What is Half-Life?

Half-Life—the debut title by Valve Software—took the PC gaming world by storm upon its release on November 19, 1998. Winning over 50 Game of the Year awards and selling more than eight million copies, Half-Life still reigns as the best-selling FPS of all time. An alternate version of the game called "Half-Life: Decay" was released for Playstation 2 on November 15, 2001 as well, offering different player characters and an all-new storyline.

Built off of a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, Half-Life boasts much-improved graphics, artful ingame scripted sequences and one of the most immersive storylines of any game to date! Gameplay includes a mix of intense action-oriented combat and various puzzles, all combined in a continuous and immense world.

Players find themselves in the shoes of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who inadvertently triggers the horrific incident known as the "resonance cascade" while performing an experiment, causing massive destruction, death and an alien infestation of the entire Black Mesa Research Facility. With a trusty crowbar (and a slew of other weaponry he finds on the way) and all the help he can get, Gordon finds himself pitted against both the aliens from the planet Xen and a dangerous military force known as the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit—who were dispatched to clean up the situation&mdashscientists included! Can he get out alive?

-IGN.com