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Half-Life 2

Reawakened from stasis in the occupied metropolis of City 17, Gordon Freeman is joined by Alyx Vance as he leads a desperate human resistance. Experience the landmark first-person shooter packed with immersive world-building, boundary-pushing physics, and exhilarating combat.

Verdict

Verdict coming soon: the jury is still reading

Buy, Wait, and Skip land in the next pass. Nothing on this card can be bought.

Player sentiment

Player sentiment is from Steam (PC) reviews.

All time

97.6%

280,010 reviews

12 months

97.1%

22,763 reviews

90 days

96.9%

5,087 reviews

30 days

96.8%

1,233 reviews

Stable0 pts versus the previous 90 days

Review history

050100

Bars are review volume. The line is the positive percentage. Periods under 10 reviews are faded.

What players are saying

Positive

  • ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☑ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☑ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10 ---{ Author }--- ☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template
    125h 54m played at review · 7 Sept 2026
  • I originally pirated this game, then finished it and it's expansions. It was so good, that I bought The Orange Box on Steam AND The Orange Box for the XBOX 360, now it's one of my holy grails. P.S.: I stopped pirating games, now I have the money to buy the games I already loved to pay back to the Developers.
    1h 27m played at review · 23 Sept 2026
  • What more can be said? Absolute masterpiece. Half-Life 2 elevated FPS and gaming in general to a level that is pretty difficult to match, and that's probably why there's still no Half-Life 3 as of 2026. As an FPS, it lets the gameplay tell its story with practically no interruptions, and it introduces new concepts like weapons and enemies fantastically by providing the right situations for you to experiment with and master progressively. Its distinctive color scheme, paired with great overall design, gives it a ton of personality and distinctive feel. Cities felt oppressive, wilder areas gave off that abandonment feel, and outskirts are a mix of both, with the most enjoyable and unexpected encounters. Shooting is fine. There are plenty of weapons to allow different approaches, and the gravity gun is immensely useful and fun to play with. Enemies are varied, although I wished there were more alien-like ones, but they are still dumb in their tactics and pretty easy to outmaneuver with movement or to force them to push you for an easy kill. Maybe it was just a result of the environment they were fighting in, but it felt like they were more organized later on. Resources like ammo and health are pretty abundant. Driving sections were cool, and I especially enjoyed how they played into the game's "controlled jankiness". Characters are interesting, but there were some bugs with their pathfinding leading to some resets. Soundtrack and sound design are both great and memorable. One of the problems that I think that I will find later on after spending more time with Half-Life 2 is that it has no real and concrete identity. After my first playthrough, since I last played some great years ago, I found that each section was defined by a specific style. Half-Life 2 but on a boat, Half-Life 2 but only with the gravity gun, etc. I'm afraid that when asked to present the final product, it will feel lesser, like its parts are greater than the whole, but I will see how that is explored in Episodes 1 and 2.
    9h 14m played at review · 15 Sept 2026
  • After having tried it and stopped in the past, Ive given another try and I finally get it. Ive not beaten the game, but I can still say its well worth $10.
    7h 57m played at review · 23 Sept 2026

Negative

  • Stupid game didn't let me take my baby through the teleporter. Absolute trash 0/10
    24h 9m played at review · 2 Sept 2026
  • Think something went horribly wrong with the anniversary update (at least with my copy of the game) because the game just refuses to work properly for me. Scripts keep breaking, maps refuse to load or work properly, enemy pathfinding keeps breaking, something's gone horribly wrong with my copy. I've tried to do everything ranging from verifying the integrity of the game files multiple times to uninstalling and reinstalling the game to unsubscribing from every single addon and nothing seems to be working. And what makes this infuriating is that I've never had to put up with any of these issues before the anniversary update and I'm just fed up with trying to make this broken ass game post anniversary update work properly.
    51h 46m played at review · 30 Sept 2026
  • can't procreate with manhacks
    15h 18m played at review · 30 Sept 2026
  • It has bugs (not game bugs but irl bugs)
    3h 26m played at review · 10 Sept 2026

Available on

Availability only. Player sentiment is from Steam (PC) reviews.

Genres

Price
£8.50
Release
2004-11-16
Developer
Valve
Publisher
Valve

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Creator coverage

YouTube coverage coming soon

Where to buy

Steam, plus partner stores where a link has been added. Partner stores are labelled Affiliate.

Method

Reviews read
3,000
Kept
1,638
Excluded
1,362
History window
2010-10-01 to 2026-10-01
  • Under 60 minutes played at review: 45
  • Under 20 characters of text: 1,032
  • Received for free: 285

Sources: Steam.

Last updated

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