1998 year. HALF-LIFE shocks the gaming industry with its combination of intense action and continuous, addictive storytelling. Valve's debut game wins over 50 Game of the Year awards on the way to winning the title of "Best PC game of all time" by PC Gamer; she launched a franchise that has sold over eight million boxed versions worldwide.
NOW. Keeping the atmosphere of anxiety, challenge and inner tension and adding new realism and interactivity, Half-Life 2 opens the door to a world in which the presence of the player affects everything that surrounds him — from the physical environment to the behavior and even emotions of both friends and enemies.
The player once again raises the mount of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth, whose resources are rapidly depleted and the population degenerates. Freeman is forced into an inevitable role as the savior of humanity from the evil he unleashed in Black Mesa. And so many people dear to him hope for him.
The intense real-time gameplay of Half-Life 2 is made possible exclusively by Source®, — new proprietary high-tech game engine from Valve. Source is characterized by significant progress in the following areas:
— Characters: An advanced facial animation system allows you to create game characters with a degree of visual refinement never seen before. Using 40 individual "muscles" faces, human characters convey the whole variety of human emotions, demonstrating adequate and justified by the situation reactions to the behavior of the hero.
— Physics: From floating pebbles to two-ton trucks, everything behaves naturally, obeying the laws of physics in terms of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy.
— Graphics: Source uses a shader-enabled image generation system similar to that used by Pixar to create Toy Story® cartoons. and Monster's, Inc.®. It allows you to draw game environments that have never been seen before in computer games, amazing in their beauty and realism.
— Intelligence: Neither friends nor foes rush headlong into a fight. They are able to assess threats, choose the best path through rough terrain and collect weapons from what is at hand.