Yes, I know Half Life 2 is old enough to be considered a classic now, but while I've been inable to connect to the server, I decided to replay it. I came across a suggestion that you could bypass the rather time-consuming section below the bridge (the one that ends in a gunship battle iirc), by simply building a stack of boxes and the like to jump over the force field. And you know what...
...you can!
Of course you're now left without a car, and you have to play chicken with the train on foot, but you actually save time by bypassing puzzles and a few enemies being on foot, plus it's only maybe 20 minutes of play to the lighthouse, which is far less than what you save by not playing through the bridge section.
Anyone else have some similar cheeky methods to completely miss out certain sections of the game?