Yes folks, as you can see you only get one "Who's Got Game" article this month, but wipe your tears away because this month we have something that the game world has been waiting for for nearly five years! As VALVe's Doug Lombardi stated in a recent, very brief press release:

"Half-Life 2 will be shown at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo."

Indeed, that would be this year's E3 Expo, which takes place in about two weeks from now! It turns out that VALVe has been working on Half-Life 2 in secrecy ever since Half-Life hit the shelves back in October 1998, and VALVe's founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, tells us that every single penny that's been earned by sales of Half-Life have been put into the development of this long awaited sequel. So grab your crowbars, folks, it's time to put on your HEV suit as Gordon Freeman takes on the world again!

But we all know how sequels tend to not quite make it to the level of their predecessor, so will we even like Half-Life 2? Well, so far it's looking good. Chuck Osborn, journalist for PC Gamer, was astonished as he realised he was looking at dust particles at VALVe's showcase of the new engine. Not only does Half-Life 2 have a gorgeous particle system, but a system similar to Red Faction's Geo Mod where walls, floors and other solid materials could all be destroyed has also been introduced. Not as elaborate as Red Faction maybe, as you can't seem to tunnel endlessly into mountains, but anything that has a wood texture on it, for example, can be destroyed.

The Physical properties of an object will be determined by its texture. This means no more throwing grenades at a thin wooden door and coming to the conclusion it's indestructible! People shooting at you from the top of a water tower? Hello wooden support beams, goodbye wooden support beams, problem solved!

Another nifty aspect is that you will also be able to pick up nearly every "smaller" object you encounter. Chairs, trashcans, metal plates, you'll be able to grab them and use them as a shield, or knock over those ever pesky machinegun turrets. If you have played games like "Battlefield 1942", you might now be spoiled after having been able to drive vehicles in FPS games, but being spoiled doesn't matter to Half-Life 2! Drivable vehicles are indeed part of the game.

What about the story? Well, Gordon Freeman was given a choice after the grand finale against the Nihilanth in the original Half-life: Accept the G-Man's job offer, or go play with countless aliens for, well, the few seconds that make up the rest of your life when playing with angry aliens. In Half-Life 2 we find that Gordon was clever, and is currently employed by the G-Man. The exact storyline is thankfully still a secret, but we do know that Half-Life 2 will take place in City17 in east Europe, a harbour, a jail, the suburbs, a dried up ocean and on a large ship.

People who own a copy of Half-Life will be aware that there are many different MODs available for the game, popular multiplayer modifications such as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Natural Selection and single player episodes like Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Azure Sheep, They Hunger and the upcoming Nightwatch have kept us all glued to our seats for a long time, and there is good news for those of us who enjoy either playing or creating modifications because VALVe tells us modding will be even easier for Half-Life 2 than it is for the original. In fact, those of you who have been waiting for Team Fortress 2 will be pleased to find out that it will be released using the Half-Life 2 engine.

Now there is so much else to say about Half-Life 2, I could mention something about the character model's advanced skeletal animations, the advanced artificial intelligence making use of the environment's context, the flawless advanced wave based lip-synching of the characters (just record your text and the character will make the proper lip movements when speaking), but I won't stretch this article with listing more advanced things. Just trust me on this, Half-Life 2 will be advanced. So advanced, that you will still be able to play it on a Pentium 733, using a TNT graphics card and running DirectX 6.0; now such backward compatibility is a rare sight in game land. Of course, there will probably be no pretty dust particles for you if you, like me, run a rather low end system.

So when, when, when?! Yes, I told you Half-Life 2 will be shown at the E3 in mid May, but the game won't be in stores yet by then. The exact release date is 30 September 2003, which is actually before Doom 3 and Duke Nukem Forever will be released, so rejoice, for the gaming gods are smiling upon us! In about five months Half-Life 2 will hit the shelves, and this is one game that I, for one, will certainly buy - no matter what the price will be.