Half-Life 2 News

Amazing new Half-Life 2 campaign is like a full, unofficial spin-off

20 years. It's almost 20 actual years since the release of Half-Life 2. We've had the Episodes. Half-Life Alyx is fantastic. But when it comes to a full-tilt, loose-end-tying mainline sequel - Half-Life 3 - we're still waiting, hoping, slowly fading away. Valve's superlative sci-fi shooter series may one day come back, but in the meantime, Gordon Freeman fans are doing a spectacular job of keeping Half-Life alive. Enter a new Half-Life 2 mod, so big and professionally made to call it a mod feels reductive. This is a proper, finished, fully playable pseudo spin-off to Half-Life 2, casting you as one of the FPS game's most memorable side characters, trapped in what is certainly the most terrifying place Valve has ever built. We're going back to Ravenholm.

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Ex Valve dev says Steam Early Access doesn't work for PC game launches

Steam Early Access seems extremely helpful for developers, especially if they're launching a brand-new game and want to get a pre-emptive sense of players' reactions. You launch an in-progress build. You make some useful cash selling to your most ardent fans. You use their feedback to iterate and improve the game before the 1.0 launch. However, in some cases Steam Early Access may be detrimental to PC game-makers - at least, that's what one veteran Valve dev, whose credits include Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and CSGO, argues.

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Half-Life 2 Update

An update has been released for Half-Life 2, Lost Coast, and the Episodes.

- Fixed a hang where NPC pathfinding could stall forever
- Fixed sprinting when using an external controller

Ex Half-Life and Valve dev says CoD MW3 is "gross and exploitative"

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is having a tougher time than the average CoD. The MW3 campaign has drawn some serious criticism, in our own review especially, while recent player numbers suggest the multiplayer is struggling to hold players in line with Modern Warfare 2, despite the changes to zombies and Warzone. As Activision's annual shooter rolls on, Chet Faliszek, the legendary ex-Valve writer behind the Half-Life 2 episodes, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Portal 2, and Left 4 Dead 2, tells the Call of Duty team that one particular aspect of the latest CoD is "exploitative" and "gross."

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New version of Half-Life 2 totally transforms Valve's classic shooter

Half-Life 2 is a stone-cold classic. The Valve shooter that introduced City 17, Alyx Vance, and the iconic gravity gun still feels fresh and modern almost 20 years later, and is well worth your time, especially as we wait - and wait - for Half-Life 3. But if there's one thing I would change about HL2, it's the gunplay. Armed with his trusty crowbar and a slew of great-looking, imaginative weapons (the red-hot-rebar-firing crossbow will always be a favorite), Gordon Freeman nevertheless feels a bit rigid, a bit static. Now, a new mod for Half-Life 2 VR transforms gunplay in the Steam classic, making the entire FPS feel much more alive.

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