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I played Half-Life 2 RTX with Nvidia neural rendering, and it looks damn fine

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Gordon Freeman's classic toxic crowbar adventure is about to get even more realistic, as the Half-Life 2 RTX Remix project is working on adding Nvidia neural rendering to the game, in addition to ray tracing. I had a chance to play the game with the new tech on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, and it looks damn fine. Many of the technical details of Nvidia neural rendering tech are under wraps at the moment, but I was given a glimpse of what's possible with the tech in Half-Life 2 on an Nvidia rig at CES, and it really brings out the benefits of realistic lighting in the scene, not just in the scenery but also in the characters. If you're thinking of buying an RTX 5090, then this is just a taster of what it can do. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Thermaltake can knock 20°C off your gaming PC temperature, with a liquid bath CES 2025 dates, location, and news: Everything you need to know This MSI CPU cooler with a turntable can turn your gaming PC into a display case

Valve's Steam page currently lists a second mystery game alongside Deadlock, sending Half-Life 3 theorists into another frenzy of speculation

by Rick Lane

The Half-Life 3 speculation mill has been running hot over the last few months. G-Man's voice actor Mike Shapiro rang in the new year by posting a video in which he refers to "unexpected surprises" in the staggering voice of Half-Life's dimension-hopping villain. Before that, evidence that Valve was working on a "Project White Sands" was revealed on an actor's website—White Sands referring to an area of New Mexico where Black Mesa was supposedly situated... Read more.

If you missed it over the holidays, this noir Half-Life 2 mod turns you into a hardboiled detective in Prohibition-era Chicago

by Christopher Livingston

Hear me out. Let's say instead of violent nerd Gordon Freeman wasting alien invaders in City 17, Half-Life 2 was actually about a gritty hardboiled detective fighting corruption in Prohibition-era Chicago. That's the concept behind The Burton Equation, a Half-Life 2 mod you may have missed because it came out on Steam between Christmas and New Year's... Read more.

A Valve engineer fixed 3D lighting so hard he had to tell all the graphics card manufacturers their math was wrong, and the reaction was: 'I hate you'

by Rich Stanton

The PC gaming icon that is Half-Life 2 recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, and Valve pulled out all the stops with a major new update integrating the game with its episodes and adding a commentary track. The studio also released a two-hour documentary about the making of the game and what was going on at Valve during its development, which is absolutely crammed with fascinating digressions about the challenge it set itself. And one of them was lighting... Read more.

Galactically petty Half-Life 2 modders ban 'anticitizens' who criticised their mod by targeting their Steam IDs, leave the proof visible in code: 'Script kiddies vibes from this lmao'

by Rich Stanton

In an act of incredibly targeted pettiness, the developers behind a Half-Life 2 mod that's been available since 2022 have managed to ban a select group of YouTubers from playing the latest version of their work. The mod in question, Half-Life 2: Overcharged , is an "overhaul modification" that adds new enemies and weapons as well as restoring some cut content, promising new ways to play and so on ( thanks, RPS )... Read more.

The actor behind Half-Life's G-Man based his iconic, halting delivery on the idea he was experiencing multiple timelines at once: 'His relationship to time is very different than you or I would think'

by Ted Litchfield

s part of Valve's 20th anniversary Half-Life 2 documentary, Secret Tape (the same crew behind NoClip) spoke with some of the actors in the game's prominent roles. Among them, Barney Calhoun and G-Man voice actor Michael Shapiro explained some of his craft and theories behind the Half-Life series' iconic extradimensional stalker... Read more.

Valve stiffed speedrunners by adding an invisible wall in its Half-Life 2 tuneup, so now it's fixed the fix and says 'enjoy'

by Rich Stanton

The 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 saw Valve release a major surprise update for the PC gaming hall-of-famer (as well as an excellent two hour documentary). It integrated Episodes 1 and 2 with the base game (so you can now play through the entire experience seamlessly), added a new commentary track from the old gang, and for the coup de grace every location was given a glow-up: "Every map in Half-Life 2 has been looked over by Valve level designers to fix longstanding bugs, restore content and features lost to time, and improve the quality of a few things like lightmap resolution and fog.".. Read more.

November 26, 2024 Update

by benb

Enable support to keep music playing during level transitions throughout the base Half-Life 2 campaign (no convar needed). Added support for displaying an active Workshop campaign name in your Steam friends list. Added a slider to the settings menu to allow scaling stick sensitivity for gamepads. Fixed issue with overlapping commentary tracks if a commentary track was playing between level loads. Fixed issue where gamepad buttons may be permanently stuck pressed after saving the game. UI fonts updated for better support in Cyrillic languages. Fixed Thai font rendering on Linux. Added initial support for Ukranian and Vietnamese. Various crash fixes when switching between episodes. Fixed soundscape playback for the Citadel menu background map. Removed collision from an underwater tube that speed runners enjoy. Updated localization files.

Half-Life 2 testers horsing around with physics props 'to make the 47th playthrough of the game more interesting' probably had no idea it would result in Gabe Newell launching a garden gnome into space 16 years later

by Ted Litchfield

"Little Rocket Man" is truly one of the greatest bits in videogame history⁠—a challenging achievement in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 that requires you to carry a cherubic little garden gnome named "Gnome Chompski" through the entirety of the campaign and deposit the wee fellow on a rocket ship to another dimension in the final level. The Chompski achievement returned in several later Valve games, including Half-Life: Alyx. It reached apotheosis with Gabe Newell's 2020 IRL recreation, with a tangible Chompski launched into space as a fundraiser for a pediatric charity. And it all began with bored Valve QA testers messing around with physics props in Half-Life 2... Read more.

Valve first came up with the Steam Hardware Survey more than 20 years ago because it wanted to know what specs it should target for Half-Life 2

by Ted Litchfield

The Steam Hardware Survey has become a critical resource for the games industry, allowing curious enthusiasts or practical-minded developers to get a sense of how the average PC gamer enjoys the hobby. To hear Valve senior engineer Jay Stelly tell it in Half-Life 2's new 20th anniversary developer commentary, the Steam Hardware Survey first came about because Valve itself had no other way of accessing the information... Read more.

Valve zoomed in Half-Life 2's FOV from the gold standard 90 so you could see all those pretty Source engine faces better

by Ted Litchfield

PC gamers love tweaking our field of view sliders⁠, the extent of your in-game peripheral vision that gets rendered. Real heads tend to adopt a "the higher, the better," mentality, with 90 degrees being a commonly-accepted sweet spot. So why did PC gaming grande damme Valve saddle us with a miserly, dare I say console-like 75-degree default FOV in Half-Life 2?.. Read more.

The origin of the Source engine's iconic neon fuchsia checkerboard texture, as told by Half-Life 2's new commentary mode

by Ted Litchfield

It feels weird to say, , but the error texture on Valve's Source engine feels like an old friend to me. Its arresting, black and fuchsia checkerboard is a familiar face that shows up everywhere from Counter-Strike surf servers to bootleg Mario Kart maps in Team Fortress 2. It kind of rhymes with the similarly ugly-cute "FIREBLU" lava texture from Doom, a cheeky reminder of a beloved FPS. Now, in the 20th anniversary developer commentary for Half-Life 2, Valve has explained some of the reasoning behind creating the now-iconic error visual... Read more.

The best Half-Life 2 mods: 20th anniversary edition

by Dominic Tarason

It’s hard to even comprehend how much PC gaming has changed in the past 20 years. But it was the classic FPS Half-Life 2 that convinced people to install this weird military-green launcher app named Steam and take the plunge on digital distribution. Not only was it a fantastic game, it built on Valve’s established track record of mod support, providing creators with the tools to create their own levels, campaigns and total conversions, even if the studio's own plans could be a bit of an inscrutable black box... Read more.

Early plans for Half-Life 2 sound wild, including visits to cities like Chicago and LA, several Combine bases, and a sequence where a plane crashed into a skyrise that was cut after 9/11

by Jody Macgregor

Thanks to Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the Half-Life 2 beta leak from 2003, we've had a few little looks at concepts Valve considered for the FPS sequel but had to cut during development. For instance, thanks to files found in the leaked version, we know there were plans for a level set on an icebreaker ship that would lead to a mini-submarine trip to an underwater base—an idea that ended up being re-used in the Half-Life 2: Episode 3 synopsis, and the fan game based on it... Read more.

Half-Life 2 review

by Jim Rossignol

20 years ago, Half-Life 2 was the recipient of two of PC Gamer's highest review scores ever: 96% in PC Gamer UK, and 98% in the US version of the magazine, which at the time published separate reviews. .. Read more.