

Valve announced Half-Life 2 at E3 2003 and released it through its new distribution service Steam after delaying it by over a year. Valve president Gable Ne-well set his team the goal of redefining the FPS genre, focusing on advanced physics systems and non-player characters. Development lasted five years and cost US$40 million. The game was created using Valve's Source engine, developed alongside. Players control Gordon Freeman, who fights the alien Combine with allies including resistance fighter Alyx Vance, using weapons such as the object-manipulating gravity gun. Like the original Half-Life, it combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based game-play. Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve.
