Key Takeaways
- Half-Life 2 modders have made the Little Rocket Man achievement far less frustrating.
- A new Steam Workshop addon called ‘Jalopy for Gnome’ allows you to keep him in the backseat without falling out.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two’s most iconic achievement is also its most gruelling — Little Rocket Man. You’re tasked with bringing a gnome from the start of the game to a rocket at the end so that you can send it to space.
It’s difficult keeping tabs on the little guy during gunfights, but what’s even harder is bringing him along during jalopy rides. Stick him in the back and he falls onto the road, meaning that you spend most of the game throwing him ahead with the gravity gun, driving up to him, throwing him ahead with the gravity gun, driving up to him…
You get the picture. It’s a headache, especially when you sprinkle in helicopter chases or throw him out of bounds by accident and don’t have a recent save handy. But thankfully, with the episodes now folded into Half-Life 2, and with built-in Steam Workshop support, there’s an easy-to-download add-on that makes this achievement a lot fairer.
Pop Him In The Backseat
Dubbed “Jalopy for Gnome”, this mod reworks the car’s collisions so that you can safely store the little fella in the backseat without him slipping out. Purists aren’t taking it too well, but the achievement was needlessly frustrating whenever the car was involved.
Since it’s a Steam Workshop add-on, all you need to do is press the ‘Subscribe’ button and it’ll download. It’s that easy. And using mods doesn’t impact achievements whatsoever.
As someone who has earned Little Rocket Man twice now, I definitely recommend picking this mod up. Episode 2 is far worse when you’re constantly getting out of the car to pelt a little gnome.
