Product Description

Pistol-packing Black Mesa research scientist and scourge of the Xen, Gordon Freeman is back in the eagerly awaited sequel to the seminal first-person shooter Half Life. In Half Life 2 Gordon is again humanity's only hope against a whole sea of alien trouble as he joins up with another scientist Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx, in a mission is to save the world from being overrun by the Xen invaders. It seems that the incident at Black Mesa was just the tip of the iceberg and now the aliens have spread like a virus across the planet leaving death and destruction in their wake. It's up to you to set things right.

Half-Life 2 is set some time after the original Half-Life ended--with Gordon now in the employ of the ambiguous G-Man. The action takes place in the environs of the Eastern European-esque, City 17. Multi-player will be included.

By taking the suspense, challenge and visceral charge of the original, and adding startling new realism and responsiveness, Half-Life 2 opens the door to a world where the player's presence affects everything around him, from the physical environment to the behaviours, even the emotions, of both friends and enemies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1104 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sierra
• Released on: 2004-11-16
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP
• Number of items: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
There can be few titles in gaming history that were more eagerly anticipated (and more consistently delayed) than Half-Life 2. The original Half-Life was one of the most influential first-person shoot-'em-ups ever made, with its amazing story-led gameplay and incredible artificial intelligence--this sequel follows in the same proud tradition. As with the first game you play resourceful scientist Gordon Freeman as he attempts to fight back against an alien invasion from another dimension. In the years that have passed since the first game the world governments have become ever more despotic in the face of the threat and Gordon once again finds himself fighting both human and alien foes.

Even more so than the original, what sets Half-Life 2 apart from the rest is its incredible technology--stunningly realistic graphics, amazing real world physics and highly adaptive AI. In combining all three elements, the game offers an almost infinite variety. One minute you find yourself being hunted down by Special Forces, using furniture to block doorways and throwing grenades to dislodge container crates and squish unsuspecting bad guys, the next you'll be stalking zombies through an abandoned village or fighting giant War of the Worlds styled tripods with the resistance movement and using a tractor beam gun to capture chunks of masonry and fling it at your enemies.

Half-Life 2 allows all this and more and could very well be the first game to actually exceed its hype, never mind just live up to it.--David Jenkins

Customer Reviews

Paradigm Shift
Half Life 2 is a blessing as much as it is a curse; it sets the benchmark by which the genre must be judged, and unfortunately you will compare everything to this game. The anticipated Crysis pales in comaprison to the depth of the story and immersiveness of Half-Life 2. This is gaming mastery, and I really want to see a game that can beat it.

DO NOT BUY SECOND HAND!!!
This game has a program called steam running it, meaning when bought new the buyer must enter the serial number and ONLY that person can use that number to play the game. Steam will not let a second user play the game if you buy it second hand you cannot play it simple buy new if you have to not second hand...

Half-Life 2

A lot of people say that some games get better with time. Most of those people are lying. Technology just progresses too quickly, trends are as fickle as the capricious northern winds, and games consoles live and die to be immediately replaced with the next model. Games just don't get better.

"Half-Life 2" is a game that gets better with time. Not just because people like it, but because it's still going. It's making babies. And, even when you play it for the second or third time, it seems like it's a living, breathing entity.

Since it was first released in 2004, its developer Valve has written two additional "episodes" to the storyline, carrying on from where the first game left off. They knew that they couldn't reserve the material for a sequel - this wasn't some half-assed attempt like "Halo 2" and "Halo 3" which are two halves of the same game. They knew that this was still "Half-Life 2" and they were going to release it as such, in the forms of "Half-Life 2: Episode One" and "Half-Life 2: Episode Two". The game still lives, and it's getting bigger and better as it goes.

"Episode Two" was released as part of Valve's game compilation "The Orange Box", and again individually in stores in 2007. After three years, it was still growing and developing, the story expanding as the characters deepened and more of its world revealed. "Episode Three", the last segment of "Half-Life 2", is being developed as you read this, but may yet be some time.

The game - and let's talk about it as one game; one story - is a first-person shooter of the highest calibre, reawakening the dormant scientist Gordon Freeman after his first adventure at Black Mesa in "Half Life". He wakes up on a train, heading into the subjugated City 17.

The world has moved on a little since Gordon was last around. After maybe two years, the dimensional rifts that happened as a result of Black Mesa's ill-destined experiments have been hijacked by an expanding alien race known as the "Combine". Their avatar on Earth, a corrupted human by the name of Dr Breen, has taken control of the city and the surrounding landscape, subduing the population until they are thoroughly defeated and hopeless.

Not entirely hopeless. There is a resistance movement, which Gordon becomes a part of. More than that, he becomes a sort of living martyr, a figurehead. The illustrious Gordon Freeman is back to lead the resistance against the Combine, and free humanity!

The storyline is awesome. And that's just the main segment of the game. The following two episodes incorporate spectacular set pieces and plot changes, tugging at the emotions of the three-dimensional characters as their plight becomes more dire by the minute. They aren't just add-ons or expansion packs, and there's so much stuff in there that I can't go into it here. Needless to say that if you like a game with story; with advanced graphics and in-game physics; with cool weapons like the "gravity gun" to accompany other ass-kicking human and Combine arms; with realistic characters with human expressions and top-class voice actors - then you need only purchase "Half-Life 2" and its accompanying episodes. A spectacular vision brought to life, as exciting, emotive and dramatic as anything a gamer could hope for.