Half-Life 2 - On this day

At a time when Valve was still doing games, Half-Life 2 was eagerly awaited. It was a game that demonstrated something never seen before in the world of video games. To continue his SF shooter, Valve set himself the task of improving the standards of physics, animation, and graphics of the games of that time. It succeeded 17 years ago, but it’s interesting how Half-Life 2 was supposed to happen a year earlier.

From today’s perspective, it’s funny that a year of postponing this game used to be too much for us, but those were some other times. Valve encountered a big problem before the game came out because a German hacker stole the source code of the game and released it into circulation. Half a year later, the FBI caught the thief who was later sentenced to two years probation for theft.

Half-Life 2 originally came out on PC and was one of the first games for which you had to install Steam. Half-Life 2 was also one of the first games that could be downloaded earlier in the digital edition (so-called preload). The game was available in three versions, of which the basic (Bronze) came with the game Counter-Strike: Source, and the Silver and Gold editions included a port of the original in the new launcher.

The launcher called Source was the heart of Half-Life 2 around which the entire game was designed, with special emphasis on Valve’s stamp in the FPS genre. If you play this game today, you will see that it does not have the standard elements of modern shooters - like precise close-up targeting, but even without such things, it works more than great thanks to imaginative enemies and the destructive power of weapons.

The most significant novelty was certainly the Gravity Gun, a weapon with which we could attract and launch numerous objects in the world, which was also used for some spatial puzzles. Unlike the first part, the second Half-Life introduced driving sections because it took place on much larger maps.

The story ended with a cliffhanger but was continued by two episodes out of the planned three. We never got the third, and even if we did, it would not be the ultimate conclusion of the story about Gordon Freeman. This left many with a bitter taste in an otherwise phenomenal experience.

The game eventually sold more than 12 million copies, and in 2012 it was named the best game of the decade at the Spike Video Game Awards ceremony. For the first year, Half-Life 2 was exclusive to the PC, and later appeared on a number of platforms including the Xbox, X360, PS3 and Android. Unofficially, the game received support for VR mode and a bunch of graphics modes.