Half-Life 2 starts off about twenty years after the ending of the original game, as the mysterious G-Man uses his time- and space-bending powers to place Gordon Freeman on a train headed for City 17, some undisclosed place in Eastern Europe. Every retail copy of the game also came with Counter-Strike: Source to help fill out the multiplayer side of things.
In 2004, Valve released the sequel to their revolutionary and critically acclaimed first game Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, which itself broke new ground on many fronts in its graphics engine, physics system, artificial intelligence, and its online distribution/updating system.