Well it seems I'm more of a noob than I imagined. Before even playing the game I had looked up a few mods and had installed and forgotten about the Source Difficulty 1.09.
No wonder I was getting wrecked - I was playing the game for the first time, with it on, on hard difficulty.
By chance I decided to start over and create a new profile so the mod wasn't activated (still playing it on default hard). Went much better. Default hard isn't too much of a challenge after you get past early level so I'll definitely go back to the mod on my second playthrough.
Just noticed that this morning. Still lots was learned here.
Thanks!
