I saw my dad playing it roughly around the day it came out (I just know because I had a power Ranger Halloween outfit still.) I watched him play it and I started playing it and beat it before him.
We have bought it over and over within different bundles, I saw Steam and said screw that I dont want to lose any more cds so I bought the Half Life 1,2 set when It was like 60% off or something and a little while later here I am.
I didn’t purchase Half Life 1 yet, but I’ve seen gameplay. I was inspired to buy Half Life 2 because I saw a Mac vs PC video about it, and I also saw something on machinima about “JOHN FREEMAN.” I looked it up and got it off steam with Gmod.
Its $10 and $10 for the source one (for some reason)
I say you buy it and play it while you wait for the remake of it.
You can get HL and the spinoffs for $15.
First time I ever heard of Half-Life was around late 2000. I was at a friend’s house after school and he showed me the game on his computer. Asked him for a copy and he burned one for me.
I bought BS when it came out. I didn’t get a legal copy of HL until last year though, when I registered my BS key on Steam and for some reason they gave me the whole Platinum Pack.
Lucky.
That’s a load of BS if you ask me 
I watched my grandfather play Half-Life years ago when I was 6? Yeah, well, I stumbled upon Half-Life 2 around '06 and then followed the story and rediscovered the all too familiar game, Half-Life.
In case anyone was wondering, the order in which I played the series was HL2: Ep1, Blue Shift, Half-Life 2, Opposing Forces, Half-Life and then HL2: EP2. The order in which I got my hands on them.
I bought the Orange Box, only really intending to play Portal and TF2. As far as I was concerned, HL2 was just another generic FPS that held no interest for me. Then, after beating Portal twice, and being without internet at my Grandparent’s house (thus no TF2), I decided to just try it out.
Best decision of my life.
I just want to give ya a big 'ol pat on the back. 
I was walking around Best Buy and saw the HL box. My dad was big into FPS so I got it for him for Christmas. About 6 months later he let me borrow it and I was hooked! My wife heard me talking about it and when BS and OP4 came out she bought them for me. She bought me HL2, I bought myself EP 1, and she bought the OB. Just waiting patiently now for the other games to come out…
I watched my brother play it after I got home from school when I was younger. I didn’t understand much of the plot, mainly because I only saw it starting with OAR, and only parts of the game after that, but I liked it a lot.
I was really into the PS2 when I was just a wee child. My dad and I were walking through the video store, and we passed by the game section. A game that filled one shelf was being rented but there was one or two left. “Half-Life” was the game. My dad told me he used to play it with his freind on his computer some years ago.
Let alone my Dad playing it, the name of the game itself brought me great interest. I rented it and i fell in love with it.
This happened probably around 8 years ago. And now here I am posting on a forum in which is modifying the epic game in today’s graphics. Amazing.
I had purchased SiN, but it ran slow as all hell on my old PC. When Electronics Botique (when it still was that) allowed full refunds in store credit, I purchased Half-Life in its place. I got SiN to run after getting another PC maybe 3 years later. I never really let Half-Life go since then.
In 1999, a friend gave me a bunch of old demo CDs from game magazines and the like. Three of these featured Half-Life in some way, but no playable demos. My first taste of Uplink was done over a 28.8kbps modem and took a day to complete.
Honestly, I didn’t even buy Half-Life for the game. That friend I mentioned already had it, and was hooked on TFC like an addict. (he said CS was “no fun”) This got me interested in it, but as a gateway to finding out what all the fuss was about with TFC.
Later, I found myself with some extra scratch while browsing through Target. The GOTY edition finally dropped below thirty bucks, so I snapped it up.
The following week was a careful balance of work, play, eat and (sometimes) sleep. One night I went for five hours straight and could only afford two hours of sleep until I had to leave for work, but it all seemed worth it. I had lost all interest in TFC or any other mods for that time. The story, the plot twists and all the suspense were positively sublime for a first-person shooter.
I just could not stop until I defeated Nihilanth. Alas, my old Pentium (no bloody II, III or 4… just Pentium) and PCI video card were barely up to the task. With every re-build of my PC, I would install, patch and play it again just to witness the best parts in higher resolution and at faster framerates. When Steam came along, I was thrilled to see that my original CD-keys unlocked the entire series.
Nowadays, my dual-core x64 machine and GeForce 7 series eat it like a snack, but it’s just as good as when I gladly waited 30 seconds to load the next map.
I even shelled-out for HL: Source when it came available, and while the source engine effects and ragdolls were neat, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. Then I learned about BM and I’ve been a fan ever since.
I had heard about half-life, and how it was a decent game. When it was on sale though Steam for 99c, I bought 6 copies of it and gave them away to people, as well as playing it myself
I then bought HL2 and the EPs during the Christmas sale later that year and have since been attached to the series.
My friend’s cousin came over to his house when I spent a night there and had The Orange Box with him for 360. We played a bit of TF2, which I somewhat enjoyed due to the fact I was new to FPSes. I enjoyed Portal more(though I looked like a noob playing it that first time) and showed me ‘Still Alive’ on Rock Band.
Interested, I became almost obssessed with coming to own this wonder, or at least Portal, which I grabbed from the XBL marketplace as 'Portal: Still Alive", my first VALVe game.
My obssession continued and soon, I had to have The Orange Box for PC. I saved up my money(couldn’t believe it was $30 2 years after release, though I understood soon enough) and bought the gorgeous deal.
Soon, I learned of Steam and fell into that wonderful, gracious black hole and soon, at a friend’s house I signed onto Steam and tried out Half-Life 2.
It was the most gorgeous game I’d ever seen. The world flowed like it would in real-time and was continuous with it’s story, complexity, and wondrous arsenal (CROWBAR TIME FOR GORDON!!! my friends and I called it). The power of Half-life 2 absorbed me into it’s gaze.
Unfortunately, we were not able to finish the entire story in an afternoon, but in time made it to “We Don’t Go To Ravenholm…”. My first finished Half-Life game was Episode 1.
I got Half-Life in every way possible because, like it’s sequels, it tells a divine story and layers on the thrill and makes other fps games of their time look like fools. The PS2 version of the game provided me with a new way to play our favorite little game, with co-op an better graphics. The Half-Life PLATINUM set given to me by a friend who already had all the games made me see how HL made so much impact on the gaming world. When I got to Half-Life: Source, I was sad and dissappointed by how little the Source engine was utilized for such a great game. And then I discovered Black Mesa.
It seems that one play of the Orange Box led to 46 games(and counting) on Steam and a whole saga of Half-Life adventure.
I owe it all to my friend and his cousin.
Cheers.
First time I was ever introduces to the HL universe was when my friend was playing uplink on his computer. His parents were “a little” overprotective of him and would never let him go out and purchase video games so 99% of his games were either shareware, freeware, and demos. So I was over his house and he told me that he got a new game and we both played thru the demo several times. The funny part was at the time I had no idea it was halflife so I went on with my life never knowing anything more about Halflife. Some years later my cousin “forcibly” asked me to play cs 1.6 with him. After playing the graphics started to remind me of something familiar. After looking around I found out… well you can figure out the rest. Once I knew that there was a full version of uplink I ran out and purchased the game. (No idea on dates tho, I was fairly young at the time and I was in to computers before most people my age were)
My best friend has been a PC gamer longer then I have. Around 2003ish (I was 10), he lent me Counter Strike: Condition Zero. I didn’t have Steam at the time, and I wasn’t interested in online gaming, so I played for hours with bots. He told me about another game which is was based on called Half Life and he burned me a copy. I was hooked.
I can’t believe I left playing HL2 untill the Orange Box came out, but it was worth it anyway, at least I had all the games that were out rather then wait for them. Now, HL2 can barley run at 25fps on medium and I can’t touch my other games becasue this computer can’t run them. My older one could run HL2 + EP1 on all high but no AA and EP2, Portal etc on medium. DAMN YOU INTEL AND YOUR SHITTY INTERGRATED CHIPSETS :fffuuu:
Yeah I got it pretty shortly after I posted that. I was sad that I needed to turn on autosave in console, but it’s a great came with almost perfect A.I.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.