| Half-Life 2 | |
|---|---|
 Box art featuring Gordon Freeman | |
| Developer(s) | Valve[a] |
| Publisher(s) | Valve |
| Artist(s) | Viktor Antonov |
| Writer(s) | Marc Laidlaw |
| Composer(s) | Kelly Bailey |
| Series | Half-Life |
| Engine | Source |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | November 16, 2004
|
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital 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. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the Combine, an interplanetary alien empire.
Half-Life 2 was created using Valve's Source game engine, which was developed simultaneously. Development lasted five years and cost US$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 sense of presence and create new gameplay. They also developed the characterization, with more detailed character models and animations.
Valve announced Half-Life 2 at E3 2003 with a release date of September of that year. They failed to meet the release date, leading to fan backlash. A year before its release, an unfinished version was stolen by a hacker and published online, which damaged the team's morale and slowed their work.
Half-Life 2 was released on Steam on November 16, 2004. 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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