Half-Life 2 Anniversary - 20 Years Old, But Is It Still Worth Playing?

[@HAL-iv2kd]

Asking if Half-Life 2 is "still" worth playing is like asking if the Odyssey is still worth reading

[@RH1812]

So, no then…😄 kidding obvs

[@alandiegovillalobos]

Good point!

[@connor9971]

Timeless.

[@Trunchisholm]

Half-Life 2, the Odyssey of computer games. Said absolutely no one.

[@HAL-iv2kd]

@@Trunchisholm You are allowed to be wrong, but it is not bad to have a little shame for it.

[@Droogie128]

Still worth playing? It's still a gold standard in game design. Masterpiece isn't a strong enough word. It's a landmark title

[@Foebane72]

The original Half-Life was bigger, to be honest.

[@Droogie128]

@Foebane72 not at all. Not in terms of sales or tech. Half Life 2 was a giant leap forward in tech from the first game. Just watch the documentary Valve released on it.

[@GavinUK_86]

Half-Life 2 will always be good, even in 50 years.

[@DieterMaier-r6k]

Cant wait for 50th anniversary and the next update!

[@Houldey]

I'll never forget being awestruck watching a Strider walk past me and just being froze in place at the sheer scale and absolute alien-ness of it.

[@Madgitty2]

Definitely

[@TonyP_Yes-its-Me]

I remember being giddy with excitement, being chased across the rooftops, in the opening section. I've never felt anything like it since.

[@KiriChan99]

Simple answer: yes

[@djp1234]

I replayed it in VR and it's better than most VR games. TO THIS DAY no one can replicate the physics of this game.

[@nightcatarts]

It's extremely easy for anyone to replicate the physics in the game, & has been for.. at least over a decade now. The issue is one of devs not bothering, because making sure everything has an optimised collision mesh that won't cause everything to flip out if it gets stuck in a corner requires a bit more time & money.

[@bobothn]

@@nightcatarts That was one of my takeaways from the 20th-anniversary documentary (bigger than a bread box, smaller than a space station). They were going through and manually setting everything mass and making sure it all worked correctly. In the same way one of the guys said he spent over a year working on the light calculations to make sure they were correct. The reason Half-Life 2 is what it is, is because the Devs cared enough to spend the time to make it great.

[@retro_founder]

@@nightcatarts people can make better physic, but nobody will use their physics' as good as half-life 2. maybe because in 2004 this was something they had to use, now its the norm to add a little physics to that pot in the corner of the room that nobody will touch.

[@bloodprophecy887]

Far Cry 1, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Max Payne 2. All of them had great visuals and also damn good physics. And before all of that there where games like Red Faction etc. but yeah, compared to modern games, they all turned down their physics.

[@nightcatarts]

@@bobothn I don't think it's that they care any more, but that they were allowed the resources to do that stuff. These days, unless a game is centred entirely around the phyiscs, there's no budget for that kind of stuff. You do commonly see little things here & there in a lot of games that individual devs added in their spare time because they thought it'd be cool, but it's mainly only little things.

[@noobsaibot2255]

The VR mod is better than many VR native games and is a must play for anyone with a headset, being there is crazy and its pinsharp, the art style and the lack of 10000 post processing makes it look better lol

[@Loundsify]

Agreed. I'd argue it's more fun than Alyx.

[@thomrl]

Looking forward to trying this after playing hl alyx

[@PLAYER_42069]

Speaking of no disc drivers, or physical media... I still have the launch disc of Half-Life 2 in the big clam shell case. I also remember specifically building a new PC expressly for H-L 2. It was one of AMD's early multicore chips paired with a Nvidia 6800. To this day, I still haven't built, or upgraded a new PC specifically for a new game since Half-Life 2. I just upgrade for better performance in general.

[@BH-ci1xo]

You might have to upgrade again soon, rumor is HL3 is in development 🔥

[@ConnieFWill]

​@@BH-ci1xo half life 3 has always been in development. half life 3 will always be in development.

[@nucularmechanic9623]

Yes. Still valid to be pissed at Valve for leaving us hanging? Also yes.

[@Foebane72]

What are you talking about? The series came to an end! The Combine were stopped, hence victory at the cost of Eli Vance. THE END.

[@PixelShade]

Valve won't touch ray-tracing anytime soon. Source2 has ray-traced pre-baked lighting which has the similar physical properties as realtime-RT (with features like realistic bounce lighting), sure it's not dynamic, but more often than not it doesn't need to be... Valve is technically- and financially confident enough not to buy into nvidias marketing hype surrounding RT. Because there's no real gameplay mechanic that can be leveraged from RT that cannot be done in "cheaper" ways. I mean even when it comes to reflections, in stealth sequences you could quite easily utilize planar reflections instead, without making performance come to a crawl. Sure you would be dependent on designing the environment in a way that it wouldn't become too taxing. But from a gameplay design perspective that's not really an issue. Hitman utilize planar reflections. and the game is nowhere near as taxing as modern RT-titles.... I'm honestly so done with the RT-hype. we get slightly more physically correct representation of graphics, at the cost of image quality and performance... and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

[@ricopaulson1]

Yeah, I thought it was cool when I got my RTX 4080 but once I realized I was cutting my FPS by half for no real improvements other some light fidelity I keep it turned off.

[@XeZrunner]

Consider how much more performant an upcoming Source 2 Half-Life game with pre-baked RT would be on an RTX 4xxx compared to other games that are coming out with real-time RT currently. That alone would make it a much nicer experience to play.

[@Loundsify]

RT depends on the game and the original artists design. Take control for example there's so much glass in that game it looks so flat and boring without RT reflects and transparent reflections.

[@bloodprophecy887]

I'm not an expert but I would simply say that it would be cheaper for developers and publishers to automatically and dynamically create correct lighting and shadows in a game using ray tracing than to manually place each scene, lighting and shadows. Not to mention the better visuals and gameplay advantages.

[@nightcatarts]

@@bloodprophecy887 Yes, much. Baking lighting means you're stuck with the lights as they are and where they are. If you want to brighten one corner, or tweak its colour, you have to re-bake the entire room. Same if you want to add a window. Same if you want to alter the shape of any major object in the room. Prebaked lighting is ancient tech in game terms & adding ray tracing to it really doesn't add much, given that it's sort of the default anyway if you want things to look natural.

[@elderwest9411]

I remember thinking this game had some of the greatest graphics ever

[@Berssange55]

In 2004 yes, still holds up.

[@mrpositronia]

That's because it did. It was on another level, and surprisingly, it ran fairly well on half decent machines. Edit: I remember reading about the game some time prior to release and looking at screenshots of the beta version, thinking they were ground-breaking.

[@Dan19821]

I remember thinking this with Goldeneye 007 on N64 and video game graphics couldn’t get any better than that! How wrong I was! 😄

[@petesmart1983]

Ironic golden eye didn't look good to pc players​@@Dan19821

[@luizarthurbrito]

Because it did

[@mountainofsound]

Aged like fine wine. Top 3 of all time Half Life 2, Halo 2, COD MW 2 (og)

[@Randarrradara]

Damn you’re old

[@Dukelol323]

Replace halo 2 with halo 3 and mw2 with FEAR and then I agree 100%.

[@challenger516]

Go play some real games, Halo 2 and COD MW 2 aren't on the same level as HL2

[@KorsAir1987]

@@Randarrradara Well, he could have said something like Doom, Quake 3 and Half Life 1 xD

[@xergiok2322]

George R. R. Martin's Winds of Wankers.

[@ineedhealing666]

I just turned 20 this month alongside half life 2 and halo 2. Both phenomenal games.

[@russelledwards001]

Was exciting when they both came out.

[@paullynch1246]

The vr version is something else, it feels like it was truly made to be played that way. What a game

[@SantoAtheos]

I preordered HL2 and it came with a black logo T-shirt. Sadly I wore that shirt out and put on 30 lbs. in the past twenty years. Thank you Jim and Ian!

[@TonyP_Yes-its-Me]

I got a tee shirt free with some Star Wars VHS's in the 90's, and was still wearing it until last year, when my family had an intervention.

[@DeathsjesterKMNP]

Seriously? The age of a great game does nothing to impact its playability except to super shallow people.

[@hoganzeros3572]

In all seriousness, remember to hydrate :) I'm waiting to play the vr mod until the rtx version comes out. I can't wait. Hope you do a video of those 2 mods combined!

[@FBNL]

In many ways Half-life 2 has been completely surpassed by the games it has inspired, but in regards to finding all the things it does in a single package, there isn't really much competition.

[@hassounahammami4142]

I swear it's still the best scripted linear fps evermade still now, and if it was coming out in 2024 it can win GOTY, what game surpassed it?

[@FBNL]

@@hassounahammami4142 I'm not saying any game has done everything HL2 does better, but all the parts that make up HL2 has been done better at some point by a different game since its release, if that makes sense?

[@MortezaFC]

@@FBNL no game has done atmosphere better or even voice acting

[@deathbyslipknot]

@@MortezaFC No other game has better voice acting? You must be joking.

[@MortezaFC]

@@deathbyslipknot some games are equal, nothing is better. especially at sounding like real people and not comic book characters.

[@M-o-r-l-a-d-e-r]

Interesting news is episode 3 was going to be set in Antarctica and Gabe Newell is currently on a journey to Antarctica.

[@TheOriginalShoneBoyOnYT]

I remember 2008

[@revanbh]

Definite yes from me. I was playing it in 2004 and fired it up yesterday again. Suffice it to say that it is the only game I have been playing for two days.

[@Fafhrd42]

Re: Integrating raytracing into game design: the big issue here is that raytracing happens on the GPU, and generally speaking, once you send data to the GPU you can't get it back to have the CPU do stuff with the result (technically you can, but it's computationally pretty expensive, so you don't want to do it often in a real-time environment), so while you could do something like 'as the player you can watch reflective surfaces to see where enemies are,' it's a lot harder to do something like 'the enemies can also see you in reflections' using GPU raytracing.

[@robarmstrong5404]

Playing it in VR is another level entirely

[@DieterMaier-r6k]

why?

[@petesmart1983]

Half life 2 is one if the greatest games and yes it has a few dated bits but the overall its amazing experience.

[@SilentObserver966]

as a ultra wide monitor gamer i do a happy dance when games work with it lol

[@soufianeezr27]

Better than 2024 games

[@chunkylover5367]

Last Saturday, I played HL2 a few hours on my Steam Deck Oled. I hadn't played it in at least 15 years! It really holds up nicely. Somethings get a little long in the tooth for me, but I'm not going to be nitpicky about a single player game that was able to hold my attention for considerably more time than many modern games do. Then on Sunday, I streamed it to my quest 3 via Steam Link, and oh boy! What an awesome port to VR! Completely different feel and vibe. Looking forward to getting back to that honestly.

[@Elaiden]

Simple answer: Yes Complicated answer: Consider waiting for Half Life 2: RTX update

[@kiss4luna]

so many blind fanboys in the comment section. i bought the original disk version back to 2004, took about 6 hours to install because it required internet connection to update before I can play. the 2003 hack incident hugely impacted this game, the final version changed so much from the 2002 to 2003 official demo. i played hl1 over 50 times just for the single player and total counts raised to over 100 with the two expansion packs. but hl2 I played only 5 times back to 2005 to 2007 (ep2). the world is empty, some levels are super small with loads of loading screens. some level is huge with nothing actually you can do but driving (hey rage). it seems that it tried to offer an open world but technically limited to only linear levels. the physics were not that good back in the mid-2000s and didn't age well, it was clunky as hell by modern standard. the final forest battle in ep2, you drive everywhere in that stupid car with broken driving physics and try to attach that sticky bomb onto those striders. ai teammates stand there don't even shoot rockets to the enemies. it's not fun at all. some gameplay designs are also questionable, such as the flashlight power bonded to suit power. in many dark levels especially the ep1 underground level, you are always lacking power because running will deplete it, flash will too. it's extremely annoying and not fun at all. the only worth-mentioning thing is the physics, but it didn't merge well into the gameplay and level design, and it has many flaws even in 2004. I think hl1 is a much better game worth playing even after 26 years, but hl2 is not.

[@rizzo-films]

HL2 is still great addicting fun to play now. I do notice the aspects that HL2 popularized in game design that have since evolved beyond it, but theres no getting around how timeless the overall design is. Even the linear gameplay is still strong because of how carefully crafted it is. You get the feeling that you're in very assured hands. HL2 is so inspired.

[@thomrl]

Played it for the very first time last month and it was amazing! The new updates just makes it even better. Looking forward to playing the whole series again at some point

[@urazoktay7940]

Half Life 2 is simply the best game ever made. The pinnacle of gaming. Not just the best fps game ever made. So it will be really hard for Valve to match or surpass it. But regardless they should make a Half Life 3. People want it, people deserve it. The whole gaming community needs Half Life 3 to happen.

[@otockian]

I don't know if I have still played a game as good as this honestly. It's still one of the best games I've ever played.

[@poposterous236]

Playing through for the thousandth time but now I have developer commentary. Half Life 2 remains one of the greatest games of all time.

[@tomiecacique]

Got the demo for Xbox from a magazine. Looking back at it, it's weird they used arguably the best part of the game and a genre bending moment for the demo but it is the best part and i think it's when the gravity gun gets introduced in the real game. Playing with it in the demo was awesome. I bought the game on Xbox and it blew my mine. Since then I've beaten it like 200 times across my life. Will probably never get old.

[@ShaunLevett]

I will still on occasion, exhume my Xbox 360 to play Orange Box.

[@gimle5535]

Absolutely worth a playthrough in 2024 - and highly recommend the VR mod if have a headset, Ravenholm in VR was horrifying.

[@The6thMessenger]

It's worth playing, but it's honestly to me somewhat hard without MMod.

[@emotionalsupportviking]

This video could just have been the sound of a group of people shouting "YES!""

[@jendabekCZ]

Immortal old game like Richard Burns Rally, which is also from 2004.

[@compaqdeskpro5770]

I tried to show someone the train ride intro in Black Mesa, 20 seconds in he says "is this all you do?" I'm linear lover but I'm tempering my expectations.

[@GoronCityOfficialBoneyard]

Even to this day it holds up so insanely well

[@kesgreen4639]

The desire to make HL3 also groundbreaking is pretty much what killed it (along with Left 4 Dead poaching everyone working on it). I think I would have been perfectly happy if it was just like HL2 but finished the story (the freeze gun did look fun though). After that, they could have worked on groundbreaking tech. That said, nothing revolutionary has been developed since. OK, we've had VR, ray tracing and mobile gaming but nothing like the difference between HL and HL2. I think they should still finish it as was intended and then move onto more stories in the same HL universe.

[@Vanu-i4o]

It's the Mario of FPS games, where it constantly gives you new mechanics and changes things up. Edit: Lmao you just said the same thing....

[@okamic1750]

Picked it up for free today on steam. I’m excited to play for the first time. Early impressions are good, I just got my suit and am escaping.

[@Stabby666]

Of course - it's one of the most atmospheric games of all time, with a great story, and (for its time) ground-breaking gameplay.

[@TonyP_Yes-its-Me]

For the anniversary, it's actually only 85p, on Steam. That's 85 Pence. Jesus. Fantastic value. But maybe do yourself a favour, and get The Orange Box version for the massive price of £1.67, coz it contains Portal 1, another great game.

[@DanielM96]

It's not really a secret Half Life 3 has been in development for 4 years now...

[@Jeremiah59]

Also if you havent played it, it is currently free for a limited time.

[@patrickholt8782]

The bridge sequence has more sauce than the last 5 cods combined!

[@TwoLeftThumbs]

Project Borealis looks promising, too.

[@bloodprophecy887]

Sadly not. Weird camera shaking, awful gunplay and animations, awful looking zombies and headcraps, awful movement. Only good thing actually is the graphics. Project Borealis is the worst Fan made project of them all.

[@bloodprophecy887]

One of the best games ever made No one: Eurogamer: "Is it still worth playing?" Me: Are you serious? :D

[@Frankorelli]

Asking if it's still worth playing is like asking if fish need water 💀

[@philjohn2649]

radeon 9800 was (and is) the boss. World building was superb. Fantastic design.

[@neildrewett]

Will never forget the strider attack in the tunnel. Just that thing coming at you. Did have the original release and then got the whole lot on the Orange box. A game just about worth the suffering with the forced Steam downloads and updates using dialup we had to do to get it running.

[@MRdeLaat]

the game always has been rly stale tbh, from seesaw puzzle to rope pully puzzle. i only ever liked the parts were the music kicks in

[@Jeremiah59]

Would be cool to see a re release on Ps5 and Xbox.

[@laggy42o5]

Didn't hear Codename: Gordon mentioned, another great offical HL universe game.

[@pgr3290]

First thing aliens will wanna do when they land is play HL2 let's face it. "Show us Humanity's greatest achievement to prove you are worthy or we'll destroy you." Ok no problem, play this..... We're all saved, they give us their technology to make HL3 possible, everyone is happy

[@Radwar99]

If you have the hardware I suggest waiting for the RTX version which is supposed to be released soon.

[@robertron5303]

I am not a fps game enthusiast but this banger is one of the best games I’ve experienced to this day.

[@Cool_Hand_Luke]

Short answer: yes. Long answer: yyyyyeeeeeeesssss.

[@byteframe_primarydataloop]

Worth playing more than watching a video with this awful tagline.

[@ExtremelyTastyBread]

I still miss the original reflections on your arms

[@sxyjay]

"But Is It Still Worth Playing?" The absolute state of game journalism.

[@thesargs]

If you get ReShade and dial in some PC CRT settings (or better yet just play on a CRT) HL2 still looks awesome

[@Spuzzell]

While its still great (currently playing through it again myself, I Did Just Go To Ravenholm) it definitely does need a remaster. It plays fine, but it's feeling its age in terms of the combat and movement. Black Mesa looks and plays much nicer. At this stage I've no idea if a sequel should ever arrive, but a remake absolutely should.

[@xalener]

I have a strong feeling all the new props and characters and stuff in the RTX remaster are gonna be backported into the vanilla engine. Then there will inevitably be a frontport from that to source 2/s&box if allowed. There's really no need to even wait, now that there's support for it, the workshop is getting overwhelmed with prop and character replacers that put HL:A models and animations in there. There's also that long running "project 17" HD prop remake project that was formed in support for the HLVR mod that's been going on for like 6 years. Valve will never waste their time revisiting a damn thing. That's just not how they function. This is a community ask!

[@JohnnyBg2905]

Half Life 2 has RT-like water reflections. Marinate on that ;)

[@MrMightyZ]

Did the anniversary bring anything to Orange Box for consoles?

[@christopher2684]

The VR mod is a must

[@Foebane72]

To be honest, I was resentful of HL2 stealing some of Doom 3's thunder, a game I consider more interesting.

[@nightcatarts]

I hated Doom 3. Being one of those who checks corners and shadows to clear them before moving on, the game's insistence on spawning things in those areas as soon as you step past them was a right kick in the teeth.

[@JaggedMercenary]

Is it worth playing? Dude, do you want me to break your ankles Misery-style?⚒

[@PatrickByrne-e5v]

The 20th anniverary HL2 Valve vid kinda felt like a bit of a middle finger for those of us let down by Ep3 never coming out despite all the promises ngl... was cool aside from that tho

[@YTAnon10]

Still puts a lot of the slop that gets released nowadays to shame

[@sleepytime999998]

Ninja Gaiden was the one I remember for killing the XBox. And Tomb Raider, but I think that was just an early 360 release that was bad to begin with.

[@ieatwater325]

Im 18. Never played it. Im excited to try it out

[@uss_04]

Saw the thumbnail and thought “GMOD”

[@liamnehren1054]

Everyone knows Valve can't count to 3. So don't hold your breath for a half-life 3 or half-life 2 episode 3

[@DieterMaier-r6k]

With HL2 Update and MMod, it is!

[@leftblank]

Who’s talking on this? Reminds me of that guy from videogamer? Also stream was terrible at launch. I was there. Hated it.

[@FigmentHF]

it's shamefully good

[@HDRGamingHub]

I play it on PSVR2 on PC and is awesome !

[@gw7624]

Is the best FPS ever made still worth playing?

[@igis92PL]

well that was illuminating

[@antoniosomera]

Wow 20 years is actually half of a life

[@SuneJorgensen]

Waiting for the RTX version coming soon on Steam.

[@desertfish74]

Answer: YES Now go play the game instead of watching this video :)

[@ArthurSpice-c1i]

asking if it's still worth playing when the game is for free...

[@kodemasterx]

Asking this question is an insult to the game itself...

[@Harrysound]

your raytracing idea.....no thanks

[@KooLaidStudios]

Yes I just played it again a month ago and finally beat it

[@nightcatarts]

Much like Star Wars, I always thought HL2 was really overrated. It's fine, & it certainly has aged well, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. Thinking on it, perhaps I didn't find the physics simulation mindblowing at all because I spent a lot of time playing The Incredible Machine games & other 2D games with advanced physics simulations before the 3D hardware was even a thing, & without that the game was a lot less impressive.

[@sleepytime999998]

Half-Life came out about the same time as Quake, and probably Tomb Raider 2. It's super janky by modern standards, I mostly remember it for the box telling me the AI would throw grenades at me.

[@nightcatarts]

@@sleepytime999998 Yea the first one wasn't great, & I thought it very ugly, but HL2 was much better.

[@sleepytime999998]

@@nightcatarts Not often I do this, but I disagree with you. Mostly because Portal exists. And, yes, Portal was a stupid thing that shouldn't have been possible in... Unreal? But they did it!

[@sleepytime999998]

@@nightcatarts Quake had a all three dimensions, but it couldn't Portal.

[@dawidmiarka8703]

I have totally different opinion. HL1 is great, played it many times, HL2 not so much, I got bored really quickely but wanted to finish it but... resignated along the way :). Still its important game.

[@G.Freeman92]

2 “bespokes” in one video, what channel is this?

[@TheAbbeyoftheEveryman]

The answer is obviously yes...

[@mrpositronia]

Play Half Life: Source, or Black Mesa first, if you haven't played HL2. For context.

[@a_muchacho]

Half-life source????????? No one should play that

[@mrpositronia]

@@a_muchacho Of course the original PC version of Half Life. the Source bit just came out... [grimace]

[@theoutergod8666]

Yes. Without question.

[@petersunnerberg2778]

I played it for the first time about a month ago and it was awesome

[@mmmmmmmmmmm10]

Is breathing still worth doing?

[@travismarshall3089]

It's great!! ...except the flashlight still drains aux power...smh

[@non-shockingtopics7563]

Yes, next question.