How do you make a sequel to a game that is widely considered to be the best PC game ever made? To Valve, the answer was quite simple. You make the sequel the new best PC game ever made; and that’s exactly where you’ll find Half-Life 2 mentioned the most, in discussions about the greatest video games of all time, and usually topping lists as the greatest video game ever made. But how much of this is true, and even now, nineteen years after it release, does Half-Life 2 remain as groundbreaking as it once was?
Following what has become known as the Black Mesa incident, Earth has been invaded and is ruled over by a multidimensional alien empire known as the Combine. Twenty years have passed when Gordon Freeman awakes on a train bound for City 17, the location of the headquarters for the Combine on Earth, The Citadel. Picked up by some old friends, Barney Calhoun, Dr. Isaac Kleiner, Dr. Eli Vance, and his daughter Alyx Vance, Gordon is recruited into an underground resistance movement that plans to infiltrate The Citadel, overpower Earth’s diplomatic negotiator Dr. Breen, and shut off the Combine’s teleportation network to stop them being able to travel to Earth.
It's tough to review a game like Half-Life 2, because it’s been so over analysed by every single critic and player that there genuinely is nothing new to say about the game. But it is a game I rarely see anyone criticise, instead it’s just showered with praise. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Half-Life 2 just as much as everyone else for reasons I shall divulge shortly, but it’s not perfect and it never has been. Even if it could be considered one of the best games ever made, it’s still got a few things I think could be improved.
Following what has become known as the Black Mesa incident, Earth has been invaded and is ruled over by a multidimensional alien empire known as the Combine. Twenty years have passed when Gordon Freeman awakes on a train bound for City 17, the location of the headquarters for the Combine on Earth, The Citadel. Picked up by some old friends, Barney Calhoun, Dr. Isaac Kleiner, Dr. Eli Vance, and his daughter Alyx Vance, Gordon is recruited into an underground resistance movement that plans to infiltrate The Citadel, overpower Earth’s diplomatic negotiator Dr. Breen, and shut off the Combine’s teleportation network to stop them being able to travel to Earth.
It's tough to review a game like Half-Life 2, because it’s been so over analysed by every single critic and player that there genuinely is nothing new to say about the game. But it is a game I rarely see anyone criticise, instead it’s just showered with praise. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Half-Life 2 just as much as everyone else for reasons I shall divulge shortly, but it’s not perfect and it never has been. Even if it could be considered one of the best games ever made, it’s still got a few things I think could be improved.
It's important to note that Half-Life 2 is more of a mechanical sequel than a narrative one. Whilst it brings back Gordon Freeman and a handful of familiar faces from the original game, the story is almost entirely unrelated. Whilst the event of the first game have allowed for the events of the second game to take place, Half-Life 2 doesn’t pick up the threads left dangling from the first game, and it does its best to make the tenuous story links as minimal as possible. This is for all intents and purposes a standalone story, separate from what came before, and whilst there are thematic connections such as both stories being about an alien invasion, Half-Life 2 is a very different kind of story to the original.
It does continue to evolve Valve’s storytelling chops, but in a different way that sometimes pays off and sometimes doesn’t. Where in the original you were given cues on what’s happening in the minimal story by other characters that you could choose to ignore if you so wished, Half-Life 2 instead does a lot of its worldbuilding entirely through the environment and the actual narrative is really offered up in the opening and doesn’t evolve much beyond the objective. There isn’t an awful lot of actual plot, and most of the game you’re on your own so characters aren’t exactly these deep wells of personality. But what Valve does well in this regard is efficiency. You only know what you need to know, and the characters only deal with the moment. There’s no waffling or monologuing (ok, a little monologuing in places), but it’s all to do with what’s happening there and then.
That means that whilst the world of Half-Life 2 is engrossing and engaging from a design perspective, with so much to decipher from the environment, it means you never really get to know the how or the why. If that’s a dealbreaker for you then Half-Life 2 may feel narratively sparse but taken on the same merits as Half-Life 1 and it’s the same kind of thing. You are a participant in something far greater than yourself, and you don’t need to know the specifics, you just need to fix it.
That being said, characters are made to be engaging during their fleeting appearances because of the dynamic they share, the excellent voice acting, and mind bogglingly advanced animation the character models have. Alyx is the character you spend the most amount of time with throughout the game, and most of the game is spent in the pursuit of her father and leader of the resistance, Eli. So, despite Gordon’s mute status, you really do form an emotional connection to both Alyx and Eli because he is your objective, and because you want to reunite them and take down the Combine.
The vocal performances here are really ahead of the curve when compared to Half-Life 2’s contemporaries, and are far more comparable to the more cinematic narrative driven games that began to emerge in the late 00’s. The writing itself, as I’ve established, is more functional than flowery and so it’s the way the lines are delivered, paired with the animation that really brings everything to life. It’s subtle inflections, use of breath and pause, and variation in pitch and speed of delivery that make these characters feel real.
It does continue to evolve Valve’s storytelling chops, but in a different way that sometimes pays off and sometimes doesn’t. Where in the original you were given cues on what’s happening in the minimal story by other characters that you could choose to ignore if you so wished, Half-Life 2 instead does a lot of its worldbuilding entirely through the environment and the actual narrative is really offered up in the opening and doesn’t evolve much beyond the objective. There isn’t an awful lot of actual plot, and most of the game you’re on your own so characters aren’t exactly these deep wells of personality. But what Valve does well in this regard is efficiency. You only know what you need to know, and the characters only deal with the moment. There’s no waffling or monologuing (ok, a little monologuing in places), but it’s all to do with what’s happening there and then.
That means that whilst the world of Half-Life 2 is engrossing and engaging from a design perspective, with so much to decipher from the environment, it means you never really get to know the how or the why. If that’s a dealbreaker for you then Half-Life 2 may feel narratively sparse but taken on the same merits as Half-Life 1 and it’s the same kind of thing. You are a participant in something far greater than yourself, and you don’t need to know the specifics, you just need to fix it.
That being said, characters are made to be engaging during their fleeting appearances because of the dynamic they share, the excellent voice acting, and mind bogglingly advanced animation the character models have. Alyx is the character you spend the most amount of time with throughout the game, and most of the game is spent in the pursuit of her father and leader of the resistance, Eli. So, despite Gordon’s mute status, you really do form an emotional connection to both Alyx and Eli because he is your objective, and because you want to reunite them and take down the Combine.
The vocal performances here are really ahead of the curve when compared to Half-Life 2’s contemporaries, and are far more comparable to the more cinematic narrative driven games that began to emerge in the late 00’s. The writing itself, as I’ve established, is more functional than flowery and so it’s the way the lines are delivered, paired with the animation that really brings everything to life. It’s subtle inflections, use of breath and pause, and variation in pitch and speed of delivery that make these characters feel real.
I’ve already mentioned the animation a number of times so talking about Half-Life 2’s technical prowess really should be next on my agenda, and I think this is perhaps the game’s most impressive aspect. Valve developed their own game engine alongside Half-Life 2, the now famous Source Engine. It really can’t be understated how impressive Source is when you compare it to its contemporaries such as Unreal 2 and id Tech 4. In fact, for better or worse, Source outlived both of those engines by quite a significant margin, only receiving a true successor in 2015.
In 2004, the Source engine was well ahead of its time regarding its animation qualities and the implementation of the Havoc physics engine. So, whilst the game may not have the same level of visual fidelity as something like DOOM 3 which released the same year, it does present you with a world that feels strikingly more alive than almost any other game world up to that point.
Starting with the animation, everything you see was key-framed as was industry standard before motion capture made leaps and bounds in the near future, but the way in which characters move is so realistic you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s motion capture. Even when it comes down to enemy movement patterns, the way in which their bodies sway, and the visual process they go through for each action is so painstakingly accurate to real movements that I don’t think a game truly rivalled this level of animation detail until Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2. Facial movement is a big wow factor too, when you get up and close to characters like Alyx during dialogue sequences, the micro-movements her face delivers are so convincing that again it’s difficult to believe that this was all achieved without motion capture. It goes such a long way in selling these characters to you, so even though they don’t have rich backstories that take hours to explore alongside the plot, you care for them so much because they come across so real.
The object physics and interactivity were the big selling points of Half-Life 2, and something that people bang on about endlessly to this day. I have to say, it is impressive for a game of that time, and it set a precedent going forward to make environments more interactive and allow more player freedom with what could be considered a weapon or a useful tool to solve a puzzle. Half-Life 2 has a lot of physics-based puzzles, such as weighing things down, making things float, and using momentum (or a lack of it) to allow passage to the next area. Physics also play a big part in the combat because of the introduction of the Gravity Gun. A weapon that allows you to pick up almost any object and fling it at a high velocity, meaning objects like a chair could be used to knock an enemy over, or a well-placed shot with a brick could kill them. If you’re lucky enough to find a saw blade you could cut them in half, or if you happen across a gas canister you can fling it and make it explode. It also means you can catch projectiles such as grenades and throw them back, not to mention the fact that items like grenades also behave much more realistically because of the advanced physics at play.
In 2004, the Source engine was well ahead of its time regarding its animation qualities and the implementation of the Havoc physics engine. So, whilst the game may not have the same level of visual fidelity as something like DOOM 3 which released the same year, it does present you with a world that feels strikingly more alive than almost any other game world up to that point.
Starting with the animation, everything you see was key-framed as was industry standard before motion capture made leaps and bounds in the near future, but the way in which characters move is so realistic you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s motion capture. Even when it comes down to enemy movement patterns, the way in which their bodies sway, and the visual process they go through for each action is so painstakingly accurate to real movements that I don’t think a game truly rivalled this level of animation detail until Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2. Facial movement is a big wow factor too, when you get up and close to characters like Alyx during dialogue sequences, the micro-movements her face delivers are so convincing that again it’s difficult to believe that this was all achieved without motion capture. It goes such a long way in selling these characters to you, so even though they don’t have rich backstories that take hours to explore alongside the plot, you care for them so much because they come across so real.
The object physics and interactivity were the big selling points of Half-Life 2, and something that people bang on about endlessly to this day. I have to say, it is impressive for a game of that time, and it set a precedent going forward to make environments more interactive and allow more player freedom with what could be considered a weapon or a useful tool to solve a puzzle. Half-Life 2 has a lot of physics-based puzzles, such as weighing things down, making things float, and using momentum (or a lack of it) to allow passage to the next area. Physics also play a big part in the combat because of the introduction of the Gravity Gun. A weapon that allows you to pick up almost any object and fling it at a high velocity, meaning objects like a chair could be used to knock an enemy over, or a well-placed shot with a brick could kill them. If you’re lucky enough to find a saw blade you could cut them in half, or if you happen across a gas canister you can fling it and make it explode. It also means you can catch projectiles such as grenades and throw them back, not to mention the fact that items like grenades also behave much more realistically because of the advanced physics at play.
Half-Life 2’s also a pretty long game, so you get a lot of content for your money. It comes in at around twelve hours, and a lot of that comes down to the excellent and expansive level design. Much like the first game you’re constantly moving to new areas, but where the first game was relegated to a single science facility, Half-Life 2 sees you travelling great distances to explore all of City 17 and the surrounding areas beyond its walls. There are a couple of pretty lengthy vehicle sections, one that sees you exploring City 17’s waterways by hovercraft, and another that sees you driving along the nearby coastline and checking in on resistance settlements & Combine outposts. They’re a welcome change of pace from the running and gunning the game throws at you the rest of the time, and you really get a sense of the scale of this world because of how large these areas are.
The pacing is excellent too as things get progressively more action packed as the game progresses. First seeing you running and hiding from the Combine, then being re-introduced to the Xen creatures from the original Half-Life such as Headcrabs and their zombie forms (now with many more varieties). The combat is never as tedious as the original game either as the Xen creatures are more intelligent, and the Combine soldiers aren’t as overpowered as the army were.
The game’s climax is some of the most fun you can have with a first-person shooter as all the games various components mesh together brilliantly as it sees you storming the streets of City 17 and claiming it back from the Combine street by street. But once you get to the top of the Combine command tower, The Citadel, the game just abruptly ends, and it provides an extremely unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise stellar game. There is no resolution, the credits quite literally roll following a big explosion and a cryptic message from the elusive G-Man. Whilst Half-Life 2 did receive two story expansions (that still left the story unresolved), back in 2004 this was a huge kick in the teeth for a game that had done basically everything right until this point, and there was no mention of a conclusion ever being provided…and here we are in the year 2023 and the story is still unfinished.
The pacing is excellent too as things get progressively more action packed as the game progresses. First seeing you running and hiding from the Combine, then being re-introduced to the Xen creatures from the original Half-Life such as Headcrabs and their zombie forms (now with many more varieties). The combat is never as tedious as the original game either as the Xen creatures are more intelligent, and the Combine soldiers aren’t as overpowered as the army were.
The game’s climax is some of the most fun you can have with a first-person shooter as all the games various components mesh together brilliantly as it sees you storming the streets of City 17 and claiming it back from the Combine street by street. But once you get to the top of the Combine command tower, The Citadel, the game just abruptly ends, and it provides an extremely unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise stellar game. There is no resolution, the credits quite literally roll following a big explosion and a cryptic message from the elusive G-Man. Whilst Half-Life 2 did receive two story expansions (that still left the story unresolved), back in 2004 this was a huge kick in the teeth for a game that had done basically everything right until this point, and there was no mention of a conclusion ever being provided…and here we are in the year 2023 and the story is still unfinished.
My playthrough for this review was done using the Steam Deck, and the game translates reasonably well to that platform, but this is also something I want to address before I close this review off.
Half-Life 2 can be played on a multitude of platforms, but its only really worth playing on PC. The version available for the original Xbox is significantly scaled back and doesn’t run very well. Then the versions available on PS3 & Xbox 360 are similarly problematic with technical issues. Plus, with both of these versions, and the Steam Deck version, the game just isn’t as nice to play with a gamepad as it is with a keyboard and mouse. So, if you’re yet to play Half-Life 2 I would only recommend checking out the PC version (which can run on a toaster these days, so you don’t really need a powerful computer to do it), or if you have a Steam Deck then maybe hook it up to a display and use a mouse & keyboard for control. The Xbox 360 has the best version for a console, and it’s backwards compatible with the Xbox Series S/X and Xbox One platforms, but you do need to contend with those gamepad controls which feel stiff and unnatural when compared to other console FPS’ even of the same time such as Halo 2.
Half-Life 2 is a truly legendary game, and its influence can be felt in so many modern titles because of how ahead of the curve it was. There are shortfalls which people seem to gloss over, such as the main plot being a bit sparse and the ending being really quite terrible; but when you look at the exceedingly high quality of the rest of the package it’s actually quite easy to overlook those issues because the game is just so damn fun to play. It rarely ever feels antiquated if you’re playing it for the first time in 2023 either which is a testament to how good the game design is, and if it feels iterative of other titles, believe me, it’s because they’ve copied Half-Life’s homework and not the other way around.
It's a game that any self-respecting gamer should play at least once, and I highly recommend doing the PC version if you at all can because it just designed to be played on a PC and not a console. It’s also quite nice to see that even almost twenty years later a game that is single player only still receives free quality of life updates from Valve, I can’t think of any other developer that does that for their titles making Half-Life 2 always a joy to return to.
Half-Life 2 can be played on a multitude of platforms, but its only really worth playing on PC. The version available for the original Xbox is significantly scaled back and doesn’t run very well. Then the versions available on PS3 & Xbox 360 are similarly problematic with technical issues. Plus, with both of these versions, and the Steam Deck version, the game just isn’t as nice to play with a gamepad as it is with a keyboard and mouse. So, if you’re yet to play Half-Life 2 I would only recommend checking out the PC version (which can run on a toaster these days, so you don’t really need a powerful computer to do it), or if you have a Steam Deck then maybe hook it up to a display and use a mouse & keyboard for control. The Xbox 360 has the best version for a console, and it’s backwards compatible with the Xbox Series S/X and Xbox One platforms, but you do need to contend with those gamepad controls which feel stiff and unnatural when compared to other console FPS’ even of the same time such as Halo 2.
Half-Life 2 is a truly legendary game, and its influence can be felt in so many modern titles because of how ahead of the curve it was. There are shortfalls which people seem to gloss over, such as the main plot being a bit sparse and the ending being really quite terrible; but when you look at the exceedingly high quality of the rest of the package it’s actually quite easy to overlook those issues because the game is just so damn fun to play. It rarely ever feels antiquated if you’re playing it for the first time in 2023 either which is a testament to how good the game design is, and if it feels iterative of other titles, believe me, it’s because they’ve copied Half-Life’s homework and not the other way around.
It's a game that any self-respecting gamer should play at least once, and I highly recommend doing the PC version if you at all can because it just designed to be played on a PC and not a console. It’s also quite nice to see that even almost twenty years later a game that is single player only still receives free quality of life updates from Valve, I can’t think of any other developer that does that for their titles making Half-Life 2 always a joy to return to.