[kupoartist]

Originally Posted by Bogart

and let me say that I have always loved the main character of Half Life, because he reminds me of my older brother!

lol! The funny thing is that Gordon Freeman is what you make him really, because aside from the loading screens and some fleeting glances in Opposing Force / Blue Shift, the actions of that character (I mean, he doesn't even speak!) are defined by you! So yes, ironically, Gordon Freeman should remind you of your older brother, because you are Freeman and you probably have a lot of similarities to your Brother

Enemy-wise, it has been demonstrated that the AI is a lot more capable now. You can't just evade some of the enemies simply by getting to higher ground or by jumping to the other side of a body of water, because the enemy AI may be able to find ways of pursuing you. In one video, the new strider enemies (these tripod-type alien things that have a devestating laser attack that seems to kill instantly) ducked under an arch over the road to pursure the player. In another sequence, a pursuing soldier tries kicking a door the player just baricaded, gives up and instead moves to the windows and tries to shoot through them instead. Basically, the AI is context sensitive, so it will make choices depending on what the player is doing, not just on heavily scripted sequences.

Enemies back from the original game, AFAIK, are the headcrabs (and the headcrab zombies) and the slave "vorticon" aliens (the ones that shot Green Lightning at you.) The former are a little better equipped to slaughter you in that, in zombie form they can detach from their hosts and fly at you (one particuarly sick sequence involves zombies that get cut in two at the torso by a revolving blade - the headcrabs jumped off in one video, whilst in another the upper-body kept crawling towards the player). The "Slave" aliens aren't actually enemies this time - they are seen helping some of your old scientest pals, presumably because they were "slaves", now freed (perhaps because Freeman killed the floating-wtf-baby from HL1). Other enemies i've seen include the Combine soldiers (think HL1 soldiers but smarter, behind masks and probably not human or at least fully human), ant-lions (nasty, large big type things that can be fooled into fighting for you if you happen to have the scent of one of their "leaders"), the weird blade-bug things (headcrab sized flying things that have a circular saw attached for some reason), a massive weird flying thing that looks like the genetic cross between a beetle and a helicopter (though white), a proper helicopter and a whole load of other enemies that either haven't been announced or I've just forgotten. Like those weird blue tentacles which have a nasty habit of spearing people.

So hopefully, you'll get your Ripley moments