In context: Valve’s debut title, Half-Life, has been named Sport of the Yr by numerous publications and influenced the childhoods of many avid gamers. The corporate sought to commemorate the twenty fifth anniversary of this traditional PC title by offering it with some TLC and re-releasing it alongside a documentary on the way it got here to be.
Valve has launched a twenty fifth anniversary replace for Half-Life that packs a whole lot of new content material and quality-of-life adjustments, in addition to help for the corporate’s standard Steam Deck handheld console. For those who’re a gamer who’s both too younger or someway missed the sport that began Valve on its path to changing into probably the most influential forces in PC gaming, now you can seize a free copy of this late ’90s traditional title for a restricted time.
The corporate made the announcement on the Half-Life web site, which has a bit of easter egg for these of you on the market with an intuition to choose up the closest crowbar and hit any alien creature that appears prefer it’s about to latch onto somebody’s head.
Half-Life was launched on November 19, 1998, and Valve says “we’re very happy with what we constructed again then and we stay extraordinarily grateful for the neighborhood of gamers who’ve been having fun with it ever since. The sport hasn’t acquired as a lot consideration in recent times as many different titles in our catalog, so we thought this milestone was an excellent alternative to spruce up the participant expertise and add some enjoyable new methods to play the sport.”
And that it did – the sport now has some much-needed options like help for widescreen displays, software program rendering for Linux customers, and a UI that scales effectively on bigger screens. “We constructed most of these items for 640×480 CRTs and apparently a few of you’ve gotten upgraded since then,” Valve says. Higher but, the corporate has additionally made the sport work effectively on the Steam Deck and added correct controller help.
In actual fact, the patch notes embrace an extended record of adjustments and fixes to gameplay, rendering, multiplayer balancing, engine enhancements for mod makers, and extra. Valve says this model of the sport is the definitive version and as such would be the just one to be supported transferring ahead. The corporate will scale back the visibility of Half-Life: Supply as a option to encourage gamers to play the brand new model, however the outdated sport will stay obtainable so the Supply engine neighborhood can nonetheless entry the sport property.
Content material-wise, the anniversary version of Half-Life now consists of Half-Life Uplink, a mini-campaign that was initially launched as unique content material on CDs from {hardware} producers and magazines. You additionally get entry to 4 new multiplayer maps that supposedly push the bounds of the Half-Life engine and embrace character fashions from a retail-exclusive enlargement referred to as Half-Life: Additional Knowledge.
On prime of this repackaging of probably the most necessary PC video games of all time, Valve teamed up with Secret Tape and summoned your entire unique Half-Life improvement workforce to make an hour-long documentary detailing how and why their mission took the form that it did. And, if you end up wanting extra as you feed your nostalgia for this seminal PC title, degree designer Dario Casali has made a whole playthrough and commentary you possibly can watch right here.
As all the time, there isn’t any information about Half-Life 3 for the eternally hopeful amongst us. One can all the time replay the wonderful Black Mesa remake, and yours really undoubtedly will this weekend. When you have but to expertise the Half-Life universe, your entire franchise is at the moment on sale, together with Half-Life: Alyx.