Half-Life 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game and the sequel to the highly acclaimed Half-Life . It was developed by Valve Corporation and was released on November 16, 2004, following a protracted five-year, $40 million development cycle during which the game’s source code was leaked to the Internet. The game uses the Source game engine, which includes a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine. Originally available only for Windows-based personal computers, the game has since been ported to the Xbox, and was a part of The Orange Box compilation for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles.
Half-Life 2 takes place in a dystopian world in which the events of Half-Life have fully come to bear on human society, which has been enslaved by the extraterrestrial civilization known as the Combine. The game takes place in and around the fictional City 17 and follows the adventures of scientist Gordon Freeman who must fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive.
The game garnered near-unanimous positive reviews and received critical acclaim, winning over 40 PC Game of the Year awards for 2004. The game has been critically praised for its advances in computer animation, sound, narration, computer graphics, artificial intelligence (AI), and physics simulation.
As of December 3, 2008, over 6.5 million copies of Half-Life 2 have been sold at retail. Although Steam sales figures are unknown, their rate surpassed retail's in mid-2008 and they are significantly more profitable per-unit.
Half-Life 2 was the first video game to require online product activation.
Gameplay
Half-Life 2 plays similarly to its predecessor. The player navigates through a linear set of levels, fighting off transhuman troops known as the Combine as well as hostile alien creatures. Puzzles and sequences involving vehicles are interspersed throughout the game, breaking up moments of combat.
Since Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter, the gameworld is always presented from Gordon Freeman's perspective. A heads-up display at the bottom of the screen shows the player's health, energy, and ammunition status, while a toggle screen shows available weapons at the top. Health and energy can be replenished by picking up medical supplies and energy cells respectively, or by using wall-mounted charging devices.
The player defeats enemies with an assortment of weapons. The game's available arsenal consists of modern-day projectile weapons, including a ubiquitous pistol, shotgun, and submachine gun, though more elaborate, fictional weapons are available, such as a crossbow that shoots hot metal rods, a pheromone pod that guides certain previously hostile alien creatures, once acquired, and pulse rifle that shoots glowing pulses and a secondary "Dark energy ball," which disintegrates enemies on contact. The Source engine's physics capabilities extend into combat via a special device called the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator , or "gravity gun." Using this device, the player can pick up objects and either hurl them at enemies or hold them in place to create a makeshift shield. The gravity gun can also perform a variety of non-combat functions, such as grabbing out-of-reach supplies, forming bridges across gaps, and flipping overturned vehicles.
Many puzzles use the game's physics engine. For example, one puzzle requires the player to either turn a seesaw-like lever into a ramp by placing cinder blocks at one end, or to stack wooden crates to form a crude stairway. Puzzles are frequently solved with the gravity gun. One puzzle has the player clear a highway by using the gravity gun to push numerous abandoned vehicles out of the way.
Another major development from the original Half-Life is the introduction of vehicular sections; while the original featured several sections on trains, the sequel features sections where the player makes use of fully functional vehicles such as cars or boats.
Multiplayer
Half-Life 2 was released without a multiplayer component, and was instead packaged with Counter-Strike: Source . A few weeks later, Valve released Half-Life 2: Deathmatch on Steam. The goal of the game is to kill as many other players as possible, using a variety of means, in either free-for-all or team-based matches. A subsequent update to the game added an additional map and three new weapons. The Xbox release of Half-Life 2 contains no multiplayer component, however the re-release of Half-Life 2 , packaged as The Orange Box for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, includes the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 .
Synopsis
Setting
The original Half-Life takes place at a remote civilian and military laboratory called the Black Mesa Research Facility. During an experiment, researchers at Black Mesa accidentally cause a "resonance cascade" which rips open a portal to an alien world, Xen. Hostile creatures from Xen flood into Black Mesa via the portal and start killing everyone in sight. The player takes on the role of Gordon Freeman, one of the research scientists who had been involved in the accident and who now must escape the facility. Gordon manages to terminate the creature holding the portal open.
At the end of the game, a mysterious figure colloquially known as the G-Man extracts Gordon from Black Mesa and "offers" him employment. Gordon is subsequently put into stasis.
In Half-Life 2 , the story resumes an indeterminate number of years after the Black Mesa incident, with the G-Man taking Freeman out of stasis and inserting him into a train en route to City 17. Official sources differ on the actual length of the intermission; a story fragment written by author Marc Laidlaw for the development team puts the intermission at ten years, while Half-Life 2: Episode One' s website puts this intermission as "nearly two decades". Twenty years seems more likely, as one of the characters Freeman encounters, Alyx Vance, is seen in a picture as a child at Black Mesa, but appears as a young adult by the time Gordon reappears. This information is not directly relayed to the player; in fact, the friendly characters that Freeman encounters appear unaware of the stasis he was put in and assume that he has full knowledge of everything that has happened since the end of Half-Life . The game is set on Earth, which has been conquered by the extraterrestrial civilization known as the Combine.
The environments in Half-Life 2 , in accordance with the game's story, all have a distinct post-apocalyptic theme, yet in design they are varied, and include the Eastern European-styled City 17, the zombie-infested Ravenholm; the coastal Nova Prospekt prison and the massive Combine Citadel. Viktor Antonov, the art director of Half-Life 2 , who spent his childhood in Bulgaria, wrote that the developers consciously modeled Half-Life 2' s setting on Eastern Europe because they were fascinated by the region's combination of both new and old architecture and desired to infuse City 17 and its environs with the same sense of history.
Plot
At the start of the game, the G-Man speaks to Gordon Freeman in a hallucination-like vision as he pulls Gordon out of stasis and places him on a train going to City 17. When the train arrives, Gordon gets off and proceeds through the Combine's security checkpoints where he is detained by a civil protection officer. Once in an interrogation room, the officer reveals himself to be Freeman's former co-worker and colleague, Barney Calhoun, and helps Freeman to get to Dr. Isaac Kleiner ' s laboratory. After meeting Alyx Vance, Freeman is instructed by Kleiner to step into a makeshift teleporter so that he can be safely extracted to the anti-Combine resistance base Black Mesa East along with Alyx, headed by her father, Dr. Eli Vance. However, Kleiner's pet headcrab Lamarr disrupts the machine, and Freeman finds himself - after briefly appearing in several different locations - just outside Kleiner's lab. With the Combine now alerted to his presence, Freeman works his way through the drained canal system, avoiding enemy forces and using the help of human resistance fighters to safely arrive at Black Mesa East.
Dr. Vance and Dr. Judith Mossman debrief Freeman on events since the incident at Black Mesa. As Alyx is introducing Freeman to DOG, her pet robot, and showing him how to use the new Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator ("gravity gun"), the lab is attacked and Dr. Vance is captured. Freeman is separated from Alyx, but she explains that he must travel to Nova Prospekt, a former prison, in order to save her father. Along the way, Freeman encounters other allies, including Father Grigori in the zombie-infested town of Ravenholm, and Colonel Odessa Cubbage and his forces. After making his way across an Antlion-infested beach, Freeman reaches Nova Prospekt and begins to search for Dr. Vance. Alyx eventually reaches him and joins in his search. Together, they discover that Dr. Mossman is a spy for the Combine, but before they can stop her, she teleports herself and Dr. Vance back to the Combine headquarters known as the Citadel using the Combine teleporter.
Freeman and Alyx follow, and the facility is destroyed by a teleporter malfunction. They materialize in Kleiner's lab one week later, discovering that their actions in Nova Prospekt have inspired the human resistance to mount a full-scal
Used Playstation 2 Games | Buy PS2 Consoles & Controllers
100's Used Playstation 2 Games. Huge Selection of Guaranteed PS2 Consoles For Sale Too ♦ Free Shipping Available.
Amazon.com: Killzone 2: Playstation 3: Video Games
Amazon.com: Killzone 2: Playstation 3: Video Games ... Excelent game, if you like real assasin', real shooter game!! just buy it!! and if it from ...
GAME.co.uk - Buy video games, consoles and accessories with free UK ...
GAME.co.uk is the UK's leading games retailer with great deals on video games ... Dsi and DS Lite (1365) PC Games (2526) PSP (647) PlayStation 2 (983) Retro (505)
PlayStation 2: PS2 Games, Accessories & PS2 Console - Best Buy
Get more from your PlayStation 2. With the latest PS2 games, consoles and accessories, at BestBuy.com you'll find everything you need for the ultimate PS2 experience.
GameFly: Persona 4 PlayStation 2 Video Game | Buy Persona 4 for ...
Rent or buy Persona 4 for PlayStation 2 or get 100% free Persona 4 critic reviews, user reviews, pictures, videos, FAQs, cheats, instructions, and more!
GameFly: Kingdom Hearts II PlayStation 2 Video Game | Buy Kingdom ...
Rent or buy Kingdom Hearts II for PlayStation 2 or get 100% free Kingdom Hearts II critic reviews, user reviews, pictures, videos, FAQs, cheats, instructions, and more!
PlayStation.com - Home
PlayStation®2 System. With its enormous game library of over 1,800 titles, online capabilities and a built-in ... Where to Buy; Register your Product; Contact Us; About SCEA; Careers; Press ...
PlayStation 2 System (Black) - 97706 - Buy.com
The PlayStation®2 has been redesigned to be slimmer ... Buy.com Sku: 208456405: Item#: G26KPK: Buy.com ... Game Pad: Package Contents : PlayStation 2 Slim Gaming Console
PlayStation 2 Games, PS2 Accessories, and System - Buy.com
Find, shop for and buy PlayStation 2 at buy.com
Amazon.com: Burnout Revenge: Playstation 2: Video Games
Amazon.com: Burnout Revenge: Playstation 2: Video Games ... Ready to buy? ... Go to Your Games & Software Library to download your game ...