Steam Community :: Half-Life 2 (original) (raw)
November 18, 2024 Update
Nov 18
- Fixed issue where NPC reactions to the player's flashlight and some incidental dialogue would not play after switching between episodes.
- Fixed amount of bloom applied after switching between Episode One and Episode Two.
- Fixed the FOV setting not applying until you got the HEV Suit if you started a new game and watched the intro sequence.
- Fixed issue where HUD messages for pickups and responses to some console commands would display multiple times after switching between episodes.
- Fixed scaling for Aim Assist at very high or very low framerates.
- Fixed issue where the gamepad weapon selector UI could be stuck on after relaunching the game with no gamepad connected.
- Fixed non-workshop mods displaying their title as "Half-Life 2" on the main menu.
- Improved load times when switching between episodes or when adding and removing workshop content.
- Workshop - Fixed some mods that were tagged to load as Episode One data but were being loaded as Episode Two mods.
- Workshop - Better handling for addons that are corrupt.
- Workshop - Fixed support for weapon mods that reskin the Stunstick.
NOTE: There is now a public "beta" branch for Half-Life 2 that will periodically receive updates before they go live to all players.
Part 1 and part 2 missing? all my achievements gone!!
Does somebody know what happened with half life part 1 and part 2? They dissapeared and all my achievements (I mean I had ALL!!) dissapeared too :( Alguien sabe qué pasó con half life parte 1 y parte 2? Desaparecieron, y todos mis logros (los tenía ¡¡TODOS!!) desaparecieron también...
3
9 minutes ago
General Discussions
980 people found this review helpful
14 people found this review funny
17
Recommended
20.0 hrs on record
Posted: November 15
This legend is being given away for free on its 20th anniversary
Only a lazy gamer still hasn't bought it yet. Now is your chance to beat this cool game! It’s amazing even today, because that's why a lot of people are waiting for Half-Life 3 (I hope we will wait for it, because there is too much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ going on in the world).
2,410 products in account
November 16, 2024 Update
Nov 16
- Fixed a crash that could occur in some languages when starting a new chapter.
- UI - Fixed some weapon icon alignment issues at various resolutions.
- Workshop - Fixed campaigns set to expand on Episode One loading some Episode Two content.
- Workshop - Always show the My Uploads page, even if not in developer mode.
- Workshop - Various UI adjustments and improvements.
Half-Life 2
423 people found this review helpful
9 people found this review funny
76
Recommended
46.9 hrs on record
Posted: November 15
About 20 years ago when my parents separated I would stay at my father's apartment every so often where he would always have the latest newspaper. I used to always grab it and go to the end where there was a section for video game reviews. The games were rated out of 5 stars and the available platforms to play those games were shown next to the ratings at the top. The platforms for each game would be either PS, xbox or gamecube and I would wish that I had one of those to play these games that were rated 3 or 4 stars out of 5, the PC platform was rarely shown. By this time our N64 was gone but there were still computers at both my parents' places.
One day in that section of the newspaper I came across a review for the game Half-Life 2. The only platform shown at the top was "PC" and it was the first full 5-star rating I saw. The review was full of praise of the game, one of the things I remember it saying was that the characters look and behave very realistically.
I asked my father to buy it for me for Christmas that year and he agreed. Steam says I created my account on December 24, 2004, so it must have been a bit before that time that we went to EB Games and saw the price, from memory it was 60(Australia).Mydadaskedmeifweshouldjustbuyitthereorshouldwetryandfinditcheapersomewhereelse.Isaidweshouldseeifit′scheapersomewhereelse.WethenwenttoBIGWinthesameshoppingcentreandtheydidhaveitforcheaper,Ithinkthedifferencewas60 (Australia). My dad asked me if we should just buy it there or should we try and find it cheaper somewhere else. I said we should see if it's cheaper somewhere else. We then went to BIG W in the same shopping centre and they did have it for cheaper, I think the difference was 60(Australia).Mydadaskedmeifweshouldjustbuyitthereorshouldwetryandfinditcheapersomewhereelse.Isaidweshouldseeifit′scheapersomewhereelse.WethenwenttoBIGWinthesameshoppingcentreandtheydidhaveitforcheaper,Ithinkthedifferencewas10.
The staff member went away and came back with the game asking my dad if that's correct, he said he doesn't know and he should ask his son (me), the staff member showed me the game and I said yes that's correct. Twenty years later I still have it and I've uploaded photos of it here on Steam.
I'm trying to dig into the deep valleys of my memory right now, but I do remember putting the disk in, and it asking me to create an online account. That frightened me a little and put me off installing the game for some time, I don't know how long. I must have ended up doing it on December 24th and now I wish I would have just done it right when we brought the game home so I can get the 'Years of Service' badge on Steam sooner!
Anyway, it was the first mouse+keyboard shooting game I ever played, using the WASD keys to move and aiming with the ball mouse was strange for me at the time but I persevered because the game looked absolutely amazing and the world was so interesting. When there was a loading screen I would just sit patiently waiting even though it took about 10 minutes. I remember one of my dads friends came over with his daughters who were much older than me. I don't remember how exactly but they found out I was obsessed with this game called Half-Life 2 and one of the daughters asked if she could watch me play. She sat next to me watching, I remember her getting spooked by the antlions and me reassuring her it's OK because I have the bait that makes them friendly, and when I held the mouse button to continuously swing the crowbar at the face of the female scientist, we exploded in laughter when that NPC slowly but surely drifted her eyes to us XD
I also remember a puzzle in the game, where you have to swim to one side to drain the water so you can swim to the other side to reach the top? Something like that, but I remember when playing the game for the first time, there was a section I didn't know how to pass so I got pretty much all the barrels from the top, dropped them to the bottom section, and stacked them like a pyramid to jump to the other hole at the top. It took me hours because the barrels kept falling, but when I finally reached the other side, I was stuck and realised I was supposed to do something with the water. I'm sure people who have played it recently know what I'm talking about?
I also told many friends at school about the game, when I was talking about the ending I said "you die but you don't die" and they bursted out laughing at me, one of them kept saying that to me after that. One friend did end up playing it as well and he agreed with me that it was good. When we were talking about the game I mentioned that it doesn't matter how many times the enemy hits you at the beginning, you won't die, and he said yes because you don't even have a health bar.
I remember when finishing the game for the first time, I was reading the credits and trying to memorise the names of the people. Of course I didn't remember a single one but in my child brain I was thinking that if I ever came across any of those people I would thank them for making the game. I did the same for Half Life Alyx after finishing that on my Valve Index but there's still 15 years to go before I review that one.
Thank you for making the game and being a big positive part of my life.
1,824 products in account
Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update
Nov 15
Half-Life 2 is officially 20 years old, and we're using this milestone as an opportunity to celebrate the community of players who have been enjoying it (or discovering it, or even re-discovering it) since November 16, 2004.
The complete Half-Life 2
We created a new webpage to showcase all the updates in detail[half-life.com], but here's a quick rundown of what's new:
- Episodes One and Two are in the box. Half-Life 2 now includes the complete Episode One and Episode Two expansions along with the base game. They’re accessible from the main menu, and you will automatically advance to the next expansion after completing each one.
- Developers Commentary for Half-Life 2. While the Episodes have always had commentary tracks, the base game never did... until now. We got the team back to record three and a half hours of new behind-the-scenes commentary for Half-Life 2.
- Integrated Steam Workshop support. Browse, install, and play user-created content for Half-Life 2 without ever leaving the game. Look for it in the Extras menu!
- Bug fixes and new graphics options. Visual pops, missing sprites, and mismatched lighting introduced in updates over the years have been scrubbed away. And we've added some settings to push the visual fidelity of Half-Life 2 farther than was allowed in the original release.
Yes, there's even a documentary!
Our Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary[half-life.com] went so well that we invited Secret Tape[secrettape.video] back to make another one—this time focusing on Half-Life 2. And it's about a lot more than just the making of a game. Running out of money. Getting hacked, and an early version being leaked online. Being sued by our publisher. Trying to build Steam. It's all in there!
As supplementary material to go along with the documentary, we've unearthed a handful of old presentations from across Half-Life 2's development. Find videos from E3 2003, E3 2002, and Siggraph 2000 on the 20th Anniversary Update website[half-life.com].
We're also (Re) Raising the Bar:
Nearly two decades since it first went out of print, Raising the Bar is set to return[half-life.com] in 2025 with an expanded second edition—offering a comprehensive look into the creation of the Half-Life 2, along with never-before-seen concept art from Episode One and Episode Two, and ideas and experiments for the third episode that never came to be.
To everyone who has played Half-Life 2 over the last twenty years, thank you.
From now through the weekend (until November 18th at 10am Pacific) Half-Life 2 is free to own, so if you've never played before, grab it now and keep it forever.
Bug Fixes and Change Notes
New Content
- Added 3.5 hours of Developer Commentary by members of the Half-Life 2 team.
- Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two are now playable from the Half-Life 2 main menu.
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast has been added to the Extras menu.
- Added Steam Workshop support. Play entire campaigns or replace weapons, enemies, UI, and more with content created by the community.
- Added custom Steam Game Recording gameplay events and phases throughout the game.
Rendering and Graphics
- Fixed issues causing props or entire maps to be fully bright or fully dark depending on settings.
- Added bicubic filtering for lightmaps to produce smoother shadows. It can be enabled by setting Shader Detail to Very High.
- Fixed missing grass detail sprites in many maps.
- Added settings to enable Classic Effects that were originally in Half-Life 2. These effects can also be enabled using r_classic_blood or r_classic_fire.
- Added support for radial fog.
- Specular reflectivity has been adjusted throughout Half-Life 2 to better match the original release.
- Updated models for the Crossbow and RPG weapons to support ultrawide displays.
- Fixed camera clipping into vehicles at high FOV settings.
- Fixed lambda cache indicators and other decals vanishing when backtracking through map transitions.
- Setting Model Detail to High will now always display the highest detail version of a model and never swap for a lower level-of-detail.
- Set Antialiasing to 4x MSAA by default.
- Fixed teeth shader rendering fully white on some GPUs.
UI and Options
- The UI now scales to support higher resolutions.
- Launching the game in Steam Big Picture mode will now use the gamepad-friendly UI previously available on Steam Deck. You can also launch this mode with the "-gamepadui" launch option.
- The High Dynamic Range setting has been moved to the main Video settings page.
- Commentary mode can now be enabled on the New Game screen.
- Fixed display of greyscale art for locked achievement icons to match their behavior in steam.
- Improved legibility of gamepad button icons.
- Button hints will now prefer to display standard face buttons and trigger icons only. This behavior can be disabled with the "sc_prefer_basic_origin_hints" convar.
- Replaced instances of system fonts like Verdana throughout the UI with a new font, GorDIN.
- Added a new font renderer that provides more consistent rendering between platforms.
- Fixed edges of certain font characters being cut off with antialiasing enabled.
- Fixed scrollbars and button animations using inverted colors.
- Removed the non-functional "Use 'bloom' effect when available" setting.
- Added Rich Presence info while playing Half-Life 2.
Input
- Updated the default Steam Input configuration.
- Added a Gamepad settings menu.
- Added the ability to select a weapon selection UI style while using a gamepad.
- Added settings for separate Aim-Assist modes for mouse/keyboard and gamepad. The new Aim-Assist "Enhanced" mode now attempts to track enemies and snap-to-target while driving vehicles.
- If using toggle crouch, pressing sprint will now make the player stand.
- Legacy joystick settings have been removed from the Mouse settings menu.
Gameplay
- Reduced chances of birds getting stuck in the world.
- Fixed Combine crouching behavior during door assault scene.
- Fixed Combine not firing in some cases during the finale.
- Game sounds and music now pause while the game is paused.
- Fix crash that can occur if the player gets too far ahead of the helicopter in canals.
- Fixed Dr. Breen not looking at the camera in certain broadcasts.
- Fixed smooth friction sounds not playing.
General Map Updates
- Full HDR lighting and tonemapping pass across every map in Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.
- Increased lightmap resolution in most maps.
- Adjusted rendering distances across the game so details and objects remain visible much further away.
- Removed Far-Z clip plane from most maps.
- Increased window and door fade distances.
- Improved lighting and world detail inconsistencies during many map transitions.
- Tuned fog and skyboxes for every map with water on the horizon for better horizon blending.
- Replaced instances of simple reflective water with fully reflective water in nearly every map.
- Fixed many instances of floating props across the game.
- Sewed up holes, aligned textures, and fixed seams on many displacements throughout the game.
- Swapped some distant trees out for higher detail models.
- Enabled shadows on many static props that were missing them.
- Added glow sprites to all lights that were missing them.
- Fixed lightmapping for many large static prop structures.
- Added simple rooftop geometry to background buildings that were missing them.
- Added background displacement geometry to areas which are now exposed by removed the clipping plane.
Specific Map Updates
- The introduction sequence has been adjusted to closely match the original sequence, including fixing specular highlights on the G-Man's eyes.
- Fixed various texture seams on train station wall
- All fences now properly cast shadows.
- Fixed issues with level transitions setting fog values improperly.
- Removed emissive value from base of lighting prop which was glowing in strange places.
- Fixed a bug with Eli's idle animations during the teleport sequence.
- Fixed lightmapping of train cars in Red Letter Day and Route Kanal.
- Fixed a rendering bug in Route Kanal where world geometry would pop in and out of view when looking down the tracks.
- Aligned pipe and canal wall textures in a few areas to reduce seams and misalignment in Route Kanal.
- Added and adjusted canal wall brushes where level geometry was conspicuously missing.
- Adjusted brightness and falloff of ambient lights in darker sections of the canals.
- Added small grates as dim light sources of ambient light in a few places in the canals.
- Fixed an issue where the splash for Manhack Matt's jump into the water would be out of sync.
- Fixed a bug where the large brick smokestacks were popping in and out depending on the player's position in Water Hazard.
- Added missing cables to utility poles in various canal maps.
- Fixed lighting and shadows on the dock and electric tower outside of Black Mesa East.
- Added displacements and water plane to 3D skybox near the dam entrance to replace simple brush cliff face.
- Fixed the lighting on the rocks and props in and around the Ravenholm graveyard.
- Fixed players being able to trap themselves in the graveyard by closing the gate after Gregori would open it.
- Added radial fog to all coast maps in the Highway 17 chapter.
- Removed area portals from many of the smaller structures along Highway 17.
- Fixed a crash that would occur if you parked the buggy in certain areas before entering the bridge level.
- Fixed a bug where Vortigaunts could fall through the world.
- Added simple 3D skybox representation of the next map visible from the top of the lighthouse in Sandtraps.
- Fixed lighting issues during the basement flare sequence in Nova Prospekt.
- Added additional geometry to various windows throughout the levels to cast more detailed shadows in Nova Prospekt.
- Fixed a bug in teleport sequence in Entanglement ending too early leaving Gordon and Alyx standing around while the teleporter reached its destination.
- Fixed the catwalk explosion detonating at the wrong time in Anticitizen One.
- Fixed the building dome having no polygons on the outstide in Follow Freeman.
- Fixed the ship visibly flying through the building dome in Follow Freeman.
- Fixed Barney being left behind during a level transition or nagging the player too early to "roll a grenade" in Follow Freeman.
- Improved resolution of portal render texture during finale.
- Added soundscape to all menu background maps
- Darkened parts of the skyboxes that fall behind Half-Life 2 logo to help with text legibility.
- Added geometry to menu background maps for Ultrawide support.
- Added smoke to the Ravenholm and Follow Freeman background maps.
- Fixed a bug where you could hear the player's bones break in the Citadel menu background map.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Fixes
- Fixed player model selection in the options menu.
- Fixed slam not being able to be detonated if you were too close to a wall
- Fixed view bob with the SMG equipped.
- Fixed using the Gravity Gun to yo-yo grenades, sometimes causing the server to disconnect or crash.
- Fixed missing sound effects for the Gravity Gun.
- Fixed characters playing a missing animation when switching weapons while jumping and moving.
- Fix weapons being invisible when being given another weapon of the same class.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Maps
- Increased player spawn point count in many maps.
- Fixed prop placement in maps that would allow players to escape the world.
- Fixed floating props in dm_runoff.
- Fixed the area portal on the blast door in dm_runoff causing the world to no longer render when the door was shut.
- Added geometry to many maps where the player could see outside of bounds.
- Fixed several areas where the player could see out of the world.
- Moved the blue barrels in dm_resistance that you could pick up with the Gravity Gun through the chainlink doors.
Other
- Improved quality of the Valve intro movie when launching the game.
- Fixed playback of the the post-credits movie at the end of Episode One and the intro movie at the start of Episode Two.
- The achievements for Episode One and Two have been added to Half-Life 2. When launching the game it will attempt to read data from installed standalone Episodes to re-grant those duplicated achievements.
- Hammer: Show detail sprite preview on non-displacement surfaces.
- Hammer: Fixed bug where orphaned entities added additional data on each map load.
- Hammer: Fixed the ability to render cubemaps.
- Hammer: Increased many limits for BSP data. Models 1024 -> 2048, Brushes 8192 -> 16384, TexInfo 12288 -> 16384, TexData 2048 -> 8096, DispInfo 2048 -> 8096.
- Added save_transition_music convar that allows streaming music to continue to play in between level transitions.
- Localization files updated.
- Miscellaneous security fixes.
Notes
- The previous version of the game has been archived to a publicly visible Beta branch named "steam_legacy", with the description "Pre-20th Anniversary Build." If a mod or feature is behaving in an unexpected way, you may need to run this archived build until the issue is resolved in the default build.
- With the Episodes and Lost Coast now contained within Half-Life 2 itself, we'll be reducing the visibility of the standalone versions on the Steam Store. The old standalone applications will remain available to ensure community projects that rely on them still function properly but they will now appear within the Tools menu on your Steam Library.
Half-Life 2
237 people found this review helpful
17
Recommended
10.3 hrs on record
Posted: November 15
As someone revisiting the game for its 20th anniversary and being completely delighted despite playing it through a few years back, I felt like it would make sense to chime in and say why I think it works.
Oh yeah, spoiler: Half-Life 2 works. It's very good, in fact.
I see a lot of people go into Half-Life 2 skeptical for a few reasons, with the biggest of those being the game's age and its reputation as a game praised constantly in a manner that might come off as a little... obsessive at times. Now: I was not playing Half-Life 2 when it came out in 2004. I wasn't doing much at that point in my life, as I was very young and probably busy picking my nose and tying to stick forks into outlets. I didn't play Half-Life 2 until 2017 when I was digging through old media and found The Orange Box, only sticking out to me because I recognized Portal, which I played earlier.
Anyways, this part of the review isn't supposed to be nostalgia baiting. The point I'm trying to make is that I came into this game aware of its popularity and age. And that didn't stop me from having a good time in the slightest. There are a lot of things people like to say about Half-Life 2 to discredit it, like it only having around ten weapons, or being very reliant on puzzles that might not flow terribly well. But something Half-Life 2 is great at - something that a lot of games still fail at - is being incredibly cohesive and well-designed. The first thing you'll see when you start the game is City 17. You don't sit back for ten minutes as the game explains everything in detail. You still walk around a while, but in a manner much less restrictive. You then meet the game's main characters in person. The game doesn't cut away, there's no narrator going "That's Dr. Kleiner. He's a bit eccentric and certainly not an athlete, but he's a pretty cool guy. He's been working in the resistance since-" NO! You observe. You are put into his presence and you gather this all because the characters are expressive and well written. There is no monologue telling you that the Combine is bad. You see them beating people and you infer that.
And that's a prime example of this game's main philosophy: Showing. Not telling.
This is such a basic principle of storytelling, which makes it a little odd that I'm praising this game for following it, but SO MANY pieces of media get this wrong. So I'll continue applauding it until it's something most people can get right. I mean, one of the biggest complaints about DOOM ETERNAL was how every time a new enemy showed up, you had a pop-up on screen saying "Hey! Check out this new enemy! Let's go through some instructional videos on how to take them out effectively!"
Half-Life 2 was a slow burn for me. There were a lot of sections where I was having an incredible time, but I couldn't really name a one single thing in particular that I was thinking about. And I think that's because of how many different parts this game has going on. It's not an arcade shooter, but it's open ended, either. The moment-to-moment gameplay isn't just shooting. You're solving puzzles, you're navigating dangerous terrain, you're exploring every nook and cranny of the intricately detailed world that's been laid out for you, you're constantly doing so many different little things over the course of the game.
The game's primary gameplay loop is the combat, but it's followed second by things like gathering supplies and getting past various obstructions; all factors contributing to its incredible pacing. Even things like breaking open supply crates provide a satisfying break from fights. If you're not thinking too much about what you're doing at any moment, you might confuse it for being samey. But that's also very, very far from the truth. Despite having such simple core gameplay mechanics, I never felt like things were stale. Most of the major chapters focus on different core parts of the game. There's an (I'll admit, pretty nauseating) section where you're zipping through the canals on a mudskipper that comes to mind. One moment you'll be fighting through a prison, avoiding traps and commanding massive bugs to attack your enemies, then the next you'll be utilizing everything in your advantage to make your way through a zombie infested town when the game turns into a horror game for a little bit.
Half-Life 2 feels seamless. That's its biggest strength. It never feels like you're playing a set of levels; it feel like you're exploring. Even your weapons feel like tools you use to manipulate the world around you and make it past obstacles. Never, even in 2024, have I played a game that so effortlessly makes such a linear and straightforward game feel so natural. Every puzzle, no matter how game-y it may be, is still placed into the world with justification. Some people might criticize the basic combat, but I'd argue that the visual feedback, effects, and absolutely incredible sound design make it feel great to play. I'm not going to say that it's for literally everyone. But I am going to say that if you like games where you really feel like you're making your way through the world in a convincing, engaging, and fun manner, Half-Life 2 is absolutely fantastic and easily one of the best FPS/Action games I've ever had the joy of playing through.
I don't believe in number ratings for media, but I give Half-Life 2 a ten out of ten. Not because it was influential, but because it is one of the few games I've ever played where every aspect is done so immaculately well, where there was not a single point that I felt like I could have designed it better, and where I remembered what the appeal of interactive media is through examples of what interactivity is like at its peak. Half-Life 2 is much, much more than the sum of its parts.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
62 products in account
Guide
Did you see all your hard-earned Achievements from Half Life 2: Episode One and Half Life 2: Episode Two get greyed out in the 20th Anniversary Update? Don't worry, here's how to get them all back and fast!
Guide
Экспресс гайд для ленивых.
How do we feel about random steam users uploading whole mods authors spent months or years of their lives making?
It makes me uncomfortable.
53
9 minutes ago
General Discussions
Guide
If you have previously earned achievements in episodes, you can transfer them to the updated version of Half-Life 2 (20th Anniversary Update). To do this, you just need to launch and close the episodes, and then launch Half-Life 2.
Guide
Como habréis visto, Half-Life 2 se ha actualizado por su 20 aniversario. Ahora incluye los Episodios 1 y 2 en el juego base, añadiendo varias mejoras e incluyendo todos los logros en el mismo juego. Si ya los conseguiste en su día y no quieres tener que vo
Guide
Подробное руководство по нахождению всех тайников с символом лямбды в игре. Всего в игре 45 тайников.
Who is Gman?
I know that’s a topic that’s not new and I’ve played enough to know he’s not good but he’s also not bad either. What I want to know is what exactly is he?
20
1 hour ago
General Discussions
why is game blurry now bruh
5
16 minutes ago
General Discussions
Glorified tech demo
So now after 20 years do people realise that this game's only purpose is to advertise the source engine? I'm not saying it's a bad advertisement as it did showcase the engine very well, but what this game failed at is being a good half-life 1 sequel. Basically all the soul that this game had was left out in Half life 2 Beta and what is left is a gimmick filled amusement park ride with hand holding. If that's what you like then it's cool but I would not consider this to be a good game worth playing (seeing ...
49
13 minutes ago
General Discussions