Half-Life 2

***Half-Life 2*** is a first person shooter video game created by the company Valve Corporation and released in 2004. This game is the sequel to the original Half-Life video game which came out in 1998. It is sold through the Steam platform also developed by Valve. It is also available in The Orange Box, along with Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two (sequels to Half-Life 2), Portal, and Team Fortress 2. Half-Life 3 is thought to be currently in development. Half-Life 2 is based on a game engine called Source. There have been many other Source-based games, such as Portal, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Garry's Mod (which is a mod of Half-Life 2 that later became its own game).

Half-Life was a very popular video game, and Half-Life 2 was also very popular. Many reviewers believe Half-Life 2 is better than Half-Life and one of the best games ever made. It took six years to create Half-Life 2 (from 1998 to 2004). It was supposed to be released in 2003, but it was not ready. Many fans were very angry and said Valve lied to them. However, it did release the next year (2004). It had much better graphics than Half-Life. It also had more complicated non-player characters and more of a story.

## Plot and characters

In Half-Life 2, the player is Gordon Freeman (the same character as in Half-Life). It begins about 20 years after the first Half-Life. The Combine, a group of evil aliens, took over Earth and made humans their slaves. They are spoken for by Doctor Breen, and an evil human who used to run Black Mesa. Gordon Freeman is woken up by the mysterious G-Man and placed on a train in a place named City 17, which seems to be in Eastern Europe. He finds the resistance, some humans who fight the Combine. He meets the main members of the resistance in a secret bunker. One of them Eli Vance, who worked at Black Mesa with Gordon Freeman before the Combine came. Alyx Vance is Eli's daughter. Doctor Mossman also worked at Black Mesa. She works with the resistance. Barney Calhoun was a guard at Black Mesa. Now he leads the resistance. Issac Kleiner is another scientist from Black Mesa. He owns Lamarr, one of the hostile “headcrab” aliens seen many times in the series, who has been made harmless by having her beak taken out. It is also shown that the Vortigaunts, an alien species that were enemies in the first game, have joined the resistance.

After the meeting, Gordon is accidentally teleported outside the lab and must run away from Combine soldiers. He later finds more resistance members and an airboat he uses to escape. After fighting a combine helicopter that serves as the first boss, he meets up with the main resistance leaders again. He is given a special device called a gravity gun that can pick up and throw heavy objects. He also meets Alyx’s friend, a huge robot named Dog. The Combine suddenly attacks and Gordon must flee to Ravenholm, a town that has been taken over by zombies. An eccentric monk named Father Grigori helps him kill the zombies and escape through the town’s old mines. Gordon then finds out Eli has been kidnapped by the Combine and drives a dune buggy up a long highway to find the prison he’s being held at, fighting lots of Combine soldiers and hostile aliens on the way. He then breaks into the prison and rescues Eli with the help of Alyx. In the process they find out that Mossman is a is also a traitor who helps Doctor Breen. They are teleported to safety, but arrive a week late and are told by Kleiner that a full-scale revolution has begun. Gordon leads a squad of resistance troops through the city to fight the Combine.

After fighting through the city, Gordon sneaks into the Citadel, a giant tower that Dr. Breen rules from. This leads to the final boss fight, where he stops Breen from escaping to another world through a portal. The Citadel then starts to explode, but the G-Man suddenly appears and stops time in a cryptic ending scene.

## Other websites

- Official website
- Steam website

## Infobox (video game)

- **image**: Half-Life 2 Logo.svg