Blood and gore: When you or an enemy is shot, thick moderate to extreme amounts of blood jet and spurt out, splattering onto nearby walls and floors. Blood and bodies do linger. There is no option to turn off blood in this game. You also see several bloodied, burned, severely disfigured, genetically altered, severed, and zombified (detailes below) human and Combine bodies scattered throughout the game. Many of the human bodies are so damaged, you can't even see facial features.

There is an enemy alien species in this game called the "Headcrab," and in their default form resemble a headless plucked chicken, with a huge mouth where a stomach would be. They latch onto their victims' heads, (who are mostly human), take over their still living bodies, and essentially turn them into zombies. They scream with agonizingly deep, raspy, but squealing voices, as they slowly drag and lumber their bodies toward you, and strike with close-by objects and their limbs. Also, for unknown reasons; after the Headcrab has been attached for a while, the zombie's body is slit from neck to waist, showing its interal organs and rib cage. Also worth mentioning is, the Headcrabs spurt a mixture of red and green blood, with the green blood being a more gooey consistency. The next Headcrab type uses the same technique, but appears to take almost completely decomposed bodies as their hosts, resulting in them looking more like skeletons, with a small layer of muscle. Because of having less weight, they are extremely fast and will rush at your character, mercilessly tearing at his body with their claws. The last Headcrab type hangs on the ceiling and resembles a huge mutated mouth, with large sharp jaws and teeth. It has a long, thin tongue that hangs from its mouth to the floor. When the prey steps under the tongue, the mouth reels it in with its tongue, swallows it whole, with very bloody results. If you shoot and kill this enemy, it will turn inside out and regurgitate what it's eaten (including bones), in a large bloody, green pile of muck.

Early on in the game you receive the "Gravity Gun," and can use it to repulse or drag and hold objects with its gravitational force. In one specific area of the game you encounter dozens of zombie Headcrabs. You can make use of several old and loose rotating saw blades and grab them with your Gravity Gun. If you shoot the Headcrab zombies with the combo Gravity Gun/saw blades, you will sever their bodies through the waist, with of course, bloody and gory results. You also have the ability to grab compressed gas tanks with the gravity gun, and if used on zombies, they will explode in flames and scream for quite sometime in agony, before dying.

Specific scenes of blood & gore:

One of the chararacters keeps a "reformed" and debeaked (toothless) Headcrab as a pet, much to the chagrin of the other allied characters. The Headcrabs cage does have visible blood stains at the bottom (from who knows what).

You come upon a scene where the Combine are killing (and have killed) several citizens with a high-powered gun turret. You can see their recently dead bodies, with blood smeared on the walls and floors.

One area, about a quarter through the game, plays like a horror movie, with countless Headcrab zombies and even a somewhat cliche old priest, who watches over his former congregation (humans who have all turned into zombies), by bringing them to salvation, which pretty much means he kills the zombies in a variety of ways, quoting scripture and laughing in almost jovial tones as he does. The priest has set several makeshift traps for the zombies. Examples: large, sharp fan blades are attached to a upstanding motorized rotor, and when turned on, as zombies walk through it, the device severs them through the waist. He's also attached and hung cars to pulleys, and as the zombies walk underneath the hanging cars, you can crush them by pulling a lever that drops the car. In one area you also see a large bonfire, made of dead zombies, who have, of course, been burned to death; some of them are skewered on stakes. The priest is actually very friendly (to you) at one point, giving you a shotgun, and even risks his life to help you escape the area.

The game takes place in a depressed, near apocolyptic world, where an oppressive dictator and his men, the "Combine," rule the streets, tormenting and controlling its citizens. The violence is moderately graphic, realistic and intense. The majority of the game has you evading the enemy...

Page: 1 - 2 - 3 - Next >