I finished "Half-Life 2" tonight. What a fantastic game... makes me sad that it's over. There are so many things about it that I think make it great - the story, which I found unique and well-written and did a great job of never boring me; the dialogue, which I also thought was well-written and performed excellently; the characters, each one a unique individual I grew to love (or hate!); the creatures, which were highly varied and always made me wonder just what could be lurking behind that door, waiting to jump out at me when I opened it; the whole atmosphere of the game, which always made me feel like I was being watched or chased and occasionally gave me quite a good scare (seeing blood on the walls in a darkened house, for example, always made me feel edgy); and the gameplay, which, while simple to learn your way around the game, often brought challenges that always gave me a sense of accomplishment when I got past them and made me look eagerly towards the next one, and it certainly was not a short game by any means. The graphics are quite advanced for the game's age (released in November of 2004, if I recall correctly), with detailed weapons, environments, enemies, and facial and body animations, and the Source engine provides realistic physics (including gravity and friction) and lighting properties, which caused the environments to draw me in even further.
I honestly can't really think of anything to complain about in this game, aside from the few technical issues present in the PlayStation 3 version that nothing can (or will, more accurately) be done about, and even those are easily overlooked.
As sad as I am to finish it, I am happy to have done so, as I can not only add "Half-Life 2" to the admittedly short list of games I've played completely through, but also start on "Half-Life 2: Episode One" and, eventually, "Episode Two." Hopefully by the time I finish those two "Episode Three" will be out and I will either have a new computer capable of gaming past "Quake III Arena" or Valve releases a PS3 version of it.
In all, "Half-Life 2" is incredible, and if you haven't played it, do yourself a favor and do so if at all possible, even if your only means of playing it is to buy an original Xbox for $50. You will not regret it.
HL2: E1 and HL2: E2 are just as amazing as the first. The only problem with those is that they're just so hard, it's almost impossible to beat them without dying close to 10 times for every encounter. That is, until you get the Combine assault rifle >:3 (the one that has the energy blast as the secondary fire, oh man)
It's truly one of the greatest games of all time though, no lie. Also, you should check out a fan movie made by two brothers: Escape from City 17 (http://www.purchasebrothers.com/Purchase-Brothers-v2-hl.html). One of the best fan movies I've ever seen.
I started "Episode One" last night after writing that review. It's pretty awesome so far aside from some framerate issues and one hard freeze... It feels very much like it's the same game, in a good way, of course. Alyx's zombie jokes made me giggle, no lie.
Me and Roy call the grenade thingies hot dogs and the plasma pulses hamburgers
I beat the HL2 ep 1 and 2 without dying more than like 15 times....
Most were suicide But who cares its fun to jump off high places :D