High: One of the best games ever made. Excellent graphics, story and gameplay. Would be a fool to not play it.
Low: Zombies get a bit too creepy sometimes. Steam is very annoying and buggy.


Half Life 2 is the sequel of the original Half Life game. The original Half Life was developed by Valve in 1998. Valve is also responsible for developing Counter Strike and Team Fortress. Counter-Strike and Team fortress are the most popular multiplayer games ever developed and made a huge impact on the gaming industry. They defined what multiplayer games should be, much like Doom and Quake did to the single player FPS. Half Life 2 was finally released Fall 2004, after nearly 6 years of wait and much critic. All I can tell you right now is that Half Life 2 is well worth the wait!

Half Life's story can be a bit confusing to understand. It is part of a very big story and may not seem clear at first. The game starts with you, Gordan Freeman, a typical geek type from MIT. Due to your pervious accomplishments in the past game, you are called upon by the mysterious G-Man. You will be awoke from your eternal sleep by him and suddenly dropped into a fast moving train. A couple of guys nearby will get pretty surprised by this but they just assumed they missed you when you got on the train. The train slows down a couple minutes later and ground to a halt. You will step out of the train and..... Welcome to City 17! A normal looking, small European city on Earth! Everything seemed normal and peaceful until you see the big screen on a tall building with an old guy talking about obeying and order. Look down from that screen and you will see a bunch of weird , alien like cops beating on others for no reason. Move too close to the cops and you will get spanked like the others. You will have some time to explore the city and meet up a few old friends from Half Life. Afterall, the story is based on the original Half Life many years later. It won't be long before those cops discover who you are though. Enjoy the city while you can. You will soon learn how the city is besieged by a bunch of aliens and human races are divided into two groups. One group are the brave fighters fighting for freedom from the aliens and seeking to protect their city. The other group are those who submit to alien's rule and oppress those who dare to stand up against them. You will be on a wild run saving the those brave freedom fighters and the humanity in whole.

Like you guessed it, your enemies will be those weird cops/soliders, swarms of them. The game calls them Combine soliders and they are humans who submitted to alien's rule. They strength from alien weapons and armories. They come in different sizes too! First are the soliders with pistols and electrical sticks. The next in line are the soliders who wield submachine guns and throwing grenades. Then comes the better organized plasma rife equipped soldiers. They are a bit tougher than the submachine gun ones but they die just as easy. The last in line are the SOFs. They dress in special protection suits and use plasma rifles exclusively. They also know how to kill you with a those special grenades of theirs. They are very tough but won't come into play till near the end of the game.

The AI for your enemies are fairly solid. They act based on their terrain and can make some smart decisions. They can either hide behind a cover and ambush you, or they could rush you in squads and unleash some devasting firepower. The soliders will be very easy to beat for the most part but do not underestimate them.

No FPS games today will be complete without a crap load of zombies trying to have you for lunch. Half Life 2 zombies are annoying and they rarely come alone. They come in the special favors of headcrabs. Those headcrabs looks like a spider without a head and with a huge butt hole underneath. The headcrabs rest their butt holes on their victim's head ( zombie) and jump whoever alive near them. This made fighting zombies alot more challenging and fun since you have to watch for the headcrabs constantly. The headcrabs won't do much damage per bite but they bite really fast. Some headcrabs are quite poisonous and can drain your life slowly even if you killed it.

Don't worry though, you will kick some major ass with the weapons Half Life 2 provided. The weapons include your standard FPS pistol, submachine gun, rocket launcher and shotgun as well as a number of weapons very unique to Half Life 2. Those unique weapons are your standard Half Life crowbar (Good for breaking boxes or whack a dead zombie) , plasma rifle, bug gait and Gravity gun. Plasma gun is a 30 clip/round pumped up version of your submachine gun. The firepower is devasting and can mow down a squad of Combine soldiers faster than you can say "noob". Bug bait is a fun little weapon you get much later in the game. I won't spoil much of the fun for you but I promise you it will be a super fun weapon to use. (Hint: Think of using big bad monsters to aide you.) Gravity gun is perhaps the best weapon in game in term of uselessness and coolness. You can pick up almost anything to hit your enemies with as long as that "anything" is removable. You can even use the Gravity gun to pick up some saw blade and slice zombies in half with it. The Gravity gun will be upgraded much later in the game to increase its devasting power to least 50x. Most weapons also come with secondary fire functions, make the party red hot.

Half Life 2 wouldn't be complete without some bizarre vehicles to drive in. You get to drive an airboat and a buggy in two chapters of the game. They are fast and come with unlimited ammo. Nothing beats driving one at max speed with guns blazing to mow down your enemies like chopping porks. Don't get too excited, your enemies also have some vehicles they can use against you. You will be facing gunships, rocket launching tanks, helicopters, and huge Star Wars AT-ST style Striders. No need to worry though, you will be given sufficient weapons and ammo to waste them.

Puzzles in Half Life 2 are worth mentioning. You will encounter a fair amount of them. They are not your typical puzzle , where you have to pluck your brains out trying to figure out what the developer is thinking when he/she made the puzzle. The puzzles in Half Life 2 are very logical and they fit very well in the game. You just have to know what to do if you encounter it in real life and you can solve it with no problems. Heck, if you don't know what to do in real life, just use your common sense. The puzzles are the best so far I have seen in a game. Bravo to the Half Life 2 team.

Graphics in Half Life 2 are top of the line. It may not look as good as Doom 3 or Farcry but it runs so smooth. On my outdated graphic card (Nvidia FX5200 ), the game rarely lags even when I was facing a horde of zombies. The Half Life 2 engine also includes the best character animating I have ever seen. Characters responds and move like a real human being instead of some computer pixel. Voice synchroniztion is the best I have ever seen in my gaming career. Each character's lip move according to the exact word they spoke. Must have taken a long time to accomplish this degree of professionalism.

The music in Half Life 2 kickass. Most are creepy music that add spice to the environment. The rest are andreline pumping music's that push your gaming experience to a higher level. They come in at the appropriate moment, usually during a big firefight or a dangerous escape. Voice acting is both superb and professional. Very nice job overall.

I don't think I know a way to express for anger for the fucked up Steam service that Valve provided. Steam screwed up my Counter Strike 1.6 service and it continues to annoy the shit out of my Half Life 2. Long and unnecessary waiting time, not been able to connect for no reason, and random kick out of the game are just a few of the hussles it provided. They lost a lot of customers and pissed off those they didn't lost. Steam is perhaps the worst gaming nightmare I never had and I will never support it. Half Life 2 might be perfect if didn't have Steam. They lost more money due to Steam than due to piracy. I hope Valve has learned their lesson.

Other than Steam, I can't think of any other cons for Half Life 2. It's that good.

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Reviewed By:p3t3r Reviewed On: Mon, 09 May 2005 15:51:02 Read:

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