What Half-Life is
Half-Life is Valve's debut title, an action game that mixes shooting with puzzle-solving and exploration. You play a silent protagonist moving through a frighteningly realistic world where raw firepower is rarely enough — the game keeps pushing you to think before you act in order to survive. It's tagged as a classic, story-rich shooter, so expect a long single-player campaign carried by its setting and the alien threats inside it rather than by cutscene chatter.
Playing together
The single-player campaign is a solo run, but Half-Life also ships with a multiplayer mode where you play against friends and enemies around the world. That's the PvP side of the game: online matches, no co-op campaign. Valve Anti-Cheat is enabled to keep those matches fair, and Steam Cloud carries your saves across devices. If someone in your group can't sit at the same screen, Remote Play on Phone and on Tablet lets them join in from a handheld device, and Family Sharing means the game can be accessible to others on the same account family.
Before you start
Half-Life is fully playable with a controller — Full controller support, plus DualShock and DualSense support — but there's a Keyboard Only Option too, which suits the classic PC FPS crowd. If timers are a problem for anyone in the group, the game is playable without timed input, and the difficulty is adjustable, so you can tune a session to whoever is least experienced. Accessibility options also cover Color Alternatives, Custom Volume Controls, and Stereo Sound, so a quick look at the settings menu before the first session is worth it.
Progress is protected by Save Anytime, which matters in a campaign where death comes fast and thinking is part of the loop. The moddable tag also means the game has a long tail beyond the official content — worth mentioning if anyone in your group likes tinkering with games rather than just playing them.