It was somewhere in 2009 when I first played Valve’s masterpiece, Half-Life 2. My gaming experiences before that were mostly demos of old games (Half-Life: Uplink, Worms, Turok) and Flash games so Half-Life 2 hit me like a truck. From the first time I arrived in the City 17, fought through Ravenholm and learned the secrets of this world I knew that this is something special - at least for me. These memories are dear to me and I notice that I want to relive those first times of playing this game again - they are some of my favorite memories and the feeling that I had playing Half-Life 2 for the first time is still something that no other game has been able to give me.
In Half-Life 2 you step on the shoes of Gordon Freeman, who’s trying to help the remaining human resistance to fight against Combine, an alien force that has been taken over the world after the 7 Hour War. Player is taken through the ruins of a world that is so familiar to us but now deserted: seas have been dried, humans can not give birth anymore and even most of the animals are gone. Gordon must fight his way to the Citadel, where local alien forces are controlling the City 17 and its remaining population. On his long way there he gets reunited with some old friends from the previous installment on Half-Life series, like Barney and Dr. Kleiner, and meets some new characters. Alyx, his trusty sidekick (or a real main character of the story?) is one of these. Gordon’s - and player’s - relationship with Alyx during the gameplay is something that stands out from the other games. All the characters in Half-Life 2 react somehow to the player and what they are doing, and especially Alyx on your side it really feels like you are there in the game world. That’s something that I haven’t really personally experienced with other games and I think the fact that the game has this uninterrupted flow within it makes it really stand out. With Half-Life 2 I don’t always feel like I am playing a game, it’s sometimes more like a book kind of experience - there is no jumping in and out from levels, no time spent in menus or anything like that. Everything just happens and you are part of it.
Physics are one thing that make Half-Life 2 stand out for me. I’ve been playing a lot of different games and how the game handles real life like physics is something that really is important for my personal gaming experience, especially in the FPS genre. There’s just something so special with the way Half-Life 2 and the Source engine handle physics that I always feel at home when I get to play games made with Source. I know how things work, I know what to expect and most importantly the feel of the game(s) feel right. And maybe this feeling of home is why Half-Life 2 to this day stays at my all time favorite game.
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