Half-Life
It's from 1998, before you were born.
- Developer
- Valve
- Genre
- First-person shooter
- Debut platform
- PC (1998)
- Protagonist
- Gordon Freeman
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About
As of 2026, it's 28 years old.
Half-Life crashed into 1998 and quietly made every other shooter feel dumb. Instead of a faceless gun with a plot bolted on, it cast you as a mild-mannered physicist with a crowbar, told its story without ever cutting away from your eyes, and treated the player like an adult who could pay attention.
That commitment to seamless, environmental storytelling raised the bar for the entire genre — and its silent protagonist, Gordon Freeman, became an icon despite never saying a single word.
Smart, immersive, and hugely influential, Half-Life is the game that proved a shooter could have a brain (and that a crowbar is a perfectly respectable weapon).
