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Health and HEV Suit Chargers are wall-mounted devices that give a limited amount of health and power. They are found throughout the Black Mesa Research Facility and, later, in Combine-controlled locations.
Overview[]
The chargers can be used by staying near them and pressing the USE
key. Whilst being used, their power drains and eventually they will stop healing or charging. In Half-Life 2 and Half-Life: Source they will also stop when the player reaches full health or power.
In Half-Life, health and HEV chargers are the primary source of health and power throughout the game. Medkits and batteries do not provide enough health and armor to be an effective long-term source of healing and protection.
In Half-Life 2, however, medkits have become the primary healing item, giving 25 health points. Medkits are also considerably more common in Wasteland areas outside of Combine control, whereas chargers are common within City 17. The HEV charger is still the primary source of power, due to batteries being comparatively uncommon.
Health chargers[]
In both games, Health Chargers are scattered throughout areas, and are placed around for the convenience of staff in high-risk areas, such as in areas with dangerous creatures or machinery. The Half-Life 2 variant has a blue line that gets smaller as more supplies are used up, as well as a spinning disk which twirls inward continuously until health liquid is depleted.
The Health Charger gives 70%, 50% or 30% health on Easy, Medium and Hard difficulties respectively each time. On the other hand, the health chargers in the PlayStation 2 version have a hypodermic needle on a mechanical arm connected to a small reservoir of medicine. Whenever a user is nearby, the arm automatically extends in front of them.
In Half-Life: Alyx, the health chargers are powered by a canister containing an Antlion Grub. This is likely the Combine having discovered that the grubs contain materials that have healing properties to humans, which are supplied to be used by the Overwatch and Civil Protection. It is possible that by the point of Half-Life 2, the Combine has either learnt to synthesise the grub material artificially or simply harvests it and puts it in liquid form in the chargers, as the 'larva' tube component is no longer visible.
HEV chargers[]
HEV Chargers appear in both games, but for completely different reasons. In Half-Life, there are dedicated HEV suit chargers scattered throughout the facility, hinting that HEV usage was widespread throughout the Black Mesa Research Facility. In addition, generic power sources (Ohm's) can also be used to draw power for the HEV suit, though these only appear in the more-neglected areas of the facility. Dedicated PCV chargers are made, but they only appeared in key parts of the facility controlled by the military, mostly after the Resonance Cascade. In the neglected parts of the facility, there are old HEV Chargers that have a different shape. These usually work like the "newer" models, but some are prone to exploding.
Finally, the charger in the source high-definition pack involves two spinning power coils, with, like the health charger, a robot arm with electricity running through it.There is also a charger in the multiplayer map "stalkyard", this one is like the old Blue Shift HEV charger (with only the upper texture different), but is unusable.
In Half-Life 2, HEV chargers are actually generic power sources used by the Combine. The Mk V HEV suit has been modified to draw power from these sources. The only "original" HEV Suit charger encountered is the front plate of one that can be found in Black Mesa East and another at the White Forest base.
After being powered up by Dark Energy[1][2] the HEV suit can utilize chargers much more efficiently; it can easily go from empty to double its capacity while barely draining the charger. In addition, their charge can also heal a person while the HEV suit is powered up.
Behind the scenes[]
- Originally, Half-Life featured first aid lockers. Two textures remain in the game files. The texture with the Red Cross emblem is seen in use in Half-Life Preliminary Findings video "Exploding boxes,"[3] "Bullchicken in action"[4] and in "Sewer."[5] The Half-Life Alpha features this first aid locker, but it cannot be used, possibly indicating that it was not scripted to heal the player yet.
- In Half-Life, Chargers are actually brush-based entities that can be applied to any surface, but are dedicated entities in Half-Life 2. The brush-based version remains in the Half-Life 2 engine, but is not used. The WC mappack maps make extensive use of the brush-based entity version, they look like updated versions of the Half-Life chargers.
- In the Half-Life 2 Beta sound files the Combine Health Charger is referred to by Dr. Kleiner as "Combine Auto-Medic."
Related achievements[]
| |||
Find the HEV Suit charger faceplate in Eli's scrapyard. |
Trivia[]
- In Half-Life multiplayer and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, HEV chargers give only 30 points of energy, and health chargers will give only 30 (50 in Half-Life Deathmatch) points of health.
- In Half-life 2: Deathmatch, in the map "
dm_lockdown
," a Combine dispenser can give 200 armor and health points like the Citadel chargers.
- In Half-Life 2, the original Half-Life HEV Suit charger front panel can be seen in the junkyard of Black Mesa East. Finding it earns the Blast From the Past achievement. It can also be found at the White Forest base, hidden behind crates in the room where Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner watch Judith Mossman's message.
- In Portal 2: Lab Rat, a HEV Charger and the Health Charger are seen on the wall of a lab inside the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.
Gallery[]
Half-Life and expansions[]
Half-Life 2 and Episodes[]
Half-Life : Alyx[]
List of appearances[]
- Half-Life: Day One (First appearance)
- Half-Life
- Half-Life: Uplink (Non-canonical appearance)
- Half-Life: Opposing Force
- Deathmatch Classic (Non-canonical appearance)
- Half-Life: Blue Shift
- Half-Life: Decay
- Half-Life 2
- Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (Non-canonical appearance)
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Non-canonical appearance)
- Half-Life 2: Episode One
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Portal 2: Lab Rat
- Half-Life: Alyx