For anyone asking about Half Life 2 without Half Life 1, I say most enthusiastically that you should go for it. I played HL2 and the episodes with no problem. I felt like I was missing some story and character development, but I read about it online, and when I finally got HL1 for $1.50 during the last sale, I loved it because it was more Half Life and great in its own way, but most of the characters I expected to meet in it were just generic character models with no real interaction. You miss very little by starting with HL2. Plus, Portal and TF2 are fantastic.