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 enlarge | From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $6.59
You Save: $23.40 (78%)
New (7) Used (24) from $6.59
Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 7941
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98
ESRB: Mature
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Game of the Year
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 1.5
MPN: 9838
Model: 71608
UPC: 014633098389
EAN: 0014633098389
ASIN: B000AOE14M
Release Date: September 6, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Game August 25, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is by far the best shooter game ever made. Every aspect is the ultimate in satisfaction.
Why not us? August 4, 2006
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Possibly the best game ever made since 2004. It comes with half-life 1: source, a digitally re-mastered version of half-life . Half-life 2's graphics are beautiful! Even on low end hardware If you have a computer that is from 2002 or later you can probably play this game on at least low setting. Half-life 2-
PROS: Great visuals. Great A.I. Great variety of weapons and ammo. Great sound and good character and story. Comes with Half-life 1:source, Counter-Strike: Source(best multiplayer game ever!!!) and if it is really a PRO Half-life 2: Death Match. It also comes with steam which organizes Valve games for you and auto updates your games.
CONS: Steam in my book is helpful but I also consider it AD-WARE, I haven't had any of the random crashed that others mention. But I did install the game and then try to play it and go what why can't I play it... 5 Seconds later Steam pops up telling me to play the game I have to become a member. I was like "what that's gay...whatever"
This is seriously with Counter-Strike: Source and HL1: Source the best game of 2004.
I recommend having a Decent PC, such as mine:
Gigabyte Motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, Seagate 320GB SATA-2 HDD x2, Corsair ValueSelects 2GB O/C DDR2-800, eVGA GeForce 7900GS 256MB x2 in SLI Mode, Dual DVD-RW Drives.
 The long awaited sequel was worth the wait...barely. July 30, 2006
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
So, I'm here a bit late, but another review can't hurt since a lot of people might buy this game in wake of the new, decent, expansion.
Developers outta keep quiet about release dates. Premature talk breeds media floods. And media floods pigeonhole developers into making deadlines. Deadlines are meant to be broken. When the bomb was dropped that a lot of the Source code was stolen, Valve pussyfooted around the subject of Half-Life 2's release and used the theft as an excuse to delay the game. Fair enough, Valve taught the hackers and us a lesson, but with all the preloading of Half-Life 2, and the free Half-Life 2 giveaways with video cards, Valve was really doing the gamers a disservice by creating hype. Hype tends to equal bad, especially for a sequel.
The good news is Half-Life 2 rocks. Half-Life 2 rocks like Half-Life, and a lot of the great FPS games that have come out over the past few years. Amazingly, Half-Life 2 doesn't do too much in terms of changing the formula from Half-Life. In fact, Half-Life 2 has a scarily similar formula and story to Half-Life. But that's no deal breaker: Half-Life has been the best first person shooter to grace this planet (in my opinion, anyway), and it still holds up today with the exception of its graphics. Very few titles managed to push the envelope and expand upon the style that Half-Life created (No One Lives Forever is definitely one of the games that should get mentioned). Half-Life was a linear game, and Half-Life 2 is also linear. In that respect, there have been titles that have changed the genre, but very few linear FPS give a bump like Half-Life.
You know the story; you're Gordon Freeman, scientist, middle-aged guy, general bad-arse. You have a cool protective suit, a crowbar, and a few nifty weapons at your disposal. Half-Life 2 plays out a lot like Half-Life 1, though I won't ruin any of the story. A little bit into the game, you pick what has to be the most entertaining piece of First Person Shooter history, the Gravity Gun. This bad boy allows you to pick up, move, and propel objects at your enemies. It's a great replacement for shotguns and pistols, and it's tons of fun. All of a sudden, useless stuff that acts as level detail in other FPS games become deadly projectiles. It's pretty much the most awesome thing ever. The Source engine has some of the best physics you will see in the genre. Objects break, crumble and move. It's satisfying when you tear stuff apart, and there's never that cold dull feeling you get in some of the levels in other games like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.. The enemy A.I. is okay, not great. Years of Counter-Strike has, apparently, made me pretty good at killing the Combine. And if you go from playing F.E.A.R. to Half-Life 2 you may find the A.I. a bit disappointing. Still, the A.I. will give you a run for your money if you crank the game up to the hardest difficulty, and I recommend you do just that so you can take more time to immerse yourself in the wonderful world that is Half-Life 2.
Half-Life 2 hasn't been all that revolutionary, or groundbreaking, or life changing. It plays out so much like Half-Life that it's easy to accuse it of being unoriginal and uninspired. But the truth is, why fix something that isn't broken? Valve has added a lot of new things that make Half-Life 2 worth playing, and fans of FPS owe themselves to check this title out. As far as linear FPS go, Half-Life 2 continues to raise the bar. For what it's worth, to me, Half-Life is a more fun game, because when I played Half-Life 2 there were a few moments of, been there, done that. But, Half-Life is getting graphically old, and the gameplay is starting to show its simplicity. And Half-Life 2 rocks anyway. So, do yourself a favor, and check this game out.
However...
I passionately dislike steam, although it does have one or two perks for its 20 flaws. In case you are wondering, Steam is Valve's handy tool to help you organize and play all of your Valve games.
If you have a broadband connection and credit card, I recommend downloading steam and just buying the game through steam. Non-broadband users should get the game from the store, because they can install most of it off the CDs or DVD.
The pros of buying the game from steam include, being able to just buy Half-Life 2, not Counter-Strike: source, and saving a trip to the store. The cons are you need (well, you don't NEED, but you should unless you don't mind waiting for a long long time) broadband.
For non-broadband users, the pros of buying the game are that you avoid the hassle of downloading it. In fact, it's pretty much impossible to get the game on a 56k connection, without aging a lot. The cons are that you have to buy the game...which comes with CS: Source, so you end up spending more money. Also, the game doesn't come with any linear information or booklets, just the CDs/DVD and CD-key. The biggest con is that you STILL NEED STEAM to activate and play the game. And in order to play it, STEAM will put you through the painful process of downloading patches, something that will still take a long long time.
For what it's worth, STEAM has become a marketing tool. Steam will alert you when new games are out; be sure to have a credit card at hand, most of the new games are only 20 dollars. Steam also will ask if you'd like to participate in surveys, and steam will occasionally crash. Steam also does weekly updates...which make me question A) the integrity of Valve's product, or B) the integrity of the updates themselves.
If you can get over the mountain that is Steam, you are in for a real treat. A game that does what it sets out to do, live up to the Half-Life name.
Steam July 7, 2006
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Why is everyone getting mad at steam. Valve had many pirecy problems with its products..... Steam proves that you will not install the game on evryone computer or make copies... Steam works perfectly on my pc. They bad multiplayer is Gamespy which I saw copying the websites and passwords i types in and sending them to god knows where.
Nearly perfect July 4, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
As far as HL2 goes, the game is nearly perfect. It is easily the best FPS I have played and I would recommend it to anyone over eighteen. It is bloody and filled with gore not to mention a few places that will make you scream/jump/scared. The only drawback is Steam but it is not that bad.
The installation is time consuming. The CD version contains five discs. Please make sure all drivers including sound are updated. Once installed, Steam takes over to provide updates. Once updated and verified you have the option to disallow Steam to run on startup through the setup which I recommend. You do not need to connect to the internet to play the game. If you disable your internet connection prior to starting the game you will be prompted to either connect to the internet or play offline which is what I normally do. One added bonus to using Steam online is that you can backup your saves using Steam which I do on occasion because I switch back and forth between my desktop and laptop. Nice feature but probably not useful for most people.
As for the game itself, the main drawback is the load times that occur during play. This can be annoying but it is there for a reason. During this period the games loads new information into ram and virtual memory allowing for the immersive play. A trade-off was made between the need for hardware performance and allowing users of lesser systems to run the game on higher settings. The game is processor driven. A high end video card is not needed. I initially was running a basic ATI X300se series card with 64 mb of memory from Dell. I have since upgraded to an ATI X600 series with 256 mb of memory and really can not tell the difference. RAM and processor are much more important to a good experience than a more expensive video card.
My desktop runs the game extremely smoothly with the following configuration. Current configuration includes 2 gb of RAM and an ATI X600 video card and the difference is not very noticeable.
Dell Dimension 4700C
Intel Pentium 4 at 3.4 ghz
1 gb of memory
ATI X300 video card with 64 mb of memory.
160 gb SATA HDD 10,000 rpm
19" Ultrasharp LCD
My laptop does an OK job on HL2. Performance is somewhat jumpy and load times are much longer.
Toshiba Satellite
Intel Celeron M at 1.5 Ghz
704 mb of memory. (this is not a typo and I know that it is an odd configuration)
ATI XPRESS 200M series card with 64 mb of memory.
60 gb PATA HDD at 5,000 rpm
15.4" monitor
I would not recommend running this game on a comparable or lesser system than my laptop, It just takes the fun out of it. However, if you have a decent system, it is absoluetly wonderful. Steam is a pain but you really only have to deal with it once and the game makes it worth it.
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