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Close to perfection This game grabs your attention from square one and doesn't let go. You'll spend some time just walking around the train station looking at stuff when you first start the game, amazed at how great everything looks. Of course, you'll also start seeing what you can pick up and push around. Sure, it's silly to see how high you can stack up some hapless guy's suitcases, but it's also fun. The physics engine lets you play with all manner of stuff inside the game. Gameplay is challenging but not impossible, which I like. Too easy is not fun, but too hard and the game would feel too much like work. The selection of weapons is good, with the gravity gun generally more fun than useful (with some major exceptions). The sound is fantastic. A tip - if you're getting sound glitches, make sure you're not in 5.1 surround mode; I just have two speakers, and I believe that the audio defaults to 5.1. Just change to stereo and you're good to go. Speaking of sound, Valve didn't cheap out on voice actors; Robert Culp and Robert Guillaume, as well as Michelle Phillips, add significant realism to the game with their acting skills. It's great to hear professionals do character voices, rather than the programmers or some guy they found in the hallway. I have to knock a star off what would otherwise be a five-star review for a couple of reasons. First, the level design is such that you are riding a rail through the entire game. That is, there are never points where you have the option of taking one of several paths; you have to take the path set out for you. Given how much area the game covers, I understand somewhat why the designers chose this approach; it avoids the need for providing a map and keeps the player from getting overly confused. However, some additional freedom of movement would have been nice. Second, Steam is a negative. If your internet service is disrupted, or slow, you are out of luck. My wife thought it was spyware when she turned on the computer the day after I installed Half-Life 2 and the Steam dialog popped up on startup. That's annoying, and should be able to be turned off. I understand the advantages of Steam, and to its credit, it does make it easy to find and play multiplayer online games. However, it's not a panacea. If you like FPS games, you'll love Half-Life 2.