Game Feed

Almost 20 years later, Arkane's founder says he understands why Valve cancelled the Ravenholm game that never was: 'It all came down to the economics'

by Harvey Randall

One of the quiet tragedies of Valve's game library is a standalone Ravenholm game that never came to fruition—it was being worked on by Arkane Studios in the late 2000s, and it would've probably been pretty damn good if Valve had the moolah to make it. Over a decade later, an entire hour of footage would drop online, with reports stating that around 10 levels had been fleshed out prior... Read more.

I was excited for this Quake port of Half-Life until I discovered the creator's wild AI conspiracy theories

by Rick Lane

Students of first-person shooter history will likely know that the technology Half-Life runs on—GoldSrc—is a heavily modified version of the Quake engine. It's one of many, many branches of id-tech's ancient technological tree. Indeed, you'll still find tiny fragments of Quake code in Valve's modern successor to GoldSrc—Source 2... Read more.

A developer got the original Half-Life running on a 2007 Nokia N95 at a respectable 30 fps, plus it even works with a mouse and keyboard

by James Bentley

We knew when we gave the original Half-Life a 97% way back in 1998 that it was something special that gamers would be playing years from then. But I don't think we ever thought someone would play it on a Nokia phone at 30 FPS, with mouse and keyboard support. Oh, technology can be a wonderful thing... Read more.

Half-Life owes its existence to one of the game industry's most formative figures—no, not Gabe Newell, the other guy

by Andy Chalk

Gabe Newell is widely regarded as the big name (and the big brain) behind Valve, and thus Half-Life and all that has sprung forth from it. But Valve, Half-Life, and the gamers who love it owe something of an unspoken debt to another man, a foundational games industry titan himself, who despite having no despite having no history or experience in the FPS field immediately saw the potential of Half-Life—at a time when numerous others did not—and moved aggressively to help make it happen... Read more.

"That lore terrifies me": Ex-Valve writer Chet Faliszek isn't interested in writing a Half-Life 3, as he wouldn't touch a sequel "with with a 10-foot pole"

by

Stop it. Stop trying to make him do it. He won't. He will not do it. He's been very clear with you. Yes, you, seemingly random commenter who's suggested that making Half-Life 3 would be a piece of cake. Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek doesn't reckon it would be. The mythical sequel's also not something he'd be interested in penning, because he's not a fan of having to deal with a tonne of established lore. Read more

This very normal Half-Life mod lets you play as 'queen of spacetime' Max Caulfield, and it's convinced me that the next Life is Strange should be a full-on boomer shooter

by Rick Lane

I've always thought Half-Life didn't have enough teenagers in it. I mean, what's an underground research facility for if not navigating the relationship challenges of adolescence? It is, frankly, shocking that Valve so flagrantly neglected this demographic in its depiction of alien invasions and military coverups. I demand justice! I demand action! I demand Max Caulfield!.. Read more.

Elon Musk considered calling OpenAI 'Freeman' because of the bonkers rationale that the Half-Life protagonist represented 'what we are essentially trying to achieve'

by Rich Stanton

The ongoing legal fight between OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman has seen the release of a treasure-trove of internal documentation from the firm's earliest years. One minor theme has been the presence of Gabe Newell, who gave the company over $20 million and was the sole member of its "informal advisory board" in 2018: he later personally emailed Musk to try and get Hideo Kojima a tour of SpaceX... Read more.

You can finally rescue Half-Life's guards and scientists thanks to this mod inspired by Lemmings

by Rick Lane

It always bugged me that you couldn't save the scientists in Half-Life. You'd be trundling through some grey corridor in the bowels of Black Mesa, with one or two or maybe even three lab coat wearing boffins behind you, when they'd suddenly stop for no obvious reason, announcing: "This is as far as I go!" You may not have noticed, Poindexter, but there's an alien invasion happening, and sticking around because those legs you don't use much are getting tired is probably not a good idea... Read more.

22 years later, this classic Half-Life zombie survival mod shambles onto Steam with all new features

by Rick Lane

Before Valve reinvented cooperative gaming with Left 4 Dead, there was Zombie Panic! A mod for the original Half-Life, Zombie Panic! pitted groups of players against a single, player-controlled brain-muncher. Which doesn't sound all that challenging, except that any survivors killed by the zombie would rise again as zombies themselves, slowly turning the tide against survivors until there was only one sorry human remaining... Read more.

Beloved Half-Life zombie mod finally comes to Steam 22 years after it debuted

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Are any of you old enough (or Half-Life-obsessed enough) to remember Zombie Panic? One of the original, Infected-style PvP experiences that no doubt inspired similar modes in the likes of Halo and Call of Duty, it put a team of single-life, gun-toting survivors against a rival team of zombies with unlimited respawns. Should a survivor die, they become a zombie and join the other team. While a Source engine sequel has been around for a while on Steam, the original Zombie Panic mod has been absent from Valve's platform for 22 years - until now. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: From new Command and Conquer and Half-Life campaigns to a full expansion for an RPG classic, these are the top ten mods of the year New FPS Half-Life Element 64 has just launched a demo on Steam, but Valve's not involved A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS

Valve veteran imperiously scorns reports that it's secretly finished Half-Life 3 and moving devs to other projects: 'They've been done for months! They just sit on the game! They're just relaxing!'

by Rich Stanton

It's not like the Half-Life 3 rumour mill ever went away, but over the past few years the tinfoil hats have been a-twitching more than ever. If it's not one thing, it's another: the anniversary of Half-Life 2, the latest mention of "HLX" (speculated to be an internal codename) in the Steam backend or, my personal favourite, a spike in pizza deliveries near Valve's offices... Read more.

Here's that noir thriller built in the original Half-Life engine you asked for

by Rick Lane

There's been a surprisingly strong run of Half-Life total conversions of late, by which I mean there have been two of them. November brought us Diffusion, a massively ambitious sci-fi adventure with some truly eye-popping environment design, especially considering the age of its tech. Yes, it featured some terrible AI generated text-to-speech. But its creator is working on fixing that and recently revealed some of the human cast for its English dub... Read more.

From new Command and Conquer and Half-Life campaigns to a full expansion for an RPG classic, these are the top ten mods of the year

by editor@pcgamesn.com

It's not often I get to write about Half-Life these days, even if fans are absolutely certain that the threequel is on the way. I still don't think Gabe Newell can count that high, but at least we've got an army of loyal modders to create new experiences for Gordon Freeman to explore. The majority of my gaming time this year has been spent on modded playthroughs, so I anticipated ModDB's annual roundup of the best mods of 2025 with bated breath. We, the players, voted for the top mods of the year, and the results are finally in. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New FPS Half-Life Element 64 has just launched a demo on Steam, but Valve's not involved A new, Valve-less Half-Life campaign is out now and puts a completely fresh perspective on the original FPS Ambitious, unofficial Half-Life expansion wraps up a 24-year-old cliffhanger

10 years in the making, this total conversion based on Half-Life is every bit as ambitious as Black Mesa

by Rick Lane

There was a specific moment while playing Diffusion where it shifted from being merely a highly capable Half-Life mod to one of the most remarkable conversions of Valve's classic FPS I've ever played. It's a moment reminiscent of Xen's reveal in Crowbar Collective's remake of Black Mesa, a sense of wonder imbued in equal parts by the sci-fi vista placed before you and the fact you know that it's running on the technical equivalent of a restored 1930s sedan... Read more.

This Half-Life mod reimagines the game as a boomer shooter—yes, even boomier than the original

by Justin Wagner

Half-Life revolutionized the first-person shooter when it released in 1998, what with its top shelf storytelling and novel puzzles. But who needs any of that crap? What if there was a game that turned the clock back just like, a year or two—same alien menace, some of the same innovations, but it plays a hell of a lot more like Quake. No, I'm not talking about Unreal, I'm talking about Half-Life: Element 64, a fresh mod that released a demo today on Steam... Read more.