all the way until it leads you back up in the small village. Get into the car and drive up on the railroad, but stop just behind the stationary train. The thing is, as you move on the rails, a train will approach and run you over if you aren't careful. There's two ways to get past this, to either drive the car until you hear the train noise and reverse back behind the train, or park it there and walk on the rails. When you hear the train noise this time, simply move as close to the train as possible and crouch. Once the train has passed, get back to the car and continue driving. Once you get to the other end of the railroad, steer left and drive past the pieces of a broken bridge, and up the part creating a ramp into a tunnel. Continue driving in the tunnel until the game stops to load. Congratulations, you've finished the chapter! Now, prepare for Sandtraps.