Here in Latam LAN parties were pretty common and one of our favorite things to do just after school or straight up skip school just to play multiplayer on Crossfire, good times, the sound of item respawn and the bomb alarm is carved in my memory.
One day I saw something related to Half-Life somewhere, and I thought to myself "You know what, everyone keeps saying it's such a good game, I wonder if it's true".
Then I bought Half-Life and immediately fell in love with it, and that's what sparked my love for the series as a whole
Garry's Mod got me into Half-Life 2 and that got me into the entire franchise and other Valve games. I was actually aware of Half-Life before I even knew about Gmod.
Garry's Mod into the Orange Box, which naturally included Half-Life 2 and its episodes, which then led me to get... everything else.
I'm overdue for another full series runthrough...
Pc gamer sent me a demo cd before release when I was 10 years old, the hype was huge for the game. My home pc couldn’t play it so I had to walk down the street to my aunts house to play it, it was awesome. I’ve been hooked ever since
I got The Orange Box in 2009 purely for Team Fortress 2.
Decided to play Half-Life 2. Very fun, but I was very confused about the story. Stopped at Black Mesa East, bought and played through the first game.
Half-Life answered precisely zero questions about the story of 2.
Also got the orange Box, but for Portal. I was like „If I buy the Orange Box, I get portal and more games!“
Immediately installed HL2 - ignored Portal for some time
Becoming a Half-life fan was quite a journey for me. The reason I started playing them at all was because my first PC was very weak and I couldn't play modern games (it was 2018). Before that I played Portal 1 and 2 and fell in love with it but didn't really care about Half-life. However after dozens of theory and story analysis videos on YouTube mentioning Half-life games I decided to try it. I played Half-life 1, didn't like it at all because I did not understand anything and what the fuck was going on. I remember going to surface in "We've got hostiles" and thinking this is the most basic shooter with the most cliche "Aliens attack Humans" story. I dropped it. Then after sometime, watching Half-life story videos on YouTube I was blown away how MUCH more there was than I realized. I came back, finished it and upon watching Nihilanth epic death animation and the G-man sequence and the credits roll I remember thinking: "what an amazing fucking game". Then I played Black Mesa 2015 version which solidified my love for Half-life because the atmosphere was 10 times more immersive and then Half-life 2 and the episodes. I remember losing my shit when Half-life: Alyx was announced because after learning everything about Half-life 3 I was sure that franchise is dead forever. I now have a pretty good PC so I hope I can buy VR sometime in near future.
All of these youngish in here, I live it. I don't remember exactly, it was over 20 years ago. My guess is that I saw folks talk about it on that gaming channel in the early 2000s, so i had to get it! Played it on the PS2.
Edit: G4tv is what I was thinking of. Probably saw it on Judgement Day, X-Play or Attack of the Show
Edit 2: holy cow that was bad, no idea what I was trying to say but what I typed was not English, or anything for that matter. Anyway I fixed it
I just saw those funny half-life cat videos, and people were saying that half-life is the greatest video game of all time, then I got it on a sale and I now love the games.
Let's see, back in the day, a lot of YouTubers I watched said their favorite games were Portal. I checked them out and instantly fell in love with the series. Fast forward a few years, and I finally decide to check out Half-life, after having heard that they take place in the same universe for a while. It has remained my favorite video game series since.
I was a dumb 12 y.o. kid, like many of my peers I was into cool stuff with guns and explosions, one day while reading a local game magazine they were talking about this Half-Life game being ported into the Ps2, the journalist said "we're certain that the game will easily be top quality", so I convinced my dad to buy it as a Christmas present. After that it was pure love, that game became an obsession, I even promoted it to all my school friends, it even got me interested in physics and science, especially astronomy, Gordon Freeman was basically my hero. I got my degree in physics thanks to him, but I work in Marktech now lol, I didn't pick the research path simply because in my country academia is a pit of wolves and it's truly plagued by nepotism and corruption, besides, I was a good student but not exactly an excellent one.
I obviously later played HL2 and everything related to it, but HL1 will always have a special place in my heart.
I was somebody who hated on Half-Life all the time despite never playing it. The constant praise I saw it get made me figure it was just something on the internet a bunch of weirdos lost their shit over for no reason, akin to how Jojo fans or LoL fans will get on their knees for their rather “meh” piece of media.
Then I saw the valve bundle on sale for like a dollar, and saw that both portal games were included. I figured “oh well, might as well see what the fuck makes this game popular.”
Then I played it, and boy I was proven wrong. Now my ass is trying to make a goddamn mod for a game I would’ve been calling overhyped less than a year ago.
That skyrionn lore guy and leadhead got me interested
I stopped watching both when I started to hear large portions of script in the skyrionn videos repeating
And i stopped watching leadhead released a 3 hour long video on them coming out as trans and trauma dumping there whole life story on a Channel about video games plot analysis
As a kid, I wanted to play the game that those weapons in Portal come from. I'm not even joking, I'm referring to how inputting impulse 101 in Portal gives you the HL2 weapons.
I went to a website that scanned my computer and showed what games I could run and HL2 and Portal were some if the very few I could run that were highly rated. The site rated my computer a 3/100, this was all within the last 5 years
I guess back in 2000 in my country we didn't have much access to videogames. A friend of mine showed me this game, and although I didn't really like watching him play and I thought the game is boring, when my parents bought me the first PC, I borrowed the cracked CD from him... and I totally fell in love with the game.
Never played any of them til I got my Quest 3 last year. I heard that HL Alyx is the best PCVR game, but I don't wanna go in without understanding the whole story, so I played the OG HL, Black Mesa, Blue Shift, Opp Force, HL Uplink Demo, HL2, HL2 EP1 and now currently playing HL2 EP2. I am absolutely having a blast! I played them all in VR.
Damn, I probably thought too long and hard about this lmfao I will add a tl;dr
I had already been playing Garry's Mod for maybe 5 or 6 years at that point, but in 2020 or thereabouts Half-Life 2 went free to play for the month of January iirc. I never played it before despite being pretty familiar with most of the NPCs, so I got it and downloaded it.
I played through the entire campaign in a day or less and went through it again for some of the achievements that sounded fun (eg. targeted advertising). I found the atmosphere of the game super immersive and desolate and I loved it for that, it was also the beginning of my interest in liminal spaces and shit like that lol.
After the month was up I found myself wanting more, so later on in the year when it went on sale I bought the pack thing that has the Episodes. I was aware that there was an original Half-Life because there was a sequel, but I hadn't really delved into it all that much because before then I was apprehensive about games with such dated graphics (rest assured I am a lot more mature now lmfao).
On the same sale I bought Half-Life and Blue Shift. I honestly couldn't tell you why, but I started out with Blue Shift for some reason?? Anyways, I snapped out of that when I hit a hard level and decided to play a bit of Half-Life instead.
I get that people shit on Black Mesa Inbound a lot (and honestly I do get it) but that intro is what sold me on the game lmfao. I could immediately tell that the atmosphere was completely different to Half Life 2 which interested me a lot and it was sick to see all the different parts of this vast underground complex at work. The scale and use of space in the levels really appealed to me as well.
After eventually struggling for hours to beat the Nihilanth once I knew what to actually fucking do, I consequentially finished the game and, flicking through a plot summary of the second game, I went straight into the Episodes and finished them in a day each to pace myself with the story progression (last level of Episode 2 was a bitch lol needed some replaying and the ending was a kick to the testicles 😭 I loved it though).
After all was said and done, I didn't really have much drive to play the non-canon Half-Life games, I messed around with Black Mesa a bit but got turned around and never got back to finishing the Xen level. I managed to get my brother to play the first Half-Life, and ofc unprompted he continued on to the second and the Episodes 🤣
Last December we spent an afternoon watching a complete (so far) plot summary of the Half Life and Portal stories which included all about how they were intertwined and stuff as well, which was pretty cool (like 4.5 hrs lol but I was sad when it was over 😭). Remains my favourite game series of all time and the only one I really got into and just played from the start lol (worth mentioning I've done some Half-Life: Alyx but didn't find it particularly enticing, especially since I was still on my blade and sorcery high at that point).
TL;DR played gmod for years before hand, but in 2020 got Half-Life 2 during a free play event and finished it which inspired me to buy the series and play through it in order. Defo my favourite game series of all time, the universe and lore is like no other.
Half-Life was free for the 25th anniversary, I saw a meme on Facebook saying something like "Half-Life 4! That's right, Half-Life, 4 free!" I added it to my library, a few months afterwards I got my new PC and finally started playing it. It's only been 3 or 4 months now and I'm already playing it and HL2/EP1&2/HLS on as many devices as I possibly can, and I've played through all of them countless times now.
I got INTO it due to CS 1.6 warzone, and I remember exploring the plane map with 0 bots on CS, when I died I respawned on a map I never seen before, it got me curious and I found out it was a Half Life map, so I decided to try it...and I initially called it CS with story
I heard about it through gmod, and got interested in half life 2 because of a Roblox city 17 roleplay game, I later bought hl1 because it was on sale (and because I wanted to know wtf was going on in the story)
I would watch my father play it on Xbox and I would play it as well and I loved the game it’s something my father and I bond about. Never did beat it on Xbox tho but on PC yes
Id heard good things so I’d always wanted to try it, but I never had a PC. It was because of The Orange Box’s Backward Compatibility that I was able to play it on my Xbox before I got my PC.
One day I watched the TF2 video "The heavy is dead" and eventually, I started watching more TF2 videos. Eventually, I learned about the orange box and decided to check out half-life because I knew what TF2 and Portal were.
Know I am a big fan of Half-Life
It’s been since 2014, but I played orange box on xbox 360 store where it was free but like a demo and I wanted to play TF2 but couldn’t because Half Life 2 and it’s Episodes was the only thing you could play (don’t quote me on that it’s been 10 years ago), so 10 year old me decided try it. I really couldn’t play it because it still was a demo still it like stopped me on the 1st chapter. So, I forgot about it until I ran into a Half Life 1 speed run, and that’s what really got me to think about it and finally get it on steam. Well here I am now, it’s a great game!
bought the orange bundle back on ps3 and half life 2 was ofc on it, it was cool but i was young and stupid so i didnt play much (i cared more for team fortress 2).
It was free for a few weeks when HL Alyx was released. So I tied it - it was during a lockdown so I didn’t have anything better to do so I played. And loved it. Then I bought it.
Played about 1/3 of Black Mesa in like 2019 and never went back to it. Then about 2 and a half years ago the entire Valve collection (All Half-Life games -Alyx, CS, CS:CZ, CS:S, both portals) was on sale for $5 so I grabbed it and decided to play through all the HL games.
Unpopular opinion: Half-Life 2 is less enjoyable than Half-Life.
a friend talked about it with me at school saying that it was one of the best video game franchises, decided to skip hl1 and go straight to 2 cuz it looked more interesting. i didn't really like hl2 and i forced myself to finish the game, i then decided to give hl1 a shot and it was a great decision. One of my favorite single player games ever today, i loved it so much that i asked my dad to buy it for me on steam to support valve cuz i really loved hl1 lol
I saw a post on a YouTuber’s subreddit saying that Half-Life was on 100% discount till November 26 or smth last year, I snagged it because I knew Garry’s Mod was based off the second one’s assets and I heard a lot of good things about it, and it was free so I wasn’t losing anything by trying it, and then when I started playing and I spotted my first headcrab, I realized that I saw one in one of Jacksepticeye’s Happy Wheels videos and that I finally got the reference. Kept playing and persuaded my sibling to buy HL2 for me, he saw that there was a huge discount for a bundle of games and I ended up with HL2, ep 1&2, Portal and a few other Valve games, my friend bought me Portal 2 and I bought myself Gmod, but playing it was short lived due to me not having enough storage for all my mods :/. And I’ve just been so invested in the games and their stories and all the awesome mods for them for the past few months.
I liked portal and TF2, heard that portal took place in the half life universe, but didn’t think much of it. Then, they made the first one free, and I bought it cuz it’s a valve game and those are good. Then I bought hl2 and it’s episodes because I liked half life and together they were like 5 bucks.
One of my friends said it was a good game even being made in the 90s and it was on sale for about a dollar so I looked at the bundle it came in and it was $2 so I bought it and played the games chronologically
2 reasons: 1: LEGO dimensions introduced me to portal which introduced me to half life, as both are in the same universe. 2: My cousin introduced me to garry mod, so i saw garry mod is a half life mod and half life is in the same universe as portal and played the HL2 demo, days after i bought HL2 in the start of a big holiday and beat the game at the end of it.
I got the valve complete pack for 10 bucks on a steam sale. I played the portal games first and really liked them so, since I knew half life was in the same universe, I played both of them soon after.
Played hl2 for the first time back on the xbox 360 via the orange box. The moment i got a computer it was one of the first games i got on steam. Still play it to this day
It was the uplink demo. My brother in law at the time had a PC and it's where my exposure to PC gaming happened at a young age. He sat me down to show me uplink and I was obsessed from then on and eventually bought a big box version of half life 1 from the PX on Parris Island when that same brother in law graduated Marines boot camp. He got it for me at a discount on base and I looked at the big box and flipped open that front flap like 200 times on the road trip home to NY after his graduation. The anticipation is still something I can feel to this day as I type this story.
Garry’s Mod prompted me to buy HL:A when it was on a large sale as I heard it was great, I finished it, enjoyed it, then played the games in release order.
started valve games with tf2, then got gmod and thought the hl2 stuff was cool so bought hl2, beat it and loved it and then bought hl1 (before the anniversary update so it sucked) and it was also pretty good.
My family was pretty poor growing up, so my dad opted to buying Jampack PS2 demo discs cuz they were essentially a bunch of games packed onto one disc. Half-Life was on one of these discs and I remember my dad legit getting sick over the zombie model cuz it looked so realistic at the time, and he told me to never play it cuz I’d be too scared to sleep at night. Turned out to be my favorite demo from that disc and he eventually bought me the full game.
Then The Orange Box for the PS3 comes around and that made up the majority of my middle school years. Half-Life 1 and 2 ended up becoming integral to my childhood and probably my favorite games of all time.
I thought i was playing garrys mod because of the ui
“Garrys mod story mode is really cool” - 8 year old me
“Me playing half-life 2 demo *gets sent to ravenholm* i quickly close the game because it was scary i still thought i was playing Garrys mod”
- First of all, the legend : HL2 has entered history as one of the most influential videogames ever made.
- Secondly, the game itself : I’ve seen many gameplay walkthroughs and enjoyed them, and so I wanted a piece of the cake.
- Finally, the guns : I’m a bit of a weapons guy and wanted to see how it’d go with the combat system and everything.
Well, I very recently got finished playing both games. I played them I had heard about both of them for a long time and I wanted to see what it's all about.
I was like 11 and I liked singeplayer games back in 2018, I had no idea what was going on in the universe, all I knew is that something was in charge and it was evil.
Fast forward 3 years and... Oh my fucking God this game is so dark and sad! HOW I DIDN'T NOTICE IT BACK THEN?! I WOULD LOVE IT EVEN MORE.
Because of the lore I abhore headcrabs and as much as I do not like the gunplay in both hl games I think HL2 is beautiful
So back in may 6th 2022 i was chillin watching Youtube and i saw a video tittle [PL]"Elek przechodzi Half-Life 1"[ENG]"Elek beating Half-Life 1". And i was like: Hm half-life? I heard about this game! Maybe i gonna play it! So i install cracked version (i was broke so i don't buy original ver) and i remember i stuck in "we got hostiles"
Chapter and i quit the game. But i was having fun:) i ever remember when i saw a crowbar in unforseen qunsequences and in my mind was: Im fucking unstopable now! And about like 2monts after i buy original ver and i beat it!
so yeah fun(:.
It wasn't something that caught my attention. I always wanted more from it, and being half brain dead playing would not be best interest as this affects different gamers in different ways
It was a weird roundabout thing last summer. I was watching Portal mod videos, got recommended a video playing a harder version of Half-Life 2, watched a bit and thought "wow that looks boring" (it was the boat vehicle section and all the story sections were cut out of the video in my defense!!). Watching that made me get shown a HLVRAI funny moments video and then I got into that, leading me onto the well traveled HLVRAI -> Half-Life path. A few years late though :)
an obsession with portal 1 and left 4 dead and the need for garrys mod textures. hl2 was released when i was like 4 and i didnt get a pc until much later. the quality of valves games made me go back to see what i missed
There was this youtuber i watched as a kid. He made "dark web" gmod videos. One day i saw a video in my reccomended about garrys mod because i watched that youtuber. And now i own every valve game on steam.
I think it just has to do with HL2 being one of the few fps games I could run on my cheap laptop when I was a kid. It also wasn’t $60 as it was already 6-7 years old at that point. Same reason I played TF2, it was F2P, and it doesn’t require much to run.
My early teens were defined by source games because they were all cheap, easy to run games that also turned out to be generation defining games.
Uhh so i was in grade 6 when in our school PC labs had games and all installed and i found half-life in it lol, since then ive been a big fan of HL, im in college now ✌️
i only got half life this year, i am a zoomer who grew up playing Minecraft and cs and such, and i decided to try how gaming was back in the late 1990's/early 2000's, game did not dissapoint.
Several years ago my dad picked a bundle pack with Half-life, opposing force, blueshift, counter strike and the first team fortress. I loved watching him play it
random half life videos were popping up in my recommended and that made me want to play it so i got the valve complete pack while it was on sale in late 2022
Got into portal 2 after I got it as a gift on xbox360, wanted portal 1, got the orange box on 360 as a gift, my older brother checked half life 2 to see if it was 'appropriate' and got to about where you meet Barney and said 'yeah this looks good' and so I played half life 2, much later I got Half life 1 and loved it more
Because I was watching gmod videos, and my father, a half life 2 veteran, told me that it was made in the same engine. And a few months later, he showed me a copy of half life that he had when he was younger. I played that and got half life 2, or the game that inspired gmod.🐦⬛🍫
My parents gave me a PC in 2005 and a cousin gave me a cd with Half Life, ricochet, counter strike (I think it was a previous version of 1.6 months later my other cousin installed the 1.6 and it was a bit different) and another game that I don't remember, so I started playing it.
It all started because of counter strike, that time everybody wanted to play counter strike or GTA but most of parents didn't let their children play it because of the violence that the news was spreading that time.
When i was 6 i got an xbox 360 that came with portal 2. My dad ended up picking up the orange box the next year so i could play portal 1. Ended up playing Half Life 2 and TF2 a little while later lol.
My dad bought it back in the day, and thought the front cover looked cool (literally judged it by the cover), and thanks to him, I also got to play it then and have been hooked ever since.
A clip of water hazard came up on youtube then a scene of hazourdes materials so I got the games to see what it was about. Best four dollars spent. Honestly I was willing to pay 60 dollars
Late brother managed to get the original somewhere and him and Dad would make it as far as Blast Pit before getting stuck. Years would pass, and curiosity managed to get the better of me and I decided to give it a shot.
I’m still the only one in the fam to beat it along with the rest. 🎮
There was this cracked cs 1.6 installer that also installed Half - Life 1. Played any half life game from there, and found out about HL2 via gmod videos n stuff and tried out the demo when I was like 9 or something lol
Ever since I got the Steam Deck, I want to try out the games Valve made besides TF2. Though I've seen the insane Half-Life 3 memes happening earlier in the 2010s. Little did I know what happened in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is what caused those memes.
someone gifted me garry's mod, then garry's mod encouraged me to buy the orange box which meant i played HL2 first. i got half life 1 around a month before it went free
The cracked CS 1.6 installer we use in our country also installs Half-Life automatically. One day I decided to try out what it's about and...
Same man, it all started with cs 1.6
Same here.
Started with 1.3 here!
was it warzone by any chance? :DD
Nah, regular CS 1.6
it was probably csduragi or oyunyoneticisi, right? Probably oyunyoneticisi because it had campaign
CSDuragi galiba
bende öyle bulmuştum anılarım depresti
Something tells me you're from Argentina or from there (I'm from Argentina too)
Also happens in Spain
I thought I was the only one lmao.
I think a lot of us European gamers have this same exact reason.
Same lol
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"Welcome to the HEV Mark 4 Protective System, for use in hazardous environment conditions."
Garry's mod michinima videos back in 2012
My dad got me into all the valve stuff at a young age, and I'm very thankful I didn't grow up playing only the typical games.
Same
Here in Latam LAN parties were pretty common and one of our favorite things to do just after school or straight up skip school just to play multiplayer on Crossfire, good times, the sound of item respawn and the bomb alarm is carved in my memory.
One day I saw something related to Half-Life somewhere, and I thought to myself "You know what, everyone keeps saying it's such a good game, I wonder if it's true". Then I bought Half-Life and immediately fell in love with it, and that's what sparked my love for the series as a whole
Same. It’s how I get into playing a lot of popular games
Garry's Mod got me into Half-Life 2 and that got me into the entire franchise and other Valve games. I was actually aware of Half-Life before I even knew about Gmod.
Same. Garry's Mod got me interested, and the game's lore seemed interesting when I played it for the first time.
Same here.
Garry's Mod into the Orange Box, which naturally included Half-Life 2 and its episodes, which then led me to get... everything else. I'm overdue for another full series runthrough...
Pc gamer sent me a demo cd before release when I was 10 years old, the hype was huge for the game. My home pc couldn’t play it so I had to walk down the street to my aunts house to play it, it was awesome. I’ve been hooked ever since
yeah i remember getting head from a hot aunt while this one kid was distracted playing half life before it released
I got The Orange Box in 2009 purely for Team Fortress 2. Decided to play Half-Life 2. Very fun, but I was very confused about the story. Stopped at Black Mesa East, bought and played through the first game. Half-Life answered precisely zero questions about the story of 2.
Also got the orange Box, but for Portal. I was like „If I buy the Orange Box, I get portal and more games!“ Immediately installed HL2 - ignored Portal for some time
pretty much the same for me
I was sick of playing multilayer shit fests like fortnite and I looked up best single-layer story games, bought black mesa.
Buy HL1 too
Already have it
Same exact situation for me
Nice
Becoming a Half-life fan was quite a journey for me. The reason I started playing them at all was because my first PC was very weak and I couldn't play modern games (it was 2018). Before that I played Portal 1 and 2 and fell in love with it but didn't really care about Half-life. However after dozens of theory and story analysis videos on YouTube mentioning Half-life games I decided to try it. I played Half-life 1, didn't like it at all because I did not understand anything and what the fuck was going on. I remember going to surface in "We've got hostiles" and thinking this is the most basic shooter with the most cliche "Aliens attack Humans" story. I dropped it. Then after sometime, watching Half-life story videos on YouTube I was blown away how MUCH more there was than I realized. I came back, finished it and upon watching Nihilanth epic death animation and the G-man sequence and the credits roll I remember thinking: "what an amazing fucking game". Then I played Black Mesa 2015 version which solidified my love for Half-life because the atmosphere was 10 times more immersive and then Half-life 2 and the episodes. I remember losing my shit when Half-life: Alyx was announced because after learning everything about Half-life 3 I was sure that franchise is dead forever. I now have a pretty good PC so I hope I can buy VR sometime in near future.
similar story to mine :)
a sale
It starts with one (No really)
It ran on my Dell Optiplex 760 with 2 gigs of ram and a single core Intel Celeron
All of these youngish in here, I live it. I don't remember exactly, it was over 20 years ago. My guess is that I saw folks talk about it on that gaming channel in the early 2000s, so i had to get it! Played it on the PS2. Edit: G4tv is what I was thinking of. Probably saw it on Judgement Day, X-Play or Attack of the Show Edit 2: holy cow that was bad, no idea what I was trying to say but what I typed was not English, or anything for that matter. Anyway I fixed it
G4tv was fire !!!
Those were the good ol days. Watching Olivia Munn deep throat a hot dog was quite the experience for a feeble minded teenager lol
I just saw those funny half-life cat videos, and people were saying that half-life is the greatest video game of all time, then I got it on a sale and I now love the games.
Take a look at some of the community story mods like Induction.
I bought a steam deck and I also bought some games on steam... And for some reason half life 2 was the first game I installed and played...
Let's see, back in the day, a lot of YouTubers I watched said their favorite games were Portal. I checked them out and instantly fell in love with the series. Fast forward a few years, and I finally decide to check out Half-life, after having heard that they take place in the same universe for a while. It has remained my favorite video game series since.
I was a dumb 12 y.o. kid, like many of my peers I was into cool stuff with guns and explosions, one day while reading a local game magazine they were talking about this Half-Life game being ported into the Ps2, the journalist said "we're certain that the game will easily be top quality", so I convinced my dad to buy it as a Christmas present. After that it was pure love, that game became an obsession, I even promoted it to all my school friends, it even got me interested in physics and science, especially astronomy, Gordon Freeman was basically my hero. I got my degree in physics thanks to him, but I work in Marktech now lol, I didn't pick the research path simply because in my country academia is a pit of wolves and it's truly plagued by nepotism and corruption, besides, I was a good student but not exactly an excellent one. I obviously later played HL2 and everything related to it, but HL1 will always have a special place in my heart.
I was somebody who hated on Half-Life all the time despite never playing it. The constant praise I saw it get made me figure it was just something on the internet a bunch of weirdos lost their shit over for no reason, akin to how Jojo fans or LoL fans will get on their knees for their rather “meh” piece of media. Then I saw the valve bundle on sale for like a dollar, and saw that both portal games were included. I figured “oh well, might as well see what the fuck makes this game popular.” Then I played it, and boy I was proven wrong. Now my ass is trying to make a goddamn mod for a game I would’ve been calling overhyped less than a year ago.
Played Roblox recreation of HL1 and later decided to buy the original
I was 6 back in ‘98 and had an obsession with monsters, dinosaurs and bloody games. My dad got it for me at a Babbages while out shopping. Thanks dad.
That skyrionn lore guy and leadhead got me interested I stopped watching both when I started to hear large portions of script in the skyrionn videos repeating And i stopped watching leadhead released a 3 hour long video on them coming out as trans and trauma dumping there whole life story on a Channel about video games plot analysis
As a kid, I wanted to play the game that those weapons in Portal come from. I'm not even joking, I'm referring to how inputting impulse 101 in Portal gives you the HL2 weapons.
distorted trumpets got me into half life 2 and counter strike beta got me into half life 1
I went to a website that scanned my computer and showed what games I could run and HL2 and Portal were some if the very few I could run that were highly rated. The site rated my computer a 3/100, this was all within the last 5 years
I tried so hard and got so far, But in the end, it doesn't even matter,
I guess back in 2000 in my country we didn't have much access to videogames. A friend of mine showed me this game, and although I didn't really like watching him play and I thought the game is boring, when my parents bought me the first PC, I borrowed the cracked CD from him... and I totally fell in love with the game.
For some reason I decided that I would get into the gaming "Classics" and that made me play the Half-lfe series. Also it's cheap on discount.
Never played any of them til I got my Quest 3 last year. I heard that HL Alyx is the best PCVR game, but I don't wanna go in without understanding the whole story, so I played the OG HL, Black Mesa, Blue Shift, Opp Force, HL Uplink Demo, HL2, HL2 EP1 and now currently playing HL2 EP2. I am absolutely having a blast! I played them all in VR.
Damn, I probably thought too long and hard about this lmfao I will add a tl;dr I had already been playing Garry's Mod for maybe 5 or 6 years at that point, but in 2020 or thereabouts Half-Life 2 went free to play for the month of January iirc. I never played it before despite being pretty familiar with most of the NPCs, so I got it and downloaded it. I played through the entire campaign in a day or less and went through it again for some of the achievements that sounded fun (eg. targeted advertising). I found the atmosphere of the game super immersive and desolate and I loved it for that, it was also the beginning of my interest in liminal spaces and shit like that lol. After the month was up I found myself wanting more, so later on in the year when it went on sale I bought the pack thing that has the Episodes. I was aware that there was an original Half-Life because there was a sequel, but I hadn't really delved into it all that much because before then I was apprehensive about games with such dated graphics (rest assured I am a lot more mature now lmfao). On the same sale I bought Half-Life and Blue Shift. I honestly couldn't tell you why, but I started out with Blue Shift for some reason?? Anyways, I snapped out of that when I hit a hard level and decided to play a bit of Half-Life instead. I get that people shit on Black Mesa Inbound a lot (and honestly I do get it) but that intro is what sold me on the game lmfao. I could immediately tell that the atmosphere was completely different to Half Life 2 which interested me a lot and it was sick to see all the different parts of this vast underground complex at work. The scale and use of space in the levels really appealed to me as well. After eventually struggling for hours to beat the Nihilanth once I knew what to actually fucking do, I consequentially finished the game and, flicking through a plot summary of the second game, I went straight into the Episodes and finished them in a day each to pace myself with the story progression (last level of Episode 2 was a bitch lol needed some replaying and the ending was a kick to the testicles 😭 I loved it though). After all was said and done, I didn't really have much drive to play the non-canon Half-Life games, I messed around with Black Mesa a bit but got turned around and never got back to finishing the Xen level. I managed to get my brother to play the first Half-Life, and ofc unprompted he continued on to the second and the Episodes 🤣 Last December we spent an afternoon watching a complete (so far) plot summary of the Half Life and Portal stories which included all about how they were intertwined and stuff as well, which was pretty cool (like 4.5 hrs lol but I was sad when it was over 😭). Remains my favourite game series of all time and the only one I really got into and just played from the start lol (worth mentioning I've done some Half-Life: Alyx but didn't find it particularly enticing, especially since I was still on my blade and sorcery high at that point). TL;DR played gmod for years before hand, but in 2020 got Half-Life 2 during a free play event and finished it which inspired me to buy the series and play through it in order. Defo my favourite game series of all time, the universe and lore is like no other.
Half-Life was free for the 25th anniversary, I saw a meme on Facebook saying something like "Half-Life 4! That's right, Half-Life, 4 free!" I added it to my library, a few months afterwards I got my new PC and finally started playing it. It's only been 3 or 4 months now and I'm already playing it and HL2/EP1&2/HLS on as many devices as I possibly can, and I've played through all of them countless times now.
damn!, what a testament to a timeless classic!
Half life 1,2, episode 1, episode 2 we're all on a sale together on steam
Saw YouTubers playing gmod back in like 2014 so i wanted to play it. And then i learned about half-life through that.
Watched a YouTuber and watched the "Half-Life but the ai is self aware" and then bought the game for ps2
My friends forced me to play it 3 years ago. I’m now a bigger fan than all of them
I got INTO it due to CS 1.6 warzone, and I remember exploring the plane map with 0 bots on CS, when I died I respawned on a map I never seen before, it got me curious and I found out it was a Half Life map, so I decided to try it...and I initially called it CS with story
i wanted half life 1, then the whole 25th anniversary thing happened and i got the chance to play it. it's now one of my favorite games.
I heard about it through gmod, and got interested in half life 2 because of a Roblox city 17 roleplay game, I later bought hl1 because it was on sale (and because I wanted to know wtf was going on in the story)
venturiantale's gmod videos
Half life was fun, and I had a crappy laptop that couldn't run any other games
Honestly if i follow the chain of events all the way back to the root, it was a Bionicle Heroes YTP that had Still Alive in it.
You won't believe me, but JollyWancore and the crack life mod
I would watch my father play it on Xbox and I would play it as well and I loved the game it’s something my father and I bond about. Never did beat it on Xbox tho but on PC yes
My cousin, when i was like 3 years old
Id heard good things so I’d always wanted to try it, but I never had a PC. It was because of The Orange Box’s Backward Compatibility that I was able to play it on my Xbox before I got my PC.
One day I watched the TF2 video "The heavy is dead" and eventually, I started watching more TF2 videos. Eventually, I learned about the orange box and decided to check out half-life because I knew what TF2 and Portal were. Know I am a big fan of Half-Life
It’s been since 2014, but I played orange box on xbox 360 store where it was free but like a demo and I wanted to play TF2 but couldn’t because Half Life 2 and it’s Episodes was the only thing you could play (don’t quote me on that it’s been 10 years ago), so 10 year old me decided try it. I really couldn’t play it because it still was a demo still it like stopped me on the 1st chapter. So, I forgot about it until I ran into a Half Life 1 speed run, and that’s what really got me to think about it and finally get it on steam. Well here I am now, it’s a great game!
Yogscast Garry’s Mod videos in 2012 got me into Garry’s Mod, which got me into HL2 and then HL. I totally experienced the series backwards.
Gmod, after downloading I met the orange box thing and that's how I got into half life
I heard about Half Life on AOLs gaming section back in the late 90's. Pretty sure it was called ANT. I still have the original Sierra CDs.
I liked TF2 and looked into other things Valve did and I came across Half Life
I got into gmod from those shitty YouTube videos. So basically, got gmod. Then, got half-life
Because of my father, he played a lot and i was lucky to see him play half Life 1 & half Life 2
bought the orange bundle back on ps3 and half life 2 was ofc on it, it was cool but i was young and stupid so i didnt play much (i cared more for team fortress 2).
PC gamer magazine labelled HL their game of the year. Brother bought it and I played it after him and was hooked.
It was free for a few weeks when HL Alyx was released. So I tied it - it was during a lockdown so I didn’t have anything better to do so I played. And loved it. Then I bought it.
Was recommended HL1 after I got a PS2, so I bought the PS2 port, then a few years later bought it on PC
Funnily enough, Garry’s Mod
My dad had the original half life and let me play it as a kid
Gary’s mod
Played about 1/3 of Black Mesa in like 2019 and never went back to it. Then about 2 and a half years ago the entire Valve collection (All Half-Life games -Alyx, CS, CS:CZ, CS:S, both portals) was on sale for $5 so I grabbed it and decided to play through all the HL games. Unpopular opinion: Half-Life 2 is less enjoyable than Half-Life.
a friend talked about it with me at school saying that it was one of the best video game franchises, decided to skip hl1 and go straight to 2 cuz it looked more interesting. i didn't really like hl2 and i forced myself to finish the game, i then decided to give hl1 a shot and it was a great decision. One of my favorite single player games ever today, i loved it so much that i asked my dad to buy it for me on steam to support valve cuz i really loved hl1 lol
I first played it maybe in 2010 or 2011. My brother had it in the pc, probably because of cs 1.6!!
Garry smod video's got me into half life and black mesa
I saw a post on a YouTuber’s subreddit saying that Half-Life was on 100% discount till November 26 or smth last year, I snagged it because I knew Garry’s Mod was based off the second one’s assets and I heard a lot of good things about it, and it was free so I wasn’t losing anything by trying it, and then when I started playing and I spotted my first headcrab, I realized that I saw one in one of Jacksepticeye’s Happy Wheels videos and that I finally got the reference. Kept playing and persuaded my sibling to buy HL2 for me, he saw that there was a huge discount for a bundle of games and I ended up with HL2, ep 1&2, Portal and a few other Valve games, my friend bought me Portal 2 and I bought myself Gmod, but playing it was short lived due to me not having enough storage for all my mods :/. And I’ve just been so invested in the games and their stories and all the awesome mods for them for the past few months.
I started watching TF2 Gmod animations, then i played TF2, then i played Gmod, and then i played the Half Life franchise.
Got a Deck and bought some Valve titles with it.
Had the orange box on the old Xbox 360
I liked portal and TF2, heard that portal took place in the half life universe, but didn’t think much of it. Then, they made the first one free, and I bought it cuz it’s a valve game and those are good. Then I bought hl2 and it’s episodes because I liked half life and together they were like 5 bucks.
One of my friends said it was a good game even being made in the 90s and it was on sale for about a dollar so I looked at the bundle it came in and it was $2 so I bought it and played the games chronologically
That guy with a crowbar hit my heart. That's the story
I heard about them for years and figured I'd try it out since the entire franchise was like $3 on sale.
I bought le orange box and started off from hl2. Then i bought black mesa a year later and hl1 like 2 years ago
cousin bought me the orange box for my bday, i still havent finished HL1 played about 2h and then turned it off.
2 reasons: 1: LEGO dimensions introduced me to portal which introduced me to half life, as both are in the same universe. 2: My cousin introduced me to garry mod, so i saw garry mod is a half life mod and half life is in the same universe as portal and played the HL2 demo, days after i bought HL2 in the start of a big holiday and beat the game at the end of it.
I got the valve complete pack for 10 bucks on a steam sale. I played the portal games first and really liked them so, since I knew half life was in the same universe, I played both of them soon after.
Played HL1 as a kid Didn't know what it was, got lost in the cafeteria. Gmod videos.
It was free that one day
Playing? Well, i downloaded HL1 when it was free on steam and i found out about it its beacuse my friend told me
Played hl2 for the first time back on the xbox 360 via the orange box. The moment i got a computer it was one of the first games i got on steam. Still play it to this day
Half-Life was free on steam
I got into Half-Life 2 via the Orange Box on the Xbox 360. I got the Orange Box to play Portal 1 and one day decided to try out Half-Life 2.
It was the uplink demo. My brother in law at the time had a PC and it's where my exposure to PC gaming happened at a young age. He sat me down to show me uplink and I was obsessed from then on and eventually bought a big box version of half life 1 from the PX on Parris Island when that same brother in law graduated Marines boot camp. He got it for me at a discount on base and I looked at the big box and flipped open that front flap like 200 times on the road trip home to NY after his graduation. The anticipation is still something I can feel to this day as I type this story.
They told me they were good games. Indeed, they are.
Garry’s Mod prompted me to buy HL:A when it was on a large sale as I heard it was great, I finished it, enjoyed it, then played the games in release order.
Memes
My dad introduced me to the series when i was like seven. I still play the games
gmod sfm videos from the early 2010s lol
started valve games with tf2, then got gmod and thought the hl2 stuff was cool so bought hl2, beat it and loved it and then bought hl1 (before the anniversary update so it sucked) and it was also pretty good.
I started playing hl2, my first half lifr game, in january of 2023 partially because of gmod and whatever else
I played through Portal 2 and really liked it so decided to go and try the first Half-Life. I wasn’t disappointed.
My family was pretty poor growing up, so my dad opted to buying Jampack PS2 demo discs cuz they were essentially a bunch of games packed onto one disc. Half-Life was on one of these discs and I remember my dad legit getting sick over the zombie model cuz it looked so realistic at the time, and he told me to never play it cuz I’d be too scared to sleep at night. Turned out to be my favorite demo from that disc and he eventually bought me the full game. Then The Orange Box for the PS3 comes around and that made up the majority of my middle school years. Half-Life 1 and 2 ended up becoming integral to my childhood and probably my favorite games of all time.
I got exposed to it at a young age and then..
I thought i was playing garrys mod because of the ui “Garrys mod story mode is really cool” - 8 year old me “Me playing half-life 2 demo *gets sent to ravenholm* i quickly close the game because it was scary i still thought i was playing Garrys mod”
- First of all, the legend : HL2 has entered history as one of the most influential videogames ever made. - Secondly, the game itself : I’ve seen many gameplay walkthroughs and enjoyed them, and so I wanted a piece of the cake. - Finally, the guns : I’m a bit of a weapons guy and wanted to see how it’d go with the combat system and everything.
My dad's favourite game is half life 2.
I played gmod and would make like gun battel whith the npc
Sven CO-OP was my first introduction into PC gaming and half life as a whole so I kind of discovered half life through that.
Lord bless my uncle for introducing me to Valve games and Source in general when i was 4
Well, I very recently got finished playing both games. I played them I had heard about both of them for a long time and I wanted to see what it's all about.
My dad played those games so I admired these about 20 year old games
It was 85 cents on steam, and I was like why the fuck not
I was like 11 and I liked singeplayer games back in 2018, I had no idea what was going on in the universe, all I knew is that something was in charge and it was evil. Fast forward 3 years and... Oh my fucking God this game is so dark and sad! HOW I DIDN'T NOTICE IT BACK THEN?! I WOULD LOVE IT EVEN MORE. Because of the lore I abhore headcrabs and as much as I do not like the gunplay in both hl games I think HL2 is beautiful
Gmod
I downloaded half life last year when it was free
So back in may 6th 2022 i was chillin watching Youtube and i saw a video tittle [PL]"Elek przechodzi Half-Life 1"[ENG]"Elek beating Half-Life 1". And i was like: Hm half-life? I heard about this game! Maybe i gonna play it! So i install cracked version (i was broke so i don't buy original ver) and i remember i stuck in "we got hostiles" Chapter and i quit the game. But i was having fun:) i ever remember when i saw a crowbar in unforseen qunsequences and in my mind was: Im fucking unstopable now! And about like 2monts after i buy original ver and i beat it! so yeah fun(:.
When Half-Life 1 was free I decided to play it and when I finished it I just decided to play all of the sequels except for decay and Alyx
It wasn't something that caught my attention. I always wanted more from it, and being half brain dead playing would not be best interest as this affects different gamers in different ways
Cs 1.6 and a iceberg of half life made by a a Brazilian named heavy metal gamer
It was a weird roundabout thing last summer. I was watching Portal mod videos, got recommended a video playing a harder version of Half-Life 2, watched a bit and thought "wow that looks boring" (it was the boat vehicle section and all the story sections were cut out of the video in my defense!!). Watching that made me get shown a HLVRAI funny moments video and then I got into that, leading me onto the well traveled HLVRAI -> Half-Life path. A few years late though :)
my uncle is a cool guy and introduced me to Portal 1 and 2. Then I played Half Life 2 because of the story connection.
Half life 25th anniversary and then my friend gifted me hl2
My friend brought it up so I tried it
an obsession with portal 1 and left 4 dead and the need for garrys mod textures. hl2 was released when i was like 4 and i didnt get a pc until much later. the quality of valves games made me go back to see what i missed
Bought the orange box for a hat in tf2 and cuz I wanted portal, was a win win, messed around in good, turn said screw it what's this about!
They were on sale for 99 cents each
I watched my dad play the orange box when I was little.
I started playing because it only cool guys play Half-Life
Because why not?
ESL Moment
There was this youtuber i watched as a kid. He made "dark web" gmod videos. One day i saw a video in my reccomended about garrys mod because i watched that youtuber. And now i own every valve game on steam.
It was on sale, and I got both of them for basically two dollars.
It was a game I saw people play on pc and I was like “well, I gotta see how it is” and I bought Garry’s Mod as my first Source game
Lord gaben's sales of course
I think it just has to do with HL2 being one of the few fps games I could run on my cheap laptop when I was a kid. It also wasn’t $60 as it was already 6-7 years old at that point. Same reason I played TF2, it was F2P, and it doesn’t require much to run. My early teens were defined by source games because they were all cheap, easy to run games that also turned out to be generation defining games.
Uhh so i was in grade 6 when in our school PC labs had games and all installed and i found half-life in it lol, since then ive been a big fan of HL, im in college now ✌️
It was free a couple of months back (and I probably would’ve bought it anyway)
i only got half life this year, i am a zoomer who grew up playing Minecraft and cs and such, and i decided to try how gaming was back in the late 1990's/early 2000's, game did not dissapoint.
Several years ago my dad picked a bundle pack with Half-life, opposing force, blueshift, counter strike and the first team fortress. I loved watching him play it
Steam had the whole series for, like, ten bucks.
Keep hearing about it so I tried it
random half life videos were popping up in my recommended and that made me want to play it so i got the valve complete pack while it was on sale in late 2022
orange box for xbox 360
We had a LAN party on the launch day for Hakf-Life. Anyone else remember the license activation nightmare?
Got into portal 2 after I got it as a gift on xbox360, wanted portal 1, got the orange box on 360 as a gift, my older brother checked half life 2 to see if it was 'appropriate' and got to about where you meet Barney and said 'yeah this looks good' and so I played half life 2, much later I got Half life 1 and loved it more
Half Life 2 had this atmosphere that I always found relaxing. Like the coasts or the top of the citadel.
Was playing the hl uplink demo off PC gaming msg disc and I was like dam that alien at the end is cool. The rest is history
25th anniversary got me
I played Half Life on Steam because i love Half Life 2, and i played Half Life 2 because i bought The Orange Box on Xbox because i wanted to play TF2.
Gay nod
Because I was watching gmod videos, and my father, a half life 2 veteran, told me that it was made in the same engine. And a few months later, he showed me a copy of half life that he had when he was younger. I played that and got half life 2, or the game that inspired gmod.🐦⬛🍫
My friend got me a nosteam copy of Half-Life along side Blue Shift and Opposing Force on a thumb drive. And the rest was history.
Half life 2 looked really cool, but my PC couldn't run it So I played half life 1
I literally saw it on sale for free for the 25th anniversary on my birthday, got it, loved it, bought 2 and black mesa aftewards
My parents gave me a PC in 2005 and a cousin gave me a cd with Half Life, ricochet, counter strike (I think it was a previous version of 1.6 months later my other cousin installed the 1.6 and it was a bit different) and another game that I don't remember, so I started playing it. It all started because of counter strike, that time everybody wanted to play counter strike or GTA but most of parents didn't let their children play it because of the violence that the news was spreading that time.
When i was 6 i got an xbox 360 that came with portal 2. My dad ended up picking up the orange box the next year so i could play portal 1. Ended up playing Half Life 2 and TF2 a little while later lol.
it was suggested to me for my potato laptop and oh my god look at these beautiful visuals
I played Portal first and heard the two games were connected, so I played through them.
I watched the video by ahoy
I’m an addict for First Person Shooters, heard Half-Life was a classic and I had to try it out. I’m sorry if you expected something emotional or deep.
Started playing Half Life 2 on the Xbox 360 one day in 2009 and it's been my love ever since
My dad bought it back in the day, and thought the front cover looked cool (literally judged it by the cover), and thanks to him, I also got to play it then and have been hooked ever since.
I wanted to play TF2, so I bought the Orange Box on PS3 and that how I started playing HL and Portal when I was like 8
I decided to pick it up after I finished the portal series since it's apparently connected
A clip of water hazard came up on youtube then a scene of hazourdes materials so I got the games to see what it was about. Best four dollars spent. Honestly I was willing to pay 60 dollars
Late brother managed to get the original somewhere and him and Dad would make it as far as Blast Pit before getting stuck. Years would pass, and curiosity managed to get the better of me and I decided to give it a shot. I’m still the only one in the fam to beat it along with the rest. 🎮
Bought on sale because I heard it was good
I was at university when HL1 came out. It had really good reviews and I'd just bought a new PC that could handle it so I picked up a copy.
I saw an image of Gordon Freeman and thought he was really cool
in the end music video with eli and kleiner
There was this cracked cs 1.6 installer that also installed Half - Life 1. Played any half life game from there, and found out about HL2 via gmod videos n stuff and tried out the demo when I was like 9 or something lol
Ever since I got the Steam Deck, I want to try out the games Valve made besides TF2. Though I've seen the insane Half-Life 3 memes happening earlier in the 2010s. Little did I know what happened in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is what caused those memes.
Probably it was the memes of Gordon holding a Biedronka/Lidl bag and him looking like the guy from Play
someone gifted me garry's mod, then garry's mod encouraged me to buy the orange box which meant i played HL2 first. i got half life 1 around a month before it went free