Half Life 2 is a good game, but there are a couple issues that hold you back from buying this right away.
Let's start out with the gameplay. For one, it is EXACTLY the same as before on the pc. Everything from your character's walking pace, to the aiming reticles, to the overall general feel of the weapons feels great. The only problem I had with the gameplay would be the framerate. Ok, alot of people have said this before, but it's true. The framerate really has some issues throughout the game. So during big firefights with multiple enemies on-screen, the game will lag and run very slowly. There are also some really dissapointing loading times that stop in-game for a matter of seconds, and those seem like they happen often. The weapons of the single player game are mostly pretty powerful, and the anti-gravity gun is just as fun as it was on the pc. You can literally aim the gun at anything, and it will lift off the ground, and shoot it out, depending on where you aim. Other guns include, well, all the guns from the PC version. And for those of you that are Half Life fans, you will know. The aiming in the game seems fine. Reticles are perfectly sized for each different gun, and your character has a nicely paced walk, so that won't ever get annoying. Overall, the gameplay was decent, but the framerate issues really screwed it up.
Graphics in one word: Amazing. Stunning. Beautiful. Half Life 2 features some amazing visuals, especially in cutscenes. The enemied and all other characters are incredibly detailed. The weapons also look fantastic and fire fantastic too. If you shoot a gun at the wall, chunks of cement fly everywhere with some dust and smoke. The destruction is very woll done in HL2, especially when using the anti-gravity gun. The enviroments in theg ame are massive, and look outstanding. Remember Halo 1? Think of that, and that will give you the general idea. Graphics in Half Life 2 are definitley one of its highlights.
The sound effects of Half Life are, well, hard to describe. The voice overs during cutscenes are OUTSTANDING. But then again, during gameplay, gunshots and explosions sound really weak, and fake. The enemies during gameplay do talk some, but you can barely hear it, unless you turn up your tv to max volume. I was really dissapointed with the sound effects of this game, because I think they were so much better on the pc.
Here's another thing. Half Life 2 features one thing on the whole disc, and that is the single player game. There really isn't much value at all, as the single player is about 10 hours or less. So, you get done with the single player quickly, and then you're done. That's it for 50 bucks. I think developers should have spent a little more time and added Half Life deathmatch or something, but they didn't. Their exact excuse was, "Just buy Counter Strike, it's sold seperately". How lame is that? Seems like the developers got a little lazy on us there. Oh well.
Overall, half life did have some good qualities, but they were overrun by the bad, and you can't have that happen. The awful framerate and no XBL is a huge letdown, and the game is definitley not worth the 50 bucks. I would say 30 bucks, maybe. Even if you are a hardcore HL2 fan, i would wait until the price goes down to about 30 bucks on this one. It's just not worth getting right away.