Following the period of instability caused by the events described inHalf-Life, an interdimensional organization known as the Combine invades the Earth, defeating the human forces in the Seven Hour War. A Combine Citadel is erected in City 17, a town in Eastern Europe reminiscent of World War II ghettos. Dr. Wallace Breen, a human scientist, rules the city on behalf of his new masters. An energy field prevents humans from procreating, and no new children are born. Earth is turning into a grim, oppressive police state.

Meanwhile, Gordon Freeman, the man who was at the center of the events that took place shortly before the rise of the Combine, awakens from his stasis and is inserted into a train to City 17 by the mysterious G-man. Gordon is soon brought into a resistance group and makes a seemingly futile attempt to bring down the Combine and liberate the Earth.

Half-Life 2 is a linear first-person shooter with light puzzle-solving elements and many setpieces, similar to its predecessor in concept. The player guides Gordon Freeman through City 17 and the wilderness that surrounds it. On his way, he'll encounter a few friendly characters, but also fight dangerous foes. The game features a realistic physics system: Gordon can pick up objects and toss them freely, and many of the puzzles are physics-based - for example, at one point the player has to weigh down a seesaw with bricks at one end to turn it into a ramp.

Gordon's enemies, apart from alien wildlife which found their way to Earth, are mainly Combine forces, which utilize a variety of firearms, gadgets, and vehicles. Policemen and foot soldiers work along with helicopters, gunships, and gigantic walking machines to hunt him down. To defend himself, Gordon has a range of weapons available: from the iconic crowbar for close-quarter fighting, through pistols and rifles, up to grenades and a rocket launcher. One of the most notable weapons is the gravity gun, with which Gordon can pick up objects, hold them in the gun's anti-gravity field, then hurl them at the enemy with great force.

Setpieces in the game include coordinated assaults on enemy bases, fighting gigantic boss enemies, bringing down aircraft with the rocket launcher, and others. A few levels require the player to navigate buggy-type vehicles. Some of the more exotic stages involve the player summoning an army of antlions to unleash on unsuspecting foes.

Included with the game isCounter-Strike: Source, a version ofCounter-Strike made with the new Source engine which powersHalf-Life 2, andHalf-Life 2: Deathmatch, an online multiplayer game featuring the same physics and weapons as the single player game.

1001 Video Games

Half-Life 2 appears in the book1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Characters

Almost all the characters inHalf-Life 2 are modelled after a real person's appearance:

• Barney's face in the game was provided by Valve's CEOScott Lynch.
• Alyx Vance is modelled after American actress and television hostJamil Giovanni Mullen.
• Eli Vance's is based onLarry "The Count" Heard, a local man holding a sign indicating that he was looking for work. Valve found him on the corner of Highway 520 and 148th Avenue in Redmond and hired him as a model.
• The G-Man'sHalf-Life 2 model is based onFrank Sheldon, an Alexander Technique practitioner. He was originally slated to be the model for Dr. Breen.

City 17

City 17, the main location ofHalf-Life 2, strongly resembles Eastern European and Soviet cities of the communist era; the architecture style of suburb districts is nearly identical to what can be see (even until now) in East Berlin, Prague, Moscow, etc. However, there is also more direct evidence to the "Soviet" nature of City 17; several times some Russian words can be spotted. For example, during the mud skipper chase there are large gates with the wordsПОРТ written above; "порт" is Russian for "port" (pronounced roughly the same way as the English word).

Closed captions

Valve designedHalf-Life 2 with closed captioning for the deaf. Sounds are bracketed. Each character has a color assigned to their dialogue.

Cut levels

According to the bookHalf-Life 2: Raising the Bar, the original storyline spanned four in-game days instead of just three. Among the parts cut are an antlion cave, a train ride through a dried out sea bed, a ship called the "Borealis", the underwater "Kraken Base", a Combine weather control station, a chapter set in arctic regions and a skyscraper. Many of these places show up in pre-release screenshots and press material.

Some parts were recycled for existingHalf-Life 2 chapters, many others are making a comeback in theHalf-Life 2 episodes.

Distribution

The PC version ofHalf-Life 2 was the last game thatSierra distributed for Valve at retail.Electronic Arts was quick to scoop up the retail deal, but their Steam digital distribution service remains independent.

As a result of a settlement in a lawsuit betweenValve andVivendi Universal Games (as Sierra's owner), VU Games ceased distribution of retail packaged versions of Valve's games (includingHalf-Life 2), effective 31 August 2005.

Engine

Despite the complex graphics, including ragdoll physics and pixel shaders, the Source engine was designed to support cards that offer only DirectX 6 hardware support. The original Source engine code would run by using the software emulation encoded in the DirectX 9 library. That means that the game can be run even with an Intel 846g card or a Nvidia TNT chipset. To give some perspective, The TNT chipset was introduced in 1997.

According toJohn Carmack himself, "there are still bits of earlyQuake code inHalf Life 2".

German version

There are changes in some German versions:

• Blood from humans (including Gordon Freeman) and blood which is part of the level design was coloured grey
• Almost all enemies disappear instantly after being killed. This is not true for a level near the end where the corpses are necessary to proceed.
• The cries of burning zombies were toned down
• In the original version enemies get dragged with the buggy for a short time after driving over them. In the German version the buggy just drives through them.

A detailed list of changes can be found onschnittberichte.com (German).

G-Man

G-Man can been spotted in a few places throughout the game, as he is watching over Gordon or walking around.

Hydra

An enemy that was shown in early previews known as the hydra, which was a blue tentacle, was cut out of the final game. The developers said that it was good to watch, but when it came to kill you, you would just see a blue blur and you would be dead. They didn't think it would be fun to fight against.

Macintosh version

In September 2007, Valve's CEOGabe Newell wasinterviewed by gaming website Kikizo's Adam Doree about the then shortly to be releasedOrange Box, asking, among other things, about the potential for a Macintosh release. Newell responded by saying that though they had been in conversations with Apple regarding the possibility "they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms." Thus, there wouldn't be a Macintosh version ofHalf-Life 2.

A month later, in October,Tuncer Deniz, a Macintosh developer and owner of the news site Inside Mac Games,posted on his blog that while Newell's complaints likely weren't without justification, the actual reason for the lack of a Macintosh port was due to "Valve's insistence that anyone who wanted to port Half-Life 2 to the Mac had to advance $1 million to Valve. That's right, that's $1,000,000. That might be peanuts to someone like Valve, but no Mac publisher in their right mind would have given Valve that kind of money just for the rights to publish Half-Life 2 for the Mac."

A Macintosh version was finally released in 2010 when Steam, Valve's digital distribution platform, was introduced for Macintosh.

Menu

The background of the main menu changes based on the chapter of the last saved game.

Multiplayer

Counter-Strike: Source was the only Source engine multiplayer game available at the release. Two weeks later, on 30 November 2004, Valve released the regular multiplayer mode (Deathmatch) through Steam, their online content distribution system.

Piñata

Several news sources first reportedHalf-Life 2 entering gold status, quoting an unnamed source within the development team. The source revealed the existence of a piñata doll (a traditional South American custom of a doll stuffed with sweets and toys for children to break) which was broken to celebrateHL2's official completion.

It was later revealed that this "piñata" was in fact a full-scaled Scanner model (the flying machines that take pictures of suspects in-game) and it was broken using a crowbar.

Rating

Even though the initial release ofHalf-Life 2 as part ofThe Orange Box compilation received a PEGI rating of 16+, the stand-alone release received an initial rating of 18+.

References

Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab Lamarr is actually named after Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1913 – January 19, 2000, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), an Austrian-Jewish naturalized American actress and communications technology innovator.

References to the game

Half-Life 2 was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 05/2006.

Source code theft

Sometime in September 2003 Valve's network - including Gabe Newell's own computer - was compromised by a hacker and the worst case scenario soon unfolded. The entire Half-Life 2 source code was released on 4 October, and only 3 days later a playable version of the game surfaced. FBI was brought into the case, and Gabe Newell also posted a message on a Half-Life 2 forum, asking the community to help them find the hacker.

Months went by without any substantial progress, when finally on 15 February 2004 the hacker sent an e-mail to Gabe Newell, expressing both his compliments on Valve's work so far and his somewhat dodgy statement that he never had any intention to hurt Valve. Gabe Newell and the hacker, known as "Da Guy" from Germany corresponded over the next period of time, and came to the agreement that since Da Guy had been smart enough to compromise Valve's security, he deserved a job. Soon, a job interview was setup. This was, of course, a trick. FBI agents would be waiting for him when he arrived. However, when the German government heard about the scheme, they denied such activities, and instead they arrested him themselves.

Da Guy, aka Axel G now faces charges for compromising Valve as well as several other computer related crimes.

Special Editions

3 differentHalf-Life 2 packages were available:

• Half-Life 2 (Bronze Edition) includes the game andCounter-Strike: Source.
• Half-Life 2 (Silver Edition) includes the game,Counter-Strike: Source,Day of Defeat: Source and Valve's back catalog available on Steam at the time.
• Half-Life 2 (Gold Edition) includes the game,Counter-Strike: Source,Day of Defeat: Source, Valve's back catalog available on Steam at the time, 3HL2 posters,HL2 hat,HL2 soundtrack,HL2 sticker, City 17 postcard, Prima'sHL2 strategy guide, special collector's box and a chance to win a trip to Valve.

Vortigaunts

The Vortigaunts are voiced byLouis Gossett, Jr. It is mentioned inRaising the Bar that Gossett was chosen partially due to his role as the alien in the filmEnemy Mine.

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2004 – PC Game of the Year
  • 2004 – Best PC Action Game of the Year
  • 2004 – Best PC Direction of the Year
  • 2004 – Best PC Graphics of the Year
  • 2004 – Best PC Successor of the Year
• Computer Games Magazine
  • March 2005 - #4 Game of the Year 2004
• Computer Gaming World
  • March 2005 (Issue #249) – Best Music of the Year
  • March 2005 (Issue #249) – NPC of the Year (for Dog)
• GameSpy
  • 2004 – #2 Game of the Year
  • 2004 – PC Game of the Year
  • 2004 – PC Action Game of the Year
  • 2004 – PC Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • 2004 – PC Action Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • 2004 - Best Graphics of the Year (PC)
  • 2004 - Best Character of the Year (PC) (for Dog)
  • 2005 – #7 Game of the Year
  • 2005 – Xbox Game of the Year
  • 2005 – Xbox Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • 2005 – Xbox Shooter of the Year
  • 2005 – PC Mod of the Year (for Garry's Mod)
  • 2005 - The "It Shoulda Been on Xbox 360 Award" (Xbox)
  • 2011 – #10 Top PC Game of the 2000s
• GameStar (Germany)
  • February 2005 - Best PC Game in 2004
  • February 2005 - Best PC Game in 2004
  • Issue 03/2005 - Most Annoying Copy Protection in 2004
• Golden Joystick Awards
  • 2004 - Runner-up for "Most Wanted Game For Xmas"
  • 2005 - PC Game of the Year
• PC Gamer
  • April 2005 - #4 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • It was the first game to tie PC Gamer's 98% rating ofSid Meier's Alpha Centauri, previously their highest rated game ever
• PC Powerplay (Germany)
  • Issue 02/2006 - Best Game in 2005
  • Issue 02/2006 - #1 Action Game in 2005

Information also contributed byAgent 5,Apogee IV,B14ck W01f,Indra was here,James Isaac,LepricahnsGold,Lumpi,Mark Ennis,Mark Papadakis,PCGamer77,piltdown man,Scott Monster,Silverblade,Unicorn Lynx,VVP andZack Green.

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