Wow! I'm not sure where to begin with this one. I can see why people hold this series in such high regard.
I'll be approaching this from someone who started the Half Life 2 series coming from Black Mesa, so others in the same boat might know what to expect.

First of all
There are some marks of an older game that might be a little frustrating, but understandable when first stepping off Black Mesa.
First, your flashlight and sprint are run off a mechanic called Auxiliary Power, which drains as you use either one, and takes a second to recharge. It was a bit jarring coming off the game where sprint and flashlight were infatuate, but I can understand from the thought of this having more horror elements. As well as a potential lore reason, which is that in this game you don't have the resources of the Black Mesa facility. So your suit doesn't have access to nearly as much power.

Another is that there are times where you may get a weapon or item that you only use once, or the item you're given may not be very clear in how you're suppose to use it.
Example: With out spoiling anything, one of the throwable items you get, really only work if you are around a specific type of enemy, after that, they are basically useless.
Another is a near end game enemy, that seems to have a very specific weak spot, and you can find it if you are paying attention, but can be easy to miss, and waste resources on.

Other then that, the game play is amazing! I can definitely see where Black mesa got its inspirations for its level changes, the chase scenes and combat of this game are crazy exciting for a game that's 20 years old at the time of writing.
Valve uses the physics engine quite a bit in this game too, puzzles and environments make you navigate through them by moving items with the gravity gun, or by figuring out your environment, which is really cool, and makes you take in the whole level, rather then just the path you're suppose to follow.
The weapons are satisfying and punchy, and the combat more or less makes you run into the fray and think on your feet, nothing to the level of Doom Eternal, but enough to where you start to ensnarement and plan out which enemies you'll be taking out in which order.

The horror elements of the game can actually be a little frightening, especially around the half way mark, where you're introduced to a set of new creatures in an environment that is definitely reminiscent of Left 4 Dead.
Making you forget you're badass physicist Gordon Freeman for a bit, and have you looking around every alley way to make sure somethings not going to jump at you. Literally.
It also helps that this level gives you a bunch of saw blades, and not a lot of ammo, giving you a since of gritty dystopian horror that helps with the atmosphere.

The story of the game is honestly really interesting, best described as a 1984 approach to cosmic horror and natural disaster. It has you, Gordon Freeman, waking up from stasis, due to one of the events from the previous game, and finding that the entirety of the human race has been enslaved by a militia of interdenominational Aliens known as the Combine, and has you navigating a familiar world, plagued with this unknown "big brother" controlling the citizens and abusing their power over the humans they've enslaved. They also seem to hold a scary amount of knowledge and power as they use aliens from the last game to frighten, subdue and kill the unruly rabble. They also have enslaved the Vortigaunt, again. I honestly feel really bad for those poor bug eyed buddies.
On top of all this, it seems that what ever otherworldly entities that had a hand in the events of Black Mesa, still have uses for you, Gordon Freeman. You get the constant since that there is much more going on in the back ground of this dystopia, and are given a few mind bending details throughout the game, without ever truly spelling things out for you.

All and all, I can see the hype, the only down sides are the aforementioned dated and jarring elements of the game, and the fact that the story could be mildly confusing at points, but in cosmic horror fashion, that is part of the point of the story its self.
I give it a 3.5 out of 5 for fun mechanics, an interesting story and fun combat, but the lack of music in certain parts, the confusing nature of parts of the story, and single use or difficult to understand tools leave a bit to be desired. Good thing there are still 2 more games! I can;t wait to see what's in store.

Gameplay speaking, I think Half-Life 2 is a better game than the first one. Everything just feels smoother, better and the gravity gun is really fun to abuse.

However, in terms of the execution, I think this one is a bit of a step down compared to the first game. Lemme explain.

What I loved about the first game was that feeling of dread, exploring this building that you know a few moments ago, was not in the current state that it is right now. With abandoned and destroyed areas full of corpses and alien creatures lurking around every corner.

I also mentioned in my review that the first game almost feels like a horror game at times, because you are alone, exploring this collapsing facility full of enemies from two different factions that are desperately trying to kill you. The first game was not perfect by any means, it really is a bit dated, but I feel like it nailed this aspect really well...Or at least well enough for me to look past its flaws.

With that said, I don't feel like the sequel really manages to capture that same magic or even surpass it. Sure, it is fun to explore City 17 or the Citadel and don't even get me started on Ravenholm...That whole section is creepy and unsettling as hell! Which, in my opinion makes it the best part of the game.

But...Other than those, I feel like I am not really seeing the full extent of this premise's potential shown to us. You are going to spend the rest of the game walking through sewers and beaches or driving through an empty highway or forest; but these locations don't feel that severely impacted by the alien invasion.

You are mostly going to be fighting against the Combine, which are like the replacement of the soldiers from the first game, and you are not going to see a lot of strange alien monstrosities. The first game had everything! from small disgusting crab creatures to giant unkillable alien beasts that you had to work around in order to survive.

I don't even remember being able to use any weird alien weapons like in the first game. I could be wrong about this, but I remember spending most of my time just using the gravity gun for almost everything.

I mean, you don't even get to revisit Xen in this one. Which is such a massive missed opportunity, considering Xen in the first game was so ugly, rushed and lackluster for what the game was building up to.

Overall, I still give this game 4 stars and a half, simply because it is undeniable that gameplay wise, this game is better in pretty much every aspect to its predecessor. However, I still prefer the first game's execution and overall premise a lot more, even if it is a bit harder to replay nowadays.

Я из-за всех углов слышал об ахуенности этой игры, о том, что это лучшая игра всех времён и народов, но... Она просто... pretty good?

И она мне показалась даже немножко, но хуже первой части. Стрельба и атмосфера в первой части сильнее погружали меня в общий курс дела, а во второй просто... ок? К тому же в этой игре из всего арсенала я использовал только дробовик и ПП, в остальном не было необходимости. А вот в первой части я использовал каждое оружие, и оно нужно было мне ВСЁ. В ХФ2 же большинство оружий я так и не распробовал на полную, что грустно.

В сюжет я пытался вникнуть, но особых ответов на свои вопросы я не получил. Да и в целом сюжет интереса не вызвал.

Но что самое обидное - так это атмосфера. Да, тут замес глобальнее, чем в первой части, но мне не хватило блужданий по лабораториям, чувства клаустрофобии, хедкрабов, которые выпрыгивают из каждого угла (тут они тоже были, но того же ужаса не вызывали из-за открытости локаций). Справедливости ради, зомби тоже наводили ужаса своими звуками, но это происходило крайне редко. Да и вообще очень многих монстров из первой части не хватало. Там они работали отлично, а тут прям было скучно в этом плане. Впрочем, возможно такой ужас, какой давала первая игра, в этой части и не нужен.

Тогда это просто крайне хороший шутанчик от первого лица с неплохими локациями.

Unlike the original Half-Life, I knew what qualities to look for in Half-Life 2. This was the showcase for Valve's Source engine, which would form the basis for their prolific and acclaimed output for the next decade, and one whose advanced physics and malleability allowed for extensive use in the modding scene, for which the accessible Garry's Mod was a catalyst. As a teenager I may have played few levels of Left 4 Dead at a friend's once, but otherwise my only prior interaction with the Source engine was through Portal and Portal 2, both of which I adore. Otherwise I was console-based, only getting into PC gaming in adulthood, and even then not owning anything more powerful than the relatively cheap gaming laptop I currently use.

Finally playing Half-life 2, it's so clear why it was such a huge deal at the time. The physics engine allows for each object to serve a mechanical purpose, and this is used to great effect for puzzle solving and exploration. The level-design and incorporation of physics are frequently inspired, and consistently elevate Half-Life 2 even in its weaker moments. Using buoyant containers to lift ramps, or holding a car door to shield yourself from gunfire, are examples of developer-expected uses of these mechanics which prod the imagination towards a world of less conventional, less "intended" possibilities. The physics' looseness suggests that solutions to the game's challenges may be less prescriptive than they appear on the surface.

I think what ultimately limits the game is its format, the linear first-person shooter. Don't get me wrong, the physics wonderfully compliment the level-design, but the straight path of the game's progression keeps truly ingenious manipulation from yielding substantial gameplay feedback. An immersive simulation style of game made with craft on display here in Half-Life 2 could have truly shown off the potential of this engine.

Taking the game for what it is, I think it's a great first-person shooter, albeit one with serious issues. Keeping everything in-engine from Gordan's perspective makes a welcome return, and in some moments dramatically outclasses the first game. An early section where Gordan must escape a house raid is exceptional in its pacing, building of tension, and drawing the player's attention to the narrative beats of the set-piece. I could only imagine how this sequence would play out in a modern Naughty Dog title, wrestling control of the player's movement and camera towards every important detail - I'd likely begrudgingly accept that, to achieve this kind of moment, sacrificing control might be a necessary evil. But here's Half-Life 2, every bit Naughty Dog's equal in pacing out such a set piece, but many times more effective by keeping it in the player's control. When in control, there's real tension, because I could have exercised that control differently. In contrast, if my movement is halted before my attention is forcefully drawn towards a door getting kicked in, I know that I have time to escape the armed men pouring through, as I'm reacting in what I know to be the optimal moment; I'm seeing the designers' intentions as I play, rather than just being present in the scenario.

However, I think perhaps the main issue with Half-Life 2 is that it doesn't know when to stop. Fresh ideas are in abundance here, but there's just too many of them, and the pacing suffers. Take the vehicle sections - the stops along the way are always interesting, but the structure overstays its welcome. This problem isn't so bad until later levels where the core idea that's being iterated on isn't that enjoyable in the first place.

Larger battles with many combatants feature more prominently towards the end, and are the worst example of a bad idea being iterated on endlessly. They'd often put me in that unfortunate place of trying to understand what the designer intends of me; Half-Life is strongest when it is player-driven, but in these larger battles I'm often left pondering a couple of questions - "Are these enemies continuously respawning because I need to move forward and just haven't figured out how? Or can I not see the way forward because after I kill enough a loose rocket or something will explode some rubble, clearing a path?" The answer was almost always the latter, but the ambiguity meant that I was never quite sure, and the causation between my actions and the circumstances that allowed for progression were atrociously contextualised, and thus the player-driven design is lost. It's here that Half-Life 2's priorities backfire, as when this design contrivance occurs in, say, Bayonetta, magic red barriers appear out of nowhere and it's extremely clear what needs to be done to make them go away. Half-Life 2 can't have magic red barriers, so it probably shouldn't have ever adopted this style of encounter design.

Still, Half-Life 2 is superb a vast majority of the time. If it had trimmed each level down to its best two-thirds, and maybe one-third in the case of some later levels, then I might regard it as the masterpiece its often hailed as. As it is, Half-Life 2 still stands tall among first-person shooters.

For 2004 this game is absolutely spectacular and super ambitious and gorgeous, even 20 years later I was amazed at how beautiful some of the environments were, and the physics and interactivity is obviously incredible - without Half Life 2, it is pretty clear that most modern games would cease to exist. But unfortunately, this isn't the unrivaled masterpiece that I was expecting, in fact it's mostly a downgrade from the original. While some chapters are jaw-dropping even now like Ravenholm and the interior of the Citadel, a huge chunk of this game is driving around on gimmicky vehicles, or engaging in some of the most uninvolving, brain-dead combat ever put to the screen. While the original Half Life paced itself perfectly at upgrading your arsenal and introducing new enemies, HL2 stagnates nearly every step of the way. Instead of introducing new Combine enemies, it's mostly just the same guys but with increased health, which is incredibly lazy but also frustrating as it renders most of your weapons completely obsolete. While the gravity gun is obviously the coolest shit ever (second to only the Portal gun), the rest of the guns are just generic or never really needed to be used past their specific usage point in the game. What Half Life 2 does do better in, is probably the tension and dread that surrounds your movement. The introduction of the new headcrab/zombie variants in Ravenholm is perfectly executed, similar to how the antlions emerge from the ground in the chapter 'Sandtraps' and how you subsequently command them in 'Nova Prospekt' which is genius... but then you don't get to use them anymore past this point, which is also the case with the poison zombies - arguably the most terrifying enemy. The whole game feels really experimental and disjointed in it's treatment of weaponry and enemy usage, rather than being fully cohesive like the original. I still do think that Half Life 2 is a good game, and I'm annoyed that I didn't play it earlier so I could understand just how big of a deal it was, but I feel like people's love for it is chalked up more to nostalgia and it's influence on the industry, rather than assessing the overall experience.

Gun play is surprisingly good, soundtrack rocks, level design is pretty cool. For its time the graphics are good, the physics are insane, voice acting is pretty good as well. The way the physics work with the gravity gun is cool as hell, especially at the end. I really like the way they do cutscenes in Half-Life, the fact that you can still walk around while the cutscene occurs is pretty cool compared to contemporary cinematics and offers something different.

Some level design is unintuitive though, like the one part of the one level where you have to go down all these pipes and turn a wheel to fill the area up with water ... How am I supposed to know to do that?

Some of the puzzles are just obtuse like it's difficult to understand why the developers would expect you to know how some of the mechanics work without wandering around for 20 minutes trying to figure it out, specifically the blow up barrels in the shipping container so you can go under the dock and hit the ramp, like 1. Why would I know to check inside the one shipping container? 2. Why would I expect that blowing up the barrels would actually blow off the door of the shipping container when I haven't received any indication of this mechanic before, like sure I could've wandered around that area for 30 minutes trying literally everything and eventually figure it out, but I preferred to just look at a guide at which point I was like oh lol okay that's how it works

I shot a watermelon and it exploded, nice