A superb game, but may not live up to all the hype.
Gameplay: As far as the standard running and gunning goes, HL2 plays well but isn't particularly different from other PC FPSs, and the vehicle controls leave something to be desired. What makes HL2 play as well as it does, is the physics. Havok has done a superb job and the HL2 engine does an amazing job of implementing it. Once you get the gravity gun (you knew you would), the fun begins. I was amazed at the kind of things that one can do with random objects in the environment. In fact, in order to fully give you a grasp of the physics, it would require me to make this review longer than I like to make my reviews, so you'll just have to try it for yourself. Moving on...unfortunately the game was too easy for me. I'm fairly experienced with PC shooters but I don't think that the average person will find HL2 particularly difficult. In fact, I had the game set to hard mode by the time I was about 2/3 or so through the game. There are some tricky bits but they are few and far between. And the AI, as you likely have already heard, is a bit of a joke. It has no improvement on previous games and at times is signficantly worse than previous games of similar stature. In general, despite my nitpicking, HL2 is very fun to play.
Graphics: Very impressive. In my opinion it looks better than Doom 3 simply because it avoids the plastic appearance that plagued many of Doom 3's environments. I also found the game significantly easier to run than I expected. The game looked better than Doom 3 and had a better frame rate....Overall Hl2 is outstanding in the visual department.
Sound: I personally had no problems with the sound worth mentioning here. The voice acting is good and the soundtrack adds a lot to certain firefights. The gun audio is decent and ambient noises, enemies and other what not are pretty good. A 9 simply because it didn't strike me as being all that outstanding.
Value: A 10 simply because of the ingenuity of the physics. I've beaten the game 3 times now and I'm slowly working through with my upgraded rig again. Not to mention the game comes with Counter Strike: Source, which I've played for hundreds of hours. Overall Hl2 is definitely worth any price you find it at.
Tilt: A 9 here because I was expecting more. Unfortunately because of the reputation of Valve and the original half life, Hl2 was practically expected to be the best game ever created. Obviously it's not, but probably top 50 or so in my opinion.
Overall HL2 is a must own for anyone who can run the game and an excellent predecessor to the original, but beware the talk of it being the best game ever and such..