Half-Life 2 characters Gordon Freeman
Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Valve. It was first published by Valve for Windows through its distribution service Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. Players control Gordon Freeman as he joins a resistance movement to liberate the Earth from the control of an alien empire, the Combine.
Half-Life 2 was created using Valve's Source engine, which was developed at the same time. Development lasted five years and cost $40 million. Valve's president, Gabe Newell, set his team the goal of redefining the FPS genre. They integrated the Havok physics engine, which simulates real-world physics, to reinforce the player's sense of presence and create new gameplay, and developed the characterization, with more detailed character models and realistic animation. 
Valve announced Half-Life 2 at E3 2003, with a release date for that September. It was delayed by over a year, triggering a backlash. A year before release, an unfinished version was stolen by a hacker and leaked online, which damaged team morale and slowed development.
Half-Life 2 was released on Steam on November 16, 2004, and received universal acclaim. It won 39 Game of the Year awards and has been cited as one of the best games ever made. It was ported to Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MacOS and Linux. By 2011, it had sold 12 million copies. Half-Life 2 was followed by the free extra level Lost Coast (2005) and the episodic sequels Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007). In 2020, after canceling Episode Three and several further Half-Life projects, Valve released a prequel, Half-Life: Alyx.
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