Half-Life 2

Overview

Half-Life 2 is a sci-fi first-person shooter developed and digitally published by Valve for the PC on November 16, 2004, with a retail release by Sierra.

A direct sequel to the 1998 game Half-Life, Half-Life 2 continues the story of theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman decades after the Black Mesa Incident. After being conscripted by the mysterious "G-Man" and being put into stasis, Gordon re-awakens in a fictional Eastern European urban dystopia known as City 17. He quickly learns that Earth has being occupied by a powerful alien collective known as the Combine, and must work with remnants of the human resistance to disrupt their base-of-operations (the massive tower "Citadel", erected in City 17). Along with several Black Mesa survivors (including security guard Barney Calhoun and fellow scientist Dr. Isaac Kleiner), Gordon is aided by new allies (the most prominent of which is Alyx Vance, daughter of fellow Black Mesa survivor Dr. Eli Vance).

One of the earliest games to be built on Valve's GoldSrc game engine successor (known as Source), Half-Life 2 features numerous graphical, audio, animation, physics and gameplay improvements to its predecessor. It is often cited for popularizing the use of physics manipulation (powered by Havok) in first-person titles, with players using in-game physics both to solve environmental puzzles and to attack enemies with improvised weaponry (the latter of which makes use of a unique weapon known as the "Gravity Gun").

Notable for being one of the first games released on Valve's Steam platform, and for being the first to require use of their Steam client, Half-Life 2 received multiple quality-of-life updates throughout the years, including support for Mac and Linux computers (the former on May 26, 2010 and the latter on May 9, 2013). It also received a port for the Xbox on November 15, 2005, for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (as part of the 2007 compilation The Orange Box), and for Android on May 12, 2014 (exclusive to the NVIDIA Shield Tablet).

The game later received a bonus expansion level on October 27, 2005, known as Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, showcasing new technological aspects to the Source engine (such as high dynamic range rendering and a contextual developer commentary system). Along with extensive modding support through the Source SDK, the game also received a separate traditional multiplayer deathmatch component on November 30, 2004, known as Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, as well as two direct follow-ups that were released as standalone expansions: the 2006 Half-Life 2: Episode One and the 2007 Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Although a third follow-up, Half-Life 2: Episode Three, was cancelled during development, the game received a VR-focused prequel in 2020, known as Half-Life: Alyx. It also received a Japanese-exclusive arcade adaptation by Taito in 2006, known as Half-Life 2: Survivor.

The game later received a major update on November 15, 2024, celebrating the game's 20th anniversary, that includes numerous improvements to the original game while adding developer commentary, Steam Workshop support, and the inclusion of the Lost Coast, Episode One, and Episode Two expansions (with the game progressing between the original, Episode One, and Episode Two campaigns seamlessly).

Gameplay

While its run-and-gun first-person gameplay is very similar to that of the original, Half-Life 2 sets itself apart from many of its shooter contemporaries through the use of a robust physics engine (a heavily modified version of Havok) which allows players to directly manipulate many objects throughout the game world. It also introduces the Gravity Gun, a new physics-based weapon capable of picking up and launching most small or medium-sized objects with considerable force, potentially turning these mundane items into improvised weapons. Most of the game's environmental puzzles are also built around this sort of object manipulation.

Protagonist Gordon Freeman spends the majority of the game on his own, exploring and fighting enemies solo; however, he is sometimes met by non-hostile NPCs who may provide dialogue or other forms of support. Late in the game's campaign, players are given the ability to command small squads of armed human resistance members as they fight through an embattled City 17.

Weapons

Like the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2 includes a diverse array of weaponry for various situations, ranging from Gordon's iconic crowbar for melee combat and breaking open crates, to multiple types of traditional firearms for general combat, to unique weaponry with special features. They are split into six weapon "categories', with several weapons having have alternate firing mechanisms.

Category 1 (Close-Range)

Crowbar

The first weapon given to Gordon throughout the game and returning from the original Half-Life, the crowbar is the game's melee weapon and is more useful at breaking things down (such as crates and wooden boards) than it is at taking down armed forces.

It is one of the few weapons to return from the original Half-Life.

• No ammo usage.
• Ideal for breaking certain objects at close range, as well as against certain weaker enemies (such as headcrabs and manhacks).
• Returns from the original Half-Life.

Zero-Point Energy Gun (Gravity Gun)

Formally known as the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator, the Gravity Gun is a unique device that exerts enough force to punt most objects away from the player (with smaller objects able to be punted in a much larger force). Certain enemies and enemy grenades can also be punted away safely.

Its defining feature, however, is its Secondary Attack, which allows the player to grab smaller objects from a distance and vacuum them to the Gravity Gun's "barrel". This can be combined with the Primary Attack to punt the object with extreme accuracy and force, or can be gently placed down by pressing the Secondary Attack button a second time. Several items, such as health packs and ammo, can also be grabbed from a distance using this mechanism.

• No ammo usage. Only activates if there is an object in front of it.
• Useful for solving environmental puzzles and grabbing items from a distance, as well as for improvised weaponry.

Category 2 (Sidearms)

9mm Pistol

A semi-automatic pistol, heavily resembling the real-life USP, that is commonly used by the city's Civil Protection officers. Found early in the game, it has low stopping power, but are useful for its decent accuracy, stable recoil, and ammunition availability in earlier chapters.

It is unique in that players can fire it at a rapid rate through quick pulls of the rigger.

• 18 round magazine (180 in reserve).
• Accurate out to fairly long distances. Low recoil.
• Ideal against weaker and slower enemies, especially at medium to long range.

.357 Magnum

A powerful double-action revolver, heavily resembling the real-life Colt Python. Despite its very unstable recoil and slow firing rate, it fires very accurate and powerful shots, able to take down most standard enemies in a single blow (especially on lower difficulties).

Unlike most weapons, ammunition for this gun is scarce due to its power and that no enemies use it. They are generally only found in secret areas. Reloading the weapon is also a slow process.

• 6 round magazine (12 in reserve).
• Perfectly accurate. High recoil.
• Can be used at any range effectively, with longer ranges able to make effective use of the HEV's Zoom functionality.
• Returns from the original Half-Life.

Category 3 (Rapid-Fire)

SMG (Submachine Gun)

A standard-issue rapid-fire submachine gun, heavily resembling the real-life MP7, that is commonly used by both standard Combine soldiers and the Resistance. It has a very high rate-of-fire and stable recoil, although its accuracy spread becomes very poor over longer distances. Its ammunition is also one of the most common to find.

Its Secondary Attack launches impact grenades from its under-barreled 30mm launcher, although these can be very scarce to find and is easy to deal self-inflicted damage if not handled properly.

• 45 round magazine (225 in reserve). Holds 3 Grenades.
• Accurate when firing full-auto at short-to-medium ranges, with longer ranges only accurate on quick taps. Recoil ramps up slowly.
• Ideal in short and medium-ranged combat against standard enemies.

Overwatch Standard Issue (Pulse-Rifle)

A futuristic pulse-powered assault rifle, powered by the Combine's Dark Energy technology, that is used by more elite Combine soldiers. Despite its slower rate-of-fire and worse accuracy than the SMG, it deals heavier damage per-shot. It also has lower ammunition reserves than the SMG.

Its Secondary Attack launches exposed Dark Energy cores as balls that bounce on surfaces and vaporize enemies in its wake. Like the SMG's grenades, these can be very scarce to find and is easy to deal self-inflicted damage if not handled properly.

• 30 round magazine (60 in reserve). Holds 3 Energy Balls.
• Less accurate than the SMG. Recoil ramps up quickly.
• Ideal in short and medium-ranged combat against tougher enemies.

Category 4 (Heavy)

Shotgun

A powerful pump-action shotgun, heavily resembling the real-life SPAS-12, that is used by some standard Combine soldiers (marked in red) and is very effective in close ranges, despite its slow chamber-fed reloading (where it reloads one shell at a time).

Its Secondary Attack fires two shells at a time for higher damage output (although not as effective in the long run as normal-firing twice).

• 6 round magazine (30 in reserve). Reloads one round at a time.
• Ideal at short-ranged combat against most enemies.
• Returns from the original Half-Life.

Crossbow

A makeshift single-shot crossbow built by the Resistance, firing superheated rebar bolts at great distances (capable of killing most organic targets with a single shot, sometimes pinning them against walls). Although they are accurate for sniping, their shots are affected in longer distances by both projectile speed (making it difficult against moving targets) and gravity (requiring players to manage the drop distance). It is one of the few weapons that can be shot while underwater (although not as effectively).

Its Secondary Attack toggles the weapon's scope, which has a longer zoom than the HEV's Zoom and allows players to fire the weapon while scoped.

• 1 round magazine (8 in reserve).
• Ideal at medium and long-ranged against most enemies.
• Returns somewhat from the original Half-Life.

Category 5 (Explosive)

Grenade

Standard-issue hand grenades used by Combine soldiers. Useful against groups of enemies, or for flushing out enemies in cover, throwing one immediately triggers a visual and audible countdown before dealing a powerful explosion. These grenades have a slight bounce according the game's physics, requiring careful consideration on where they end up (as they can deal self-inflicted damage).

Its Secondary Attack allows players to "roll" the grenade in an underhanded toss, where it doesn't bounce as far. While crouched, this throw is a full throw from ground level. Although this technique is primarily used in-game against Floor Turrets, players can utilize it effectively alongside the Gravity Gun, both for quick punts (which is capable of distances longer than a simple throw) and for cooking (allowing players to airburst it).

Players can throw back enemy grenades, both by grabbing it as an object and by using the Gravity Gun.

• Holds 5 Grenades.
• Ideal against groups of enemies, or for flushing out enemies in cover.
• Returns from the original Half-Life, although with more physics.

RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade)

A powerful rocket launcher that is sometimes used by the Resistance against armored Combine vehicles. Featuring a laser guidance system, players can affect the rocket's trajectory through aiming the weapon's laser pointer, which is sometimes necessary as Combine vehicles can sometimes shoot rockets down.

While ammunition for this weapon is very scarce throughout most of the game, fighting against certain vehicles (namely Gunships and Striders) generally has supply crates with infinite ammunition.

• 1 rocket tube (2 in reserve).
• Ideal against vehicles or groups of enemies.
• Returns from the original Half-Life.

Category 6 (Unique)

Pheropod (Bugbait)

Generally only used in the "Sandtraps" and "Nova Prospekt" chapters, Bugbait are sacs, harvested from an Antlion Guard, that allow the player to exert control over lesser Antlions (as allies) through its pheromones. It has two functions:

• Primary Attack throws the sac, where it disperses into a cloud that all nearby Antlions converge into. It can also stun organic enemies, even in chapters when Antlions are not available.

• Secondary Attack squeezes the sac, commanding the Antlions to follow nearby. In certain locations, it also summons additional Antlions.

While Antlions can be quite powerful in numbers, they are also fragile. This makes them more beneficial as diversions.

• Infinite supply.
• Ideal for diversionary tactics (and for stunning certain enemies).
• Not used in any other expansion/adaptation, or in Deathmatch.

Vehicles

In certain chapters of Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman uses two vehicles to help him through enemy territory. The vehicles widen the range of the gameplay even more and help prevent the game from becoming overly repetitive.

Airboat

The Airboat is a land and water based vehicle. It's easy to maneuver, thus making it possible to dodge obstacles like bombs dropped by the Combine attack helicopters. Gordon Freeman uses the Airboat to navigate through the canal network and make his way to Black Mesa East, where he meets up with Alyx Vance, her father Eli Vance, Dr. Judith Mossman and Alyx's robot pet named Dog. At first the Airboat is unarmed and has no form of attack; however, later on it is mounted with a Combine chopper gun by a Vortigaunt.

Dune Buggy

The Dune Buggy is a land based vehicle that is used to cross the beaches while avoiding Antlions. The Dune Buggy is equipped with a mounted Tau Cannon which is used to gun down any enemies the player might encounter on the way. The Tau Cannon is the same from Half-Life. This one, however, cannot overload or run out of ammo.

Chapters

Like in the original Half-Life, the game doesn't include "levels" in the traditional sense. Instead, the game's continuous path is split into multiple "chapters". Unlike the original, players can choose to start at several unlocked points throughout the story (with a selection of weaponry that the player is likely to acquire prior).

1. Point Insertions
2. A Red Letter Day
3. Route Kanal
4. Water Hazard
5. Black Mesa East
6. We Don't Go to Ravenholm
7. Highway 17
8. Sandtraps
9. Nova Prospekt
10. Entanglement
11. Anticitizen One
12. Follow Freeman
13. Our Benefactors
14. Dark Energy

Story

"So, wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes."

-G-Man's introductory speech

Like the original game, the plot of Half-Life 2 is told not in discrete cutscenes, but instead through voiced NPC dialogue and scattered instances of environmental storytelling encountered during normal gameplay, such as newspaper clippings and the generally dilapidated state of the world. Due to the somewhat ambiguous presentation, many of the finer details of the game's backstory are left for players to infer themselves.

The game is set roughly one to two decades after the events of the original Half-Life, in which Dr. Gordon Freeman inadvertently caused a "resonance cascade" while working as an associate at the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. This catastrophic event heavily damaged the facility and triggered the teleportation of several hostile alien species into Black Mesa that immediately attacked the surviving personnel. Gordon battled through the aliens, as well as the US military's HECU soldiers sent to "clean up" both the invaders and any witnesses, in order to escape Black Mesa and close the dimensional portal before a full-scale invasion of Earth could take place. Eventually Gordon teleported himself to the "border world" of Xen to confront the aliens' leader, a powerful telekinetic being called the Nihilanth that was maintaining the link between dimensions. Gordon destroyed the creature, seemingly ending the alien threat to Earth; however, he was immediately met by an enigmatic figure known only as the "G-Man," who offered Gordon a job on behalf of his unknown "employers". The first game ends as Gordon is placed into some sort of stasis amidst a black void.

Half-Life 2 opens in the same void as Gordon is revived by the G-Man, who states that his "hour has come again". The G-Man inserts Gordon aboard a moving passenger train via teleportation; upon disembarking, Gordon finds himself in "City 17," an urban dystopia that appears to be the remnants of an unnamed city located in eastern Europe or Russia. Although still populated by human inhabitants (as well as several Vortigaunts), City 17 is controlled by the Combine, a powerful collective of aliens that have conquered Earth in Gordon's absence. The city's oppressed populace suffers greatly under Combine rule; forced relocation between urban centers is commonplace, and omnipresent Metrocops constantly harass innocent citizens with violence and impromptu raids on residential blocks. Even humanity's ability to procreate has been denied by a Combine "suppression field" that is slowly driving their race towards extinction.

Gordon also learns that former Black Mesa administrator Wallace Breen managed to broker a deal with the Combine's leadership to have himself installed as Earth's puppet ruler in the immediate aftermath of the "Seven Hour War," a decisive conflict between the Combine and humanity's military forces which ended with Earth's unconditional surrender. Breen surveys his citizens from the Combine Citadel, a multi-kilometer-tall metal tower in the city's center that serves as the Combine's base of operations on Earth. His publicly televised "Breencasts" are little more than Combine propaganda, touting the relative safety of City 17 and extolling the virtues of Earth's new "benefactors" while condemning the weaknesses of humanity such as instinct, superstition and the urge to reproduce.

Gordon's sudden arrival in City 17 soon sparks a massive resistance uprising, during which he and Alyx Vance manage to infiltrate the Citadel and destroy the "dark fusion reactor" located at its peak, ostensibly killing Breen in the process. Unfortunately Gordon and Alyx become trapped near the reactor's explosion; just before they are enveloped by the blast, time is apparently stopped by the G-Man, who arrives to once again place Gordon into stasis. This is where the game ends, with the franchise's story continued in Half-Life 2: Episode One.

Development

The road to release was not an easy or predictable one for Valve. In its five year development, Half-Life 2 went through numerous delays, a massive source code leak, a lawsuit with its publisher Vivendi Universal Games, and had to launch with the unproven and, at the time, unreliable Steam digital distribution system.

The game is estimated to have cost 40 million dollars to produce. As revealed by the coffee table book Half Life 2: Raising the Bar, Half-Life 2 was originally intended to be a much darker, grittier experience where the Combine are more evidently draining the Earth's resources and eliminating the surviving citizen population.

The settings of the game were also to be more diverse, with Nova Prospekt being a short stopping point but growing into the final destination.

Source Engine

For Half-Life 2, Valve developed a new game engine called the Source engine. The source engine includes a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine that allows for more environmental interactivity during both single-player and online play.

Notable Technology

• High dynamic range rendering
• Lag compensating network communications
• Network-enabled and bandwidth-efficient physics engine
• Future-proof multiprocessor support
• Facial animation system
• Blended skeletal animation system
• Full-screen motion blur
• Dynamic lighting and shadowing

Source Code Leak

Half-life 2 was merely a rumor until being officially unveiled at E3 May 2003. The game then received huge amounts of hype and won many awards for best in show. Initially the game had a release date of September 2003, but it missed that date. Leading up to the original September release date, Valve fell into an unexpected media blackout, providing almost no information whatsoever on the progress of the game as it was supposed to be being completed. After the September date had come and gone with no information from Valve, Half-Life 2's complete source code was leaked online along with other private internal Valve documents showing that the game was not yet complete and ready for release. Valve finally broke their silence and admitted that the game would be delayed for a year. This massive leak of private information was due to a major breach of Valve's internal network through a null session connection to Tangis which was hosted in Valve's network and subsequent upload of an ASP shell.

In June 2004, Valve issued a press release stating that the FBI had arrested several people suspected of involvement in the source code leak. Valve claimed the game had been leaked by a German black-hat hacker named Axel Gembe. Gembe later contacted Valve CEO Gabe Newell thinking that Valve wanted to employ him as an in-house security auditor, to which Valve feigned interest to bait him for arrest. He was to be offered a flight to the USA and then immediately arrested on arrival, but the German government learned of the plan and arrested Gembe themselves.

In November of 2006, in Germany, Gembe was sentenced to two years probation because the judge felt Gembe had a difficult childhood and was working on his problems.

Continuing Support

In January of 2012, members of the Steam Community group "A Call for Communication (Half-Life)" organized a massive community playdate called in Half-Life 2 to show their continuing support for Valve and the Half-Life franchise. Scheduled for February 4th, "A Red Letter Day" (an homage to Half-Life 2's second level) was intended to bring the game into the top ten most-played Steam games of the day by garnering as many concurrent players as possible. In total, the event put 13,126 players online at the same time, more than ten times that average for the past year.

Soundtrack

The original score for Half-Life 2 was composed by Kelly Bailey.

System Requirements

PC

Minimum

• Processor: 1.2 GHz
• RAM Memory: 256 MB
• GPU: DirectX 7 Capable Graphics Card (64mb or higher)
• Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
• Misc: Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Recommended

• Processor: 2.4 GHz
• RAM Memory: 512 MB
• GPU: DirectX 9 Capable Graphics Card (256mb or Higher)
• Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
• Misc: Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Mac

Minimum

• RAM Memory: 1 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8 or higher, or ATI X1600 or higher
• Operating System: OS X version Leopard 10.5.8 or higher, Snow Leopard 10.6.3 or higher
• Misc: Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection