In the early part of 2000, there was the slogan WWJD.
It stood for “What Would Jesus Do?” Some Christian group, probably the ACLU or YMCA or something, popularized the saying and had it imprinted on rubber necklaces. Whereas today’s ghetto kids wear cheap baller IDs, kids a decade ago were strutting around with WWJD around their skinny wrists while sniffing coke or banging up the neighborhood.
Now, we’re not too brushed up on our Bible skills ever since we got kicked out of Sunday school twenty years ago. But we do know our games. And in this case, we’re thinking:
“What would Gordon Freeman do?”
Stay cool
First of all, what Freeman WON’T do is panic. The dude is as fucking as ice-cold as you can get.
Not once throughout the entire Half Life franchise did you ever hear the man whimper, grovel, or hyperventilate. Heck, he doesn’t even speak at all. Whether he’s facing an ungodly amount of Vortigaunts or listening to one of the G-Man’s eerie monologues, Gordon remains as cool as the metal of his crowbar.
Be prepared
During the entire ruckus at Black Mesa, only Gordon survived while so many of his white-suited geeky colleagues died. Why is that? Because the man was wearing a fucking HEV suit.
The point here is that you have to be prepared for any eventuality. It can be your two-year old wetting himself during the baseball game, and you didn’t pack an extra nappy. Or it could be that asteroid that will “miss” Earth this week, and you haven’t done any panic shopping. Whatever the case, always think of all the possible eventualities and be prepared for them. In fact, buy your own HEV suit just to be on the safe side.
Pack massive firepower
Remember all those security guards in Black Mesa? They were armed with measly Glock sidearms, and look where it got them. That’s right: straight into the gaping maws of a headcrab.
In contrast, while everyone was running around with their heads being cut off, Gordon took the opportunity to ransack half of the Pentagon’s arsenal. It wasn’t enough that he carried a rusty crowbar, an MP5, and a sawed off shotgun. No: he hung a huge rocket launcher on his back. When it came time to facing an Abrams tank, Gordon didn’t take out a puny pea shooter or compute the damage cost on a car loan calculator. He unslung that huge RPG and blasted the shit out of the tank.
And he even took all the experimental weapons… just in case. Now that’s what you call being equipped for the task.