Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 (stylized as HλLF-LIFE²) is a first-person shooter video game and the sequel to Half-Life (1998). Developed by Valve Corporation, it was released on November 16, 2004, following a five-year $40 million development, during which a substantial part of the project was leaked and distributed on the Internet. The game was developed alongside Valve's Steam software. It introduced the Source game engine and, because of Steam, was the first single-player video game to require online product activation.

Some years after the events of Half-Life, protagonist Gordon Freeman is woken by the enigmatic G-Man to find the world has been taken over by the alien Combine. Joined by allies including resistance fighter Alyx Vance, Gordon searches for a way to free humanity using a variety of weapons, including the object-manipulating gravity gun.

Like its predecessor, Half-Life 2 received critical acclaim. It was praised for its advanced physics, animation, sound, AI, graphics, and narrative. The game won 39 "Game of the Year" awards and the title of "Game Of The Decade" at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. Over 6.5 million copies of Half-Life 2 were sold at retail by December 3, 2008, (not including Steam sales); as of February 9, 2011, Half-Life 2 had sold over 12 million copies. Half-Life 2 is considered one of the greatest video games of all time.

Episode I

Episode I, Episode 1 or Episode One may refer to:

See also

Half-Life 2: Episode One

Half-Life 2: Episode One is a first-person shooter video game, the first in a series of episodes that serve as the sequel for the 2004 Half-Life 2. It was developed by Valve Corporation and released on June 1, 2006. Originally called Half-Life 2: Aftermath, the game was later renamed to Episode One after Valve became confident in using an episodic structure for the game. Similar to Half-Life 2, Episode One also uses the Source game engine. The game debuted new lighting and animation technologies, as well as AI sidekick enhancements.

The game's events take place immediately after those in Half-Life 2, in and around war-torn City 17. Episode One follows scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they fight in humanity's continuing struggle against the transhuman race known as the Combine. When the story begins, Gordon wakes up outside the enemy's base of operations, the Citadel, after being left unconscious from the concluding events of Half-Life 2. During the course of the game, Gordon travels with Alyx as they attempt to evacuate the city. As the game comes to an end, Gordon and Alyx are caught in a major accident, and their fates are revealed in the sequel, Episode Two.

Episode

An episode is a coherent narrative unit within a larger dramatic work such as a film or television series. An episode is to a sequence as a chapter is to a book. Most are from 20 to 40 minutes in length.

The word derives from the ancient Greek ἐπεισόδιον (epeisodion), meaning the material contained between two songs or odes in a Greek tragedy.

See also

References

Black operation

A black operation or black op is a covert operation by a government, a government agency, or a military organization. This can include activities by private companies or groups. Key features of a black operation are that it is secret and it is not attributable to the organization carrying it out. The main difference between a black operation and one that is merely secret is that a black operation involves a significant degree of deception, to conceal who is behind it or to make it appear that some other entity is responsible ("false flag" operations).

A single such activity may be called a "black bag operation"; that term is primarily used for covert or clandestine surreptitious entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations. Such operations are known to have been carried out by the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency,Mossad, MI6, ISI (Pakistan), RAW, MSS, and the intelligence services of other nations.

Etymology

"Black" may be used as a generic term for any government activity that is hidden or secret. For example, some activities by military and intel agencies are funded by a classified "black budget," of which the details, and sometimes even the total, are hidden from the public and from most congressional oversight.