Half-Life
Half-Life reshaped the first-person shooter by refusing to break for cutscenes. Valve told its story entirely through the player's own eyes, following silent scientist Gordon Freeman through a research facility gone catastrophically wrong, and the seamless approach felt revolutionary in 1998.
The series splits between that original game with its expansions, which replay the same disaster from other characters' perspectives, and the 2004 sequel with its episodic continuations. Half-Life 2 in particular advanced physics-driven gameplay that much of the industry promptly copied. The franchise also seeded one of gaming's biggest phenomena when its multiplayer mod Counter-Strike spun off into a juggernaut of its own.
Decades later it returned as a landmark virtual-reality entry, confirming a small but fiercely influential catalog that has shaped how shooters are built.
The Half-Life franchise spans 15 games, 2 music in the CrossBinge catalog.
Games
- Half-Life (1998)
- Half-Life (1998)
- Half-Life: Opposing Force (1999)
- Counter-Strike (2000)
- Half-Life: Blue Shift (2001)
- Half-Life: Decay (2001)
- Half-Life: Source (2004)
- Half-Life 2 (2004)
- Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (2004)
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (2005)
- Half-Life Deathmatch: Source (2006)
- Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006)
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007)
- Black Mesa (2020)
- Half-Life: Alyx (2020)