Half-Life (video Game)
''Half-Life'' is a 1998 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Valve and published by Sierra Studios for Windows. It was Valve's debut product and the first game in the ''Half-Life'' series. Players assume the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who must escape the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is invaded by aliens. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving. Unlike other games of the time, the player has almost uninterrupted control of the player character, and the story is told mostly in scripted sequences rather than cutscenes. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell said that the team was disappointed with the lack of innovation in the FPS genre, and aimed to create an immersive world rather than a "shooting gallery". Valve developed using GoldSrc, a heavily modified version of the ''Quake'' engine, licensed from id Software. The science fiction novelist Marc Laidlaw was hired to shape the story and assist with design. ''Half-Life'' received accl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, video game publisher, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam (service), Steam and the franchises ''Half-Life (series), Half-Life'', ''Counter-Strike'', ''Portal (series), Portal'', ''Day of Defeat'', ''Team Fortress'', ''Left 4 Dead (series), Left 4 Dead'' and ''Dota''. Valve was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Their debut game, the first-person shooter (FPS) ''Half-Life (video game), Half-Life'' (1998), was a critical and commercial success; with its realism, scripted sequences and seamless narrative, it had a lasting influence on the FPS genre. Harrington left in 2000. In 2003, Valve launched Steam, followed by ''Half-Life 2'' in 2004. With advanced Physics engine, physics systems and an increased focus on story and characters, ''Half-Life 2'' received critical acclaim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gordon Freeman
Gordon Freeman is the silent protagonist of the ''Half-Life'' video game series, created by Gabe Newell and designed by Newell and Marc Laidlaw of Valve. His first appearance is in ''Half-Life''. Gordon Freeman is depicted as a bespectacled Caucasian man from Seattle, with brown hair and a signature goatee, who graduated from MIT with a PhD in theoretical physics. He was an employee at the fictional Black Mesa Research Facility. Controlled by the player, Gordon is often tasked with using a wide range of weapons and tools to fight alien creatures such as headcrabs, as well as Combine machines and soldiers. Gordon Freeman's character has been well received by critics and gamers, and various gaming websites often consider him to be one of the greatest video game characters of all time, including UGO and ''GameSpot''. Character design ''Half-Life'' director Gabe Newell coined the name "Gordon Freeman" during a conversation with the game's writer Marc Laidlaw in his car. Laidl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Expansion Pack
An expansion pack, expansion set, supplement, or simply expansion is an addition to an existing role-playing game, tabletop game, video game or collectible card game. These add-ons usually add new game areas, weapons, objects, characters, or an extended storyline to an already-released game. While board game expansions are typically designed by the original creator, video game developers sometimes contract out development of the expansion pack to a third-party company, it may choose to develop the expansion itself, or it may do both. Board games and tabletop RPGs may have been marketing expansions since the 1970s, and video games have been releasing expansion packs since the 1980s, early examples being the ''Dragon Slayer'' games '' Xanadu Scenario II'' and ''Sorcerian''. Other terms for the concept are module and, in certain games' marketing, adventure. Characteristics The price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game. As expansion packs consi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Video Games Considered The Best
This is a list of video games that multiple reputable video game journalists or magazines have considered to be among the best of all time. The games listed here are included on at least six separate "best/greatest of all time" lists from different publications, as chosen by their editorial staffs. List Publications The reference numbers in the notes section show which of the 46 selected publications list the game. # '' 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die'' – 2013 # ''The Age'' – 2005 # ''Collider'' – 2020 # ''Digitally Downloaded'' – 2016 # '' Electric Playground Network'' – 2013 # ''Edge'' – 2000, 2015, 2017 # ''Electronic Fun with Computers & Games'' - 1984 # ''Empire'' – 2009 # ''Entertainment Weekly'' – 2003 # ''Esquire'' – 2018, 2020 # ''FHM'' – 2010 # ''Flux'' – 1995 # '' G4'' – 2012 # '' GamesMaster'' - 1996 # ''Gamecenter'' - 2000 # ''Game Informer'' – 2009, 2018 # ''Game On! From Pong to Oblivion'' – 2006 # ''GameSpot'' – 20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Game Of The Year Awards
Game of the Year (GotY) is an award given by various award events and media publications to a video game that they feel represented the pinnacle of gaming that year. Events and ceremonies British Academy Games Awards (BAFTA Games Awards) The British Academy Games Awards are an annual British awards ceremony honoring "outstanding creative achievement" in the video game industry. First presented in 2004 following the restructuring of the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards, the awards are presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and are thus commonly referred to as the BAFTA Games Awards. Czech Game of the Year Awards The Czech Game of the Year Awards are annual awards that recognize accomplishments in video game development. D.I.C.E. Awards The D.I.C.E. Awards are awarded by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), a non-profit organization of industry professionals. The awards were previously known as the Interactive Ach ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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PC Game
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-determined gaming hardware and software; and generally greater capacity in input, processing, video and audio output. The uncoordinated nature of the PC game market, and now its lack of physical media, make precisely assessing its size difficult. In 2018, the global PC games market was valued at about $27.7 billion. Home computer games became popular following the video game crash of 1983, leading to the era of the "bedroom coder". In the 1990s, PC games lost mass-market traction to console games, before enjoying a resurgence in the mid-2000s through digital distribution on services such as Steam and GOG.com. Newzoo reports that the ''PC gaming sector'' is the third-largest category (and estimated in decline) across all platforms , with the ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Id Software
id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack. id Software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the PC (running MS-DOS and Windows), including work done for the '' Wolfenstein'', ''Doom'', and '' Quake'' franchises. id's work was particularly important in 3D computer graphics technology and in game engines that are used throughout the video game industry. The company was involved in the creation of the first-person shooter (FPS) genre: ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is often considered to be the first true FPS; ''Doom'' is a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general; and '' Quake'' was id's first true 3D FPS. On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company. In 2015, they opened a second studio in Frankfurt, Germany. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Quake Engine
The ''Quake'' engine is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game '' Quake''. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. After release, it immediately forked, as did the level design. Much of the engine remained in ''Quake II'' and ''Quake III Arena''. The ''Quake'' engine, like the ''Doom'' engine, used binary space partitioning (BSP) to optimise the world rendering. The ''Quake'' engine also used Gouraud shading for moving objects, and a static lightmap for nonmoving objects. Historically, the ''Quake'' engine has been treated as a separate engine from its successor, the ''Quake II'' engine. However, both engines are now considered variants of id Tech 2. Although, the codebases for ''Quake'' and ''Quake II'' were separate GPL releases. History The ''Quake'' engine was developed from 1995 for the video game ''Quake'', released on June 22, 1996. John Carmack did mos ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gabe Newell
Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), nicknamed Gaben, is an American businessman and the president of the video game company Valve. Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded development of their first game, ''Half-Life'' (1998). Harrington left in 2000, leaving Newell as the sole owner. As of 2021, he owned at least one quarter of Valve. Newell led development of Valve's digital distribution service Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011. He is one of the wealthiest people in the United States; in December 2021, ''Forbes'' estimated his net worth at US$3.9 billion. Early life and education Newell was born on November 3, 1962, in Colorado, and atte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cutscene
A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward the player, introduce newer models and gameplay elements, show the effects of a player's actions, create emotional connections, improve pacing or foreshadow future events. Cutscenes often feature "on the fly" rendering, using the gameplay graphics to create scripted events. Cutscenes can also be pre-rendered computer graphics streamed from a video file. Pre-made videos used in video games (either during cutscenes or during the gameplay itself) are referred to as " full motion videos" or "FMVs". Cutscenes can also appear in other forms, such as a series of images or as plain text and audio. History ''The Sumerian Game'' (1966), an early mainframe game designed by Mabel Addis, introduced its Sumerian setting with a slideshow synchronized to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scripted Sequence
In video games, a scripted sequence is a pre-defined series of events that occur when triggered by player location or actions that play out in the game engine. Function Some scripted sequences are used to play short cutscenes that the player has little control of. However, they are commonly used in games such as ''Half-Life'' or ''Call of Duty'' to bring in new enemies or challenges to the player in a seemingly surprising manner while they are still playing. They can also present further plot points without interrupting the player and making them watch a cutscene. The intended results of this style of presentation is to increase immersion and to maintain a smooth-flowing experience that keeps the player's interest. Scripted sequences trigger a number of things. A timer, a checkpoint or the progress of the game could activate a scripted sequence. For players that speedrun video games, skipping these scripted sequences that would otherwise slow down their completion time requires ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |