Half-Life 2

Moderate overall intensity
Highest flag: Mutilation / body horror — player performs it
AdventureSci-fiShooter

What's in it

Mutilation / body horror player performs it
High

In the Ravenholm chapter the player picks up circular saw blades with the gravity gun and launches them to slice zombies in half, and explosives and heavy objects blow enemies apart into separate body parts. Mutilated corpses also hang and lie throughout that town.

Violence realistic
Moderate

Realistic first-person gunfire and physics-based kills against human Combine soldiers and alien creatures, with blood spray and gibbed enemies but combat as the focus rather than lingering gore.

Dark themes intense
Moderate

A dystopian occupied city under an authoritarian regime, forced human suppression, and the grim, corpse-strewn ghost town of Ravenholm.

Horror & psychological frightening
Moderate

The Ravenholm chapter is a frightening survival-horror sequence of shambling headcrab zombies in a dark, abandoned town.

Language mild
Low

Occasional mild profanity in dialogue from resistance characters.

Who can reach your kid

What it is

Half-Life 2 is a single-player science-fiction first-person shooter in which you play the silent scientist Gordon Freeman, awakened into a dystopian city controlled by an alien empire and its human-collaborator police. Guided by allies like Alyx Vance, you fight through canals, ruined towns, and enemy strongholds using conventional weapons and a physics-based 'gravity gun' that flings objects. Combat is realistic against armored human soldiers and grotesque alien creatures, with blood and shooting throughout; one chapter (Ravenholm) shifts into tense survival horror against headcrab zombies. There is no sexual content, nudity, drug use, or gambling, and the game is entirely offline with no chat or purchases.

How it's framed

The game frames you as a member of a human resistance fighting an oppressive occupying regime; violence is directed at hostile soldiers and monsters, and the tone treats the world's cruelty and control as something to escape and overthrow rather than celebrate.

Details

Developer
Valve
Publisher
Valve
Released
Nov 16, 2004
Metacritic 96critic score (third-party) · out of 100

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