Half-Life (video game)

Half-Life is a first-person shooter game developed by Valve Software and published in 1998. The game chronicles a catastrophe at the fictional Black Mesa research facility, from the perspective of the young assistant scientist Gordon Freeman. The game attained a large cult following which continues to this day, which in turn created several modifications to the original game. The games Counter-strike and Team Fortress were both originally modifications of Half-Life, but are now marketed and developed by Valve Software. There were two main expansions to Half-Life: Opposing Force and Blue Shift, along with Decay for the PlayStation 2 only, as well as the Uplink demo levels which were not present in the full game. Half-Life has been named "game of the year" several times by different computer gaming magazines.

Plot and setting

The game is set in three main locales: the secret underground lab Black Mesa, the desert above, and the alien homeworld Xen. The player is put in the clothes of the young theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman, who is expecting a quiet day at the lab. The experiment for the day goes awfully wrong however, causing a 'resonance cascade', in effect several portals to the alien world Xen. The objective for the player is to battle the aliens, as well as the government soldiers who are subsequently sent to cover up the accident, in order to make it back through the portal to Xen and defeat the aliens.