Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve

Half-Life 2's designers seem to have had a knack for putting everything in exactly the right place, in every scene, because there are more screenshot-worthy sequences in this title than in almost any other. Other than looking perhaps a little generic at times, the title's use of color, symmetry, and balance is fantastic.

The unique Half-Life sound, made so famous by the original, is back. Kelly Bailey delivers a fitting score of fast-paced, progressive techno that plays primarily during the game's most intense scenes. The game's voice acting is mediocre and aspects of it, such as the actors' intonations, are overdone and not of the quality seen in other high-budget titles, like the entries in the Grand Theft Auto series.

Half-Life 2 is an "Era 2", narrative-driven shooter strongly in the mold of the original, or other competing titles such as Halo and Max Payne. The first half of the game is superb, and interrupts the almost Doom-like bliss only for the occasional odd bit of dialog. Like many games of this style, the latter half of the title gets bogged down with too many onerous scripted sequences.

The game's plot is banal: humanity is attacked by foreign invaders; madman tries to save humanity by submitting it to subservience. This madman is living in-- what else-- a giant tower which is, in almost parody-like fashion, called "the citadel". While the story is constructed of nothing but cliches, the action, at least in the first half of the game, is made solidly of the same run 'n' gun formula that caused people to fall in love with the genre in the first place.