Ok, now I’m officially psyched. Usually I don’t buy into hype for games/movies/etc, but this is an exception. I’ll will paste a bit of an article for you. You can read the rest at your lesure or pick up ANY of the computer game magazines May issues hitting stands now. Take a peak:

Half-Life 2 (full name) has been in development since late 1998, ever since Valve has released the original Half-Life. The reason for secrecy? They knew how much the game would mean to their fans, and that’s why they wanted to make it perfect before anyone would know about it. The good part is that the game will be in stores… on September 30, 2003. It will be available through both retailers and Valve’s recently launched pay-per-download client, Steam.

Half-Life 2 takes place in a Eastern European city, called City 17. It happens a short time after the end of the first game. Earth is once again under attack by aliens from Xen, and you, Gordon Freeman (now working for a secret government agency) have to save the day. Valve promises 12 chapters and almost 40 hours of gameplay.

The game is powered by Valve’s in-house developed graphics engine, called Source. The specs of the graphics engine sound very impressive, and Half-Life 2 is sure to give Doom 3 a run for its money. Even more impressive is the scalability of this engine – while to take full advantage of it an Athlon 2Ghz with a GeForce 4 will be needed, the game will be able to run on a P3-700 powered by a DX6 compatible video card.

Yah, I’m happy. 🙂