You all loaded your pants when you saw the gravity gun.
HL2 had more systems built for it alone than any other game, except maybe Crysis.
Half of these didn't play Half-Life 2 when it was still new, which is why they can't appreciate its significance. Some codexers weren't even born yet when it came out 20 years ago. It didn't take long for other games to adopt the same mechanics and ideas that are still a staple today.
Half-Life 2 in 2004 was like Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. They had people playing with mouths agape.
Aye, they're full of shit. I don't know why people feel like they have to lie, who are they trying to kid?
The hype was unreal from day 0 when it was first revealed in PCZone magazine, to those high quality bink trailers that dominated download sites.
It killed any and all momentum Id and doom 3 had, and the beta client leak broke the internet and topsites.
It put ATi ahead of Nvidia in marketshare for the first and far as I know last time -because 97 and 9800's were the cards to play HL2 on.
It was so good that no other game in existence could have gotten us to accept the bullshit that was early steam.