Half-Life 2
BANGER · Shooter · 2004
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
WAIT.
A BANGER today. The Winter Sale opens Dec 17, and it was discounted in 8 of its last 8 seasonal sales; 80% in the Winter Sale 2025.
Today
$9.99BANGER
Typical seasonal cut
$1.9980% offBANGER
- Cost per hourS
- $0.77/hr
- ReviewsS
- 98% of 282,034
- Critics
- 96 players 2 higher
- Genre rank
- Top 1% Shooter
Watch this gameOne alert at $1.99 or less.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 12.9h
- To 100%
- 20h 1.6x the story
- Finish
- 27% reach the ending
- Achievements
- 69
Price and sales
- Sales
- 57 on record
- Typical cut
- 80% off
- Steam low
- $0.99 June 2017
- Sale every
- 84d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 1,332 now
- Recent reviews
- 97% 30 days
- Cheaper than
- 46% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 99% of its genre
Price and player charts
The drop-off
71% start to 27% finishSteam counts a larger share of its players at the ending achievement than it does for most games this site can measure. Steam global achievements
The value story
The value story
Across all 57 discounts in the 14 years tracked, the median cut is 80 percent, about 12 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 4 weeks ago.
Against its own genre its score lands in the top 1 percent. It is better reviewed than 99 percent of its genre. The nearest things to it, Half-Life: Source ($9.99, scores 25) and Half-Life ($9.99, scores 95), are both worse buys on this math.
The math says it holds its tier up to $21.39, and you are being asked for $9.99.
More about Half-Life 2
Steam's global achievement data puts 27 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 18. Of the 799 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 2 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written November 2025 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 94 percent of the 11,832 reviews written there were positive, against 98 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
282,034 people have reviewed it, which is a big enough crowd to settle the number.
Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified, and at 12.9 hours it is short enough to finish on one.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $1.99 (80% off). Predictions like this were right 92% of the time when tested on 70 past weeks.
Last discount ended 31 days ago.
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
Grades: S best, D weakest
S is the best grade and D the weakest, judged as a buyer. ▲ raises the score, ▼ lowers it, ? is an input we do not have, • is a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
What players say
this is timeless, and its like the who framed roger rabbit of video games, something that is very unlikely to ever be made again
2 more reviews
I originally pirated this game, then finished it and it's expansions. It was so good, that I bought The Orange Box on Steam AND The Orange Box for the XBOX 360, now it's one of my holy grails. P.S.: I stopped pirating games, now I have the money to buy the games I already loved to pay back to the Developers.
Half-Life 2: The Blueprint of the Modern Shooter When Valve released Half-Life 2 in 2004, it didn't just iterate on the first-person shooter genre; it completely dismantled and rebuilt it from the ground up. Over two decades later, stepping out of the train station into the oppressive, sun-bleached dystopia of City 17 remains one of the most defining moments in gaming history. Half-Life 2 is a masterclass in pacing...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
Reawakened from stasis in the occupied metropolis of City 17, Gordon Freeman is joined by Alyx Vance as he leads a desperate human resistance. Experience the landmark first-person shooter packed with immersive world-building, boundary-pushing physics, and exhilarating combat.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, DirectX 8.1 level Graphics Card (requires support for SSE), 6.4 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, Linux.
Cite this score
Half-Life 2 scores 98/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER) as of Nov 8, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/220/half-life-2Reviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Nov 3, price as of Nov 8. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.