Half-Life (series)/Awesome


 * Okay, so, top of the frelling list here, folks: Father Grigori. Nothing you say can stand up to the fact that he's an Orthodox priest with a rifle and has a problem with his flock.
 * The entirety of Surface Tension in the original Half Life. Gordon Freeman finally makes it out of Black Mesa... only to discover that the marines and aliens are still fighting, and the marines are constantly bombing the area. So he goes through, fighting, marines, aliens, helicopters, turret placements, and main battle tanks, all while the aliens and soldiers fight one another (and in a small CMOA for the Marines, they usually win). Particular highlights include the battle against the squad of soldiers, turret placements, and helicopter at the Dam, the area where the marines Osprey continually drops soldiers to kill a group of alien grunts, and Freeman calling in an airstrike on a Gargantua.
 * Half-Life 2 Episode Two had the first Hunter battle. Alyx hears the Hunters outside and gets all scared, having almost died from her last encounter with them, only to turn around and take a badass pill before commencing to slaughter them all.
 * Any time Dog gets into a fight, an event which will probably involve much car-flinging, flailing of trashcan-sized metal fists, and excessive application of ragdoll physics.
 * In Episode 2, he fights a Strider. He not only wins, but tears that building-sized heavily-armed monstrosity into pieces. By which we mean DOG tears the Striders BRAIN out.
 * Episode 2, when about sixteen million Antlions come pouring into the chamber where Alyx is being healed. Just when you're running low on ammo, the turrets are frazzled and the mines have run out, three Vortigaunts bust through the ceiling. One of them murmurs, "We will quiet them," and they turn to face the Antlions, revealing that for all their enigmatic proverbs and general butt-ugliness, Vortigaunts are fucking badasses. They proceed to unleash all manner of green-lightning-fueled fury on the Antlions, stunning them with bolts of electricity, frying them with concentrated beams, even judo-throwing them to the ground and exploding them with balls of energy.
 * Their actions in Episode One, where they : Up until that moment, the G-Man was a Smug Snake with no apparent weaknesses, in constant control of the situation, and most of the cast didn't even know he existed. The expression on his face when he realizes he's lost control: priceless. "We'll see... about that."
 * The G-man does get get his own back in Episode Two, with his own CMOA. ("Doctor Freeemaaan. I realize this moment may not be the most convenient for a 'heart-to-heart', but I had to wait until your... 'friends' were otherwise occupied."), topped only by his Take That to Gordon regarding his actions in Half-Life ("There was a time they cared nothing for Ms... Vance; when their only experience of... 'humanity' was a crowbar coming at them down a steel coridor".)
 * What the troper above failed to mention was that his Take That not only was of Freeman but of the Vortigaunts as well. G-Man's Episode Two speech is whole cutscene of awesome. The Vorts knocked the Smug Snake down a peg at the end of Episode One. What does G-Man do? The second he is able to pass the Vorts unnoticed, he gives his badass speech, reveals how he was the one to save Alyx from Black Mesa, and wants Freeman to pay up for his survival by bringing Alyx to White Forest, and gets her to relay a message of doom to Eli as a form of Take That from the man's own daughter. The closest G-Man comes to loosing his cool is the occasional tone of anger expressed when enunciating.
 * Also; mowing down hunters while killing Striders WITH A PISTOL.
 * Alyx Vance: the scene in Breen's office.
 * From the perspective of the other characters, Gordon is a walking CMOA. Alyx would name the defeat of the gunship and then later the Strider in Episode One as Gordon's CMOA.
 * For further illustration on that, at one point in Episode 2, Gordon and a vortiguant are infilitrating an Antlion hive. The vortiguant feels the need to specifically tell Gordon not to kill the Antlion Guard, an insect monster the size of a truck that can throw cars around, laugh off grenades, and the glowing green stuff on it? That's a neurotoxin. About ten minutes after they get what they need from the hive, Gordon gets the go ahead and kills two of them, with little more than a shotgun and the trash that was laying around the valley.
 * And for even further illustration, the first definite objective Gordon is given in Half Life 2 aside from "escape" is to infiltrate a Combine prison and rescue a high priority prisoner, and no-one considers one man doing this to be unusual (granted he later receives a Redshirt Army of Antlions, but they don't know that). After he succeeds, the resistance takes this as their cue to begin a worldwide revoltion and as soon as Gordon appears they follow behind him unquestionally, because things in front of him have a tendency to die.
 * Half Life 2 speed run. The shortcuts taken and techniques used are mindblowing.
 * Storming Nova Prospekt. You are entering an an enemy base, while having an army of antlions at your hands. Plus, Apprehension and Evasion plays at the right time.
 * Barney gets a big one in Blue Shift: He actually gets out of the Black Mesa facility alive without the interference of the G-Man. That's something that Gordon and Adrian DIDN'T do. Not to mention that he does it without an HEV suit or any experimental weaponry, but with just a helmet and a Kevlar vest.