I'm kind of at a loss for words at how incredible Half-Life 2 is as a game. I never actually played it before so it blew me away. I'm flabbergasted at how excellent it is.

The pacing of Half-Life 2 is what makes it excellent. It is perfectly paced. Marathon runners wish they could have this game's pacing. The level design is incredible as well, and such a step-up from the first game. There's the coast mission where you're in a buggy that has a ton of Halo: CE energy with how open it is - and it's broken up excellently by making the player stop to keep proceeding in their buggy multiple times with different things to do each time, to keep the gameplay fresh, and to avoid it becoming a vehicle-only mission. That's genius level design, and you can feel how Half-Life 2 has sunk its roots into a plethora of FPS games that came after it.

And the missions where you're fighting in the streets with the Resistance? Good god that's good! I didn't expect something like that to be in this game, and I had a blast the entire time. Ravenholm was excellent as well, and turned the game briefly into a horror game, which was just awesome in its right.

Half-Life 2 is a near-perfect FPS. I have some nitpicks with the source engine and some of those stacking puzzles early on, but that's easily brushed aside, because they're as said, just nitpicks. And the fact that this game is so good is insane considering how good Half-Life 1 is in its own right.

One of the all-time greats, and absolutely the best FPS of all time.

Score: 96