Half-Life (series)

Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games developed and published by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles, and storytelling.

The original Half-Life, Valve's first product, was released in 1998 for Windows to critical and commercial success. Players control Gordon Freeman, a scientist who must survive an alien invasion. The innovative scripted sequences were influential on the FPS genre, and the game inspired numerous community-developed mods, including the multiplayer games Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat. Half-Life was followed by the expansions Opposing Force (1999), Blue Shift (2001) and Decay (2001), developed by Gearbox Software.

In 2004, Valve released Half-Life 2 to further success, with a new setting and characters and physics-based gameplay. It was followed by the extra level Lost Coast (2005) and the episodic sequels Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007). The first game in the Portal series, set in the same universe as Half-Life, was released in 2007.

Over the following decade, numerous Half-Life games were canceled, including Episode Three, a version of Half-Life 3, and games developed by Junction Point Studios and Arkane Studios. In 2020, after years of speculation, Valve released its flagship virtual reality game, Half-Life: Alyx. Set before Half-Life 2, players control Freeman's ally Alyx Vance in her quest to defeat the alien Combine.