Even more than 3 years after its release, Half Life 2 is one of the most "next-gen" games I've ever played.
As stated before, the physics that Half Life 2 has to offer will show gamers a new experience that they haven't had in many other games before: environmental interactivity. For example, when I hit a wooden shelf with a crowbar, I want it to break. Half Life 2 demonstrates just that. In fact, one of its most important weapons, the Gravity Gun, focuses solely on this factor of the game, and it will be useful for many things you come across. While you aren't busy engaging in an intense battle of non-stop action, you will often find many mind-challenging situations you run across. Some of these may be as simple as moving cement blocks off an object, while others may take some time to figure out. There are many of these puzzles that are more obvious than others, but they create an inviting experience that you probably haven't had with any game other than the Half Life series.
Like many other shooting games, you won't always be on foot shooting up enemies. In a point of the campaign (one that you will reach rather quickly), you have the opportunity to travel in a boat. This will be very useful and is necessary by all means for you to make it any further in the game. Due to the game's open environment, it makes traveling in vehicles more fun than you could ever imagine would be possible in a video game. This is a good thing, because you will be traveling in this boat for quite a while if you decide to take advantage of the area you are around. You can travel to areas that you don't need to, but the areas you do decide to opt-in on usually give you somewhat of a rewarding compromise. This makes the game even more enjoyable to explore, and makes the game feel much less linear. There are many more twists and turns you will encounter in Half Life 2. For example, there are bugs that will appear from sand in one point in the game that attack you, and so many will appear that it will make death almost inevitable if you don't comply to what are you instructed to do. However, you eventually get "Bug Bait" in the game, that will attract the bugs to you, and they will fight enemies for you, which definitely helps in certain situations of the game. Another example is a Gravity Gun and suit upgrade you get towards the end of the game, which is very useful, considering you lose nearly all your weapons towards that point. With the Gravity Gun upgrade, you can move all the objects you could previously move before, along with heavier ones that you could not. In addition to this, you can pick up enemies and incinerate them simply by left clicking.
There will also be other instances in your adventure through Half Life 2 that require lots of teamwork. And while your enemy AI is for the most part good, your team AI is what struggles you to get through a mission as quickly as you should be able to. You will often find your teammates in the way of where you are trying to go, which can be annoying, especially in a situation where you have to move quickly, as to get away from a grenade or anything of the sort. However, this doesn't mean that your teammates will be useless, by any means, as there are many parts of the game where you will have so many enemies rushing towards you that it is absolutely necessary to have some help.
If you are a big fan of graphics, then you will find Half Life 2 an absolutely remarkable game. Though it was made a while ago and is beginning to show it's age, it still looks stunning. You will often find yourself in amazement by the incredibly detailed environments and character models. For it's time, this was probably the best looking game out there, and it remained that way for a while. Not only this, but it sounds great as well, as music will usually present itself at the right moment, and explosions and gunshots usually sound great as well. Even though there are better looking games now, that doesn't mean this game still doesn't look amazing. However, the graphical intensity that the game has does present consequences to some. While you will most likely get a great framerate on most computers that have half-way decent video cards, loading times can be rather bothersome. The game itself doesn't take too long to load, but there are rather frequent areas in the game that have to load separately. With a high-end PC with the right amount of memory, this should not take more than a few seconds. Still, it does detract from the gameplay somewhat. Another thing to note about Half Life 2, is that it's not the most challenging game I have ever played. However, you will still run into some very difficult situations. Like I stated before, you will have to use a lot of thinking in certain areas of the game, in order to find out how you get to a certain place. The campaign took me roughly 21 hours, then again, it took me an awful long while to figure out what to do at certain areas. For most players, it should take between 14 and 20 hours. If you enjoyed the campaign as much as I did, you will probably find yourself playing it a second time, though on a different difficulty level to make the game more challenging, or you will at least replay certain chapters of the game. And when you feel you are truly done with playing the campaign, the Deathmatch game that's bundled with it has multi-player that can be entertaining.
While HL2: Deathmatch isn't nearly as enjoyable as Counter Strike: Source, it still presents itself well. The deathmatch mode is rather mindless, you simply choose a server and try to kill as many people as possible. The only other mode available for online play is Team Deathmatch, which is basically the same thing, but is not as mindless due to the fact that you are working cooperatively with certain people to kill the other team. Fun as it may be, especially considering weapons such as the Gravity Gun, it does get repetitive after a while, which is where the vast amount of mods come in. There is an amazing variety of user-created modifications to choose from, which will make you realize just how long Half Life 2 will last you, and you undoubtedly will be trying out the different mods for a long while.
If you are a fan of FPS games, or even only a casual FPS player, Half Life 2 is a game that will offer an incredible experience that will be well worth your money.