Only a lazy gamer still hasn't bought it yet. Now is your chance to beat this cool game! It’s amazing even today, because that's why a lot of people are waiting for Half-Life 3 (I hope we will wait for it, because there is too much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ going on in the world).

About 20 years ago when my parents separated I would stay at my father's apartment every so often where he would always have the latest newspaper. I used to always grab it and go to the end where there was a section for video game reviews. The games were rated out of 5 stars and the available platforms to play those games were shown next to the ratings at the top. The platforms for each game would be either PS, xbox or gamecube and I would wish that I had one of those to play these games that were rated 3 or 4 stars out of 5, the PC platform was rarely shown. By this time our N64 was gone but there were still computers at both my parents' places.

One day in that section of the newspaper I came across a review for the game Half-Life 2. The only platform shown at the top was "PC" and it was the first full 5-star rating I saw. The review was full of praise of the game, one of the things I remember it saying was that the characters look and behave very realistically.

I asked my father to buy it for me for Christmas that year and he agreed. Steam says I created my account on December 24, 2004, so it must have been a bit before that time that we went to EB Games and saw the price, from memory it was $60 (Australia). My dad asked me if we should just buy it there or should we try and find it cheaper somewhere else. I said we should see if it's cheaper somewhere else. We then went to BIG W in the same shopping centre and they did have it for cheaper, I think the difference was $10.

The staff member went away and came back with the game asking my dad if that's correct, he said he doesn't know and he should ask his son (me), the staff member showed me the game and I said yes that's correct. Twenty years later I still have it and I've uploaded photos of it here on Steam.

I'm trying to dig into the deep valleys of my memory right now, but I do remember putting the disk in, and it asking me to create an online account. That frightened me a little and put me off installing the game for some time, I don't know how long. I must have ended up doing it on December 24th and now I wish I would have just done it right when we brought the game home so I can get the 'Years of Service' badge on Steam sooner!

Anyway, it was the first mouse+keyboard shooting game I ever played, using the WASD keys to move and aiming with the ball mouse was strange for me at the time but I persevered because the game looked absolutely amazing and the world was so interesting. When there was a loading screen I would just sit patiently waiting even though it took about 10 minutes. I remember one of my dads friends came over with his daughters who were much older than me. I don't remember how exactly but they found out I was obsessed with this game called Half-Life 2 and one of the daughters asked if she could watch me play. She sat next to me watching, I remember her getting spooked by the antlions and me reassuring her it's OK because I have the bait that makes them friendly, and when I held the mouse button to continuously swing the crowbar at the face of the female scientist, we exploded in laughter when that NPC slowly but surely drifted her eyes to us XD

I also remember a puzzle in the game, where you have to swim to one side to drain the water so you can swim to the other side to reach the top? Something like that, but I remember when playing the game for the first time, there was a section I didn't know how to pass so I got pretty much all the barrels from the top, dropped them to the bottom section, and stacked them like a pyramid to jump to the other hole at the top. It took me hours because the barrels kept falling, but when I finally reached the other side, I was stuck and realised I was supposed to do something with the water. I'm sure people who have played it recently know what I'm talking about?

I also told many friends at school about the game, when I was talking about the ending I said "you die but you don't die" and they bursted out laughing at me, one of them kept saying that to me after that. One friend did end up playing it as well and he agreed with me that it was good. When we were talking about the game I mentioned that it doesn't matter how many times the enemy hits you at the beginning, you won't die, and he said yes because you don't even have a health bar.

I remember when finishing the game for the first time, I was reading the credits and trying to memorise the names of the people. Of course I didn't remember a single one but in my child brain I was thinking that if I ever came across any of those people I would thank them for making the game. I did the same for Half Life Alyx after finishing that on my Valve Index but there's still 15 years to go before I review that one.

Thank you for making the game and being a big positive part of my life.

As someone revisiting the game for its 20th anniversary and being completely delighted despite playing it through a few years back, I felt like it would make sense to chime in and say why I think it works.

Oh yeah, spoiler: Half-Life 2 works. It's very good, in fact.

I see a lot of people go into Half-Life 2 skeptical for a few reasons, with the biggest of those being the game's age and its reputation as a game praised constantly in a manner that might come off as a little... obsessive at times. Now: I was not playing Half-Life 2 when it came out in 2004. I wasn't doing much at that point in my life, as I was very young and probably busy picking my nose and tying to stick forks into outlets. I didn't play Half-Life 2 until 2017 when I was digging through old media and found The Orange Box, only sticking out to me because I recognized Portal, which I played earlier.

Anyways, this part of the review isn't supposed to be nostalgia baiting. The point I'm trying to make is that I came into this game aware of its popularity and age. And that didn't stop me from having a good time in the slightest. There are a lot of things people like to say about Half-Life 2 to discredit it, like it only having around ten weapons, or being very reliant on puzzles that might not flow terribly well. But something Half-Life 2 is great at - something that a lot of games still fail at - is being incredibly cohesive and well-designed. The first thing you'll see when you start the game is City 17. You don't sit back for ten minutes as the game explains everything in detail. You still walk around a while, but in a manner much less restrictive. You then meet the game's main characters in person. The game doesn't cut away, there's no narrator going "That's Dr. Kleiner. He's a bit eccentric and certainly not an athlete, but he's a pretty cool guy. He's been working in the resistance since-" NO! You observe. You are put into his presence and you gather this all because the characters are expressive and well written. There is no monologue telling you that the Combine is bad. You see them beating people and you infer that.

And that's a prime example of this game's main philosophy: Showing. Not telling.

This is such a basic principle of storytelling, which makes it a little odd that I'm praising this game for following it, but SO MANY pieces of media get this wrong. So I'll continue applauding it until it's something most people can get right. I mean, one of the biggest complaints about DOOM ETERNAL was how every time a new enemy showed up, you had a pop-up on screen saying "Hey! Check out this new enemy! Let's go through some instructional videos on how to take them out effectively!"

Half-Life 2 was a slow burn for me. There were a lot of sections where I was having an incredible time, but I couldn't really name a one single thing in particular that I was thinking about. And I think that's because of how many different parts this game has going on. It's not an arcade shooter, but it's open ended, either. The moment-to-moment gameplay isn't just shooting. You're solving puzzles, you're navigating dangerous terrain, you're exploring every nook and cranny of the intricately detailed world that's been laid out for you, you're constantly doing so many different little things over the course of the game.

The game's primary gameplay loop is the combat, but it's followed second by things like gathering supplies and getting past various obstructions; all factors contributing to its incredible pacing. Even things like breaking open supply crates provide a satisfying break from fights. If you're not thinking too much about what you're doing at any moment, you might confuse it for being samey. But that's also very, very far from the truth. Despite having such simple core gameplay mechanics, I never felt like things were stale. Most of the major chapters focus on different core parts of the game. There's an (I'll admit, pretty nauseating) section where you're zipping through the canals on a mudskipper that comes to mind. One moment you'll be fighting through a prison, avoiding traps and commanding massive bugs to attack your enemies, then the next you'll be utilizing everything in your advantage to make your way through a zombie infested town when the game turns into a horror game for a little bit.

Half-Life 2 feels seamless. That's its biggest strength. It never feels like you're playing a set of levels; it feel like you're exploring. Even your weapons feel like tools you use to manipulate the world around you and make it past obstacles. Never, even in 2024, have I played a game that so effortlessly makes such a linear and straightforward game feel so natural. Every puzzle, no matter how game-y it may be, is still placed into the world with justification. Some people might criticize the basic combat, but I'd argue that the visual feedback, effects, and absolutely incredible sound design make it feel great to play. I'm not going to say that it's for literally everyone. But I am going to say that if you like games where you really feel like you're making your way through the world in a convincing, engaging, and fun manner, Half-Life 2 is absolutely fantastic and easily one of the best FPS/Action games I've ever had the joy of playing through.

I don't believe in number ratings for media, but I give Half-Life 2 a ten out of ten. Not because it was influential, but because it is one of the few games I've ever played where every aspect is done so immaculately well, where there was not a single point that I felt like I could have designed it better, and where I remembered what the appeal of interactive media is through examples of what interactivity is like at its peak. Half-Life 2 is much, much more than the sum of its parts.

And that makes all the difference in the world.