7. The Enemies Are Genuinely Freaky
Something which people often overlook when talking about the Half Life series is that the games can be genuinely chilling at times. Many moments veer into survival horror territory, with Gordon having to crawl through infested air ducts and corridors armed with only a torch and a crowbar. Half Life 2 even features an entire city overrun by Zombies and Headcrabs an eerie forgotten mining town known as Ravenholm. Its a terrifying section of the game, and although youll get to have some fun with your gravity gun and some circular saw blades, youre never far from something horrific in Ravenholm. Clearly inspired by the face huggers of the Alien film series, Headcrabs scuttle around and dart towards you, with the sole intention of latching onto your cranium to eat your brain. Then there are the zombies shambling rotting corpses whove become reanimated due to the parasitic headcrabs. Theres also something deeply unsettling about Barnacles giant pulsating mouths attached to the roof of sewers and caves which will try to grab you with their tentacles and lift you into their drooling mouths.