Half Life 2 ♥

☺


"Ahh luv this game ah tellya ah reely do!"

Before I go any further, a bit of history.

*puts on thick historian glasses, and takes out this old-ass projector*

Back in 1998, the First Person Shooter genre in PC videogames was in a decline. Crappy, low quality products dotted the shelves of video game stores all over the world. FPS games were still a rarity for console systems back then(and quality ones even rarer) , with maybe Goldeneye for the N64 being the only exception. So naturally, gamers around the world were kinda scared.....would the genre started by Wolfenstein 3d, Doom and Quake on the PC be cast aside and then be regarded in the future as just a passing fad?

Enter a game made by the then unknown company Valve Software and published by Sierra Interactive.

Half Life.

The game was easily a huge success taking away numerous awards in various categories. But what made it really special was the fact that it was revolutionary. The game dared to be different. With the rise of the PlayStation games now had numerous cutscenes, but Half Life had none. All the games events unfolded in real time, as you were playing it. And the other hallmark of the game were the brilliant 'jumping puzzles' that it had, which were unheard of in an FPS game. It is also now regarded as one of the Greatest Games of All Time.

I don't want to give out anymore details.....spoilers, ya see. (dont' want to bore anyone too! lol). If you're interested in reading more about Half Life, you can check out this Wikipedia article.

So, anyway, you can imagine the delight of gamers worldwide when Valve announced that they had been working on a sequel to Half Life 2.....ever since the original one shipped out! Valve said that the game would be released in the fall of 2003. But due to a security flaw in Microsoft Outlook XP(M$ product right...what can you expect?!!! lol....), the Half Life 2 source code was actually STOLEN from Valve database in early September 2003. The game was leaked by a German hacker by the name of 'Axel G'. He contacted Valve through e-mail and was fooled by them that they wanted to employ him as an in-house security auditor. The actual plan was to have him arrested by the FBI on his arrival in America. However, when the German government learned of this plan, they intervened and decided to arrest him in Germany itself, on account of this and other crimes.

This source code leak delayed the release of the game by a whole year and the game was released in 2004. Valve had promised breath-taking graphics in the game using their proprietary Source engine and realistic physics via the Havok engine, but did they deliver?

I think, a 98% score from PC Gamer, which is the highest score they've given for a game, speaks for itself!!! From the beginning train ride and the voice of Dr.Breen welcoming you to City 17, to the ending explosion with the G-Man coming through, Half Life 2 never fails to entertain and enthrall. The game did feature breathtaking graphics and realistic physics. But like it's predecessor, Half Life 2 also revolutionized. The game featured a new weapon called the Gravity Gun, with which players could pick up objects and then hurl them away, making anything and everything into a potential weapon. A whole new world of physical possibilities opened up to the players, and Valve made full use of this to create physics-based puzzles in the game, just like they made jumping puzzles for Half Life. Add to this a story of humans struggling against aliens, and you've got a classic.

Another new technique was the way the game was delivered to people around the world. Other than the traditional way of buying the game off shelves, gamers could now download the entire game using Valve's download client, Steam. Steam is now also used to distribute other games, as well as patches and updates to these games, and to play multiplayer games like Counterstrike, which was completely redone in Source graphics by Valve. A Source version of the original Half Life was also released. Valve then released that the future episodes in the Half Life saga would be released in episodic form. one very few months or year. So far, one chapter titled Episode One has been released, with the second one, titled Orange Box is slated for an October release.

If you want more on the story of Half Life you can visit this brilliant site for it.

Whew........my wrists hurt now...with all that typing....hope you guys didn't get bored!!! And thank you for reading!