Nvidia just announced a free playable Half-Life 2 RTX demo, and it's coming soon

Soon you'll be able to don Gordon Freeman's HEV suit in full ray-traced glory, smashing your trusty crowbar into headcrabs with realistic shadows and reflections, as Nvidia has just announced that a playable Half-Life 2 RTX demo will be available to download in March 2025. Not only that, but if you already own Half-Life 2 (and sort that out if you don't), the demo will be a free download.

The launch comes as Nvidia announces that RTX Remix is now officially out of open beta, with a host of new neural rendering features on the platform. According to Nvidia, you'll get around two hours of gameplay in the new Half-Life 2 demo, which will not only bring ray tracing to the classic FPS, but also a host of new features, including RTX Skin, neural radiance cache, and DLSS 4. I had a chance to play with some of these Half-Life 2 RTX neural rendering features at CES, where Nvidia was showing off the game, and I came away really impressed by them.

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