Half Life

Half-Life is a sci-fi first person shooter released in 1998 on PC, and is often considered one of the most influential games of its time. Developed by Valve, the game made leaps and bounds in both storytelling and overall gameplay for the FPS genre. By offering more control to the player, Half-Life draws you in with its interesting and tense story, fantastic controls, and otherworldly enemies. Since its release, Half-Life has cemented itself as one of the greatest games of all time. From the narrative to the gameplay itself, Half-Life is an absolute masterpiece.

The story of Half-Life starts at the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico, where highly classified scientific experiments take place. You assume the role of Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who works at the aforementioned facility. When an experiment goes wrong, Freeman and his cohorts accidentally rip open a portal to another dimension. This sends everything into an expected chaos, and Freeman must escape the facility while fending off the horrors from the other dimension. As the story progresses, Freeman encounters various military groups and mysterious characters. There's a huge amount of atmosphere to the game, which reinforces the more mysterious aspects of the narrative.

Half-Life tells its story in an interesting way, and it helped push storytelling forward in video gaming. Instead of containing the story to cutscenes and text boxes like other games at the time, Half-Life almost always leaves control up to the player. Using scripted sequences, characters will talk to each other and events will happen, leaving the player in control to watch. This kind of organic storytelling made the game more immersive, making the player really feel like Gordon Freeman. The use of scripted sequences in storytelling would become more common in later years, and we have Half-Life to thank for starting the trend.

Half-life (symbol t1⁄2) is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential or non-exponential decay. Determining a Half Life. To determine a half life, t ½, the time required for the initial concentration of a reactant to be reduced to one-half its initial value, we need to know: The order of the reaction or enough information to determine it. The rate constant, k, for the reaction or enough information to determine it.

The gameplay in Half-Life also feels vastly far ahead of its time. Instead of offering various levels full of enemies, Half-Life feels like a continuous world. Players often have to solve environmental puzzles to progress further in the game, as well as navigate treacherous obstacles and hazards. There's also plenty of gunplay and enemies to shoot, and a fun arsenal of weapons to use. From the iconic crowbar to pistols and assault rifles, Half-Life has a great mixture of guns and weapons. The alien creatures from the other dimension are intimidating and smart, so you'll have to use your wits as well as your skill to defeat them. Crab creatures scurry fast on the ground, while long-tongued monsters hang from the ceilings waiting to trap you. There's always a feeling of tension and suspense while fighting, especially early on in the game.

Half-life Element

Overall, Half-Life is a wonderfully crafted game that helped push video gaming into the new century. By using scripted sequences instead of cutscenes, Half-Life showed us just how cinematic games could be. In addition to the great storytelling, the game is tons of fun to play. The great variety of guns and enemy types keep things fresh, and exciting bosses and puzzles punctuate excellent level design. By modern standards, the graphics can feel a bit low quality, but that's the only complaint you'll find. Even to this day, Half-Life remains a stunningly enjoyable game.

Overall rating: 10

Half-Life Named Game of the Year by over 50 publications, Valve's debut title blends action and adventure with award-winning technology to create a frighteningly realistic world where players must think to survive. Also includes an exciting multiplayer mode that allows you to play against friends and enemies around the world. Half-Life: Directed by Randy Pitchford. With Kathy Levin, Lani Minella, Brice Armstrong, Harry S. Gordon Freeman must fight his way out of a secret research facility after a teleportation experiment goes disastrously wrong.

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half-life

(hăf′līf′, häf′-)n.
1. Physics The time required for half the nuclei in a sample of a specific isotopic species to undergo radioactive decay.
2. Biology
a. The time required for half the quantity of a drug or other substance deposited in a living organism to be metabolized or eliminated by normal biological processes. Also called biological half-life.
b. The time required for the radioactivity of material taken in by a living organism to be reduced to half its initial value by a combination of biological elimination processes and radioactive decay.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

half-life

n
1. (General Physics) the time taken for half of the atoms in a radioactive material to undergo decay. Symbol: τ
2. (Biology) the time required for half of a quantity of radioactive material absorbed by a living tissue or organism to be naturally eliminated (biological half-life) or removed by both elimination and decay (effective half-life)
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Half-life Valve

half′-life`

or half′ life`,


n., pl. -lives (-ˌlaɪvz)
1. the time required for one half the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to decay.
2. the time required for the activity of a substance taken into the body to lose one half its initial effectiveness.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

half-life

(hăf′līf′)
The average time needed for half the nuclei in a sample of a radioactive substance to undergo radioactive decay. The half-life of a substance does not equal half of its full duration of radioactivity. For example, if one starts with 100 grams of radium 229, whose half-life is 4 minutes, then after 4 minutes only 50 grams of radium will be left in the sample, after 8 minutes 25 grams will be left, after 12 minutes 12.5 grams will be left, and so on.

Half-life Formula

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

half-life

The time required for the activity of a given radioactive species to decrease to half of its initial value due to radioactive decay. The half-life is a characteristic property of each radioactive species and is independent of its amount or condition. The effective half-life of a given isotope is the time in which the quantity in the body will decrease to half as a result of both radioactive decay and biological elimination.
Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. US Department of Defense 2005.

half-life

1. A substance which undergoes exponential decay decays by the same ratio in equal intervals of time. The constant ratio is the half-life. The rate of radioactive decay of a substance is defined by its half-life.
2. The time in which half the atoms in a radioactive isotope decay.
Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words by Diagram Group Copyright © 2008 by Diagram Visual Information Limited
Noun1.half-life - the time required for something to fall to half its initial value (in particular, the time for half the atoms in a radioactive substance to disintegrate)
period, period of time, time period - an amount of time; 'a time period of 30 years'; 'hastened the period of time of his recovery'; 'Picasso's blue period'
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

half-life

[ˈhɑːflaɪf]N (half-lives (pl)) (Half-lifePhys) → mediavidaf
Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

half-life

[ˌhɑːfˈlaɪf]n (Phys) → tempo di dimezzamento
Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

half-life

1. n. vida media, tiempo requerido para que la mitad de una sustancia ingerida o inyectada en el organismo se elimine por medios naturales;
2. semidesintegración, tiempo requerido por una sustancia radioactiva para perder la mitad de su radioactividad por desintegración.

half-life

n vida media
English-Spanish/Spanish-English Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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