Update: And now it's official: The full Half-Life Collection is, for awhile at least, free to play. "Half-Life: Alyx is coming in March, and we are celebrating early by making all games in the Half-Life Collection FREE to play for Steam users, from now until the day it launches," Valve said in announcement.

"Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible."

The Half-Life Collection includes Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, as well as the spin-off games Opposing Force and Blue Shift, and the multiplayer Team Fortress Classic.

Original story:

Some Steam users received a notification yesterday that advertised a Half-Life: Alyx event before vanishing. The notification claimed that the Half-Life Collection would be free until the launch of the VR spin-off, except there is no such thing as the Half-Life Collection, and right now all the Half-Life games have prices. 

While there are no bundles known as the Half-Life Collection, there's The Orange Box and the Half-Life Complete bundles, but neither of them are free. And despite the notification, which links to an error page, Valve hasn't made any announcements. 

It looks like the notification was sent out too early, but that doesn't explain why the bundle has a different name. It could simply be a mistake, so the notification could just be referring to Half-Life Complete. It could also be that Valve's going to release a third bundle, which will eventually contain Half-Life: Alyx. 

I've reached out to Valve to find out more about the event, so keep an eye out for updates. 

Back in 2013 an alpha build of Half-Life called version 0.54, a version first distributed to game journalists in 1997, was released to the public. Its six chapters included one called The Office Warrens, which would eventually evolve into the finished game's fourth chapter. It served as the inspiration for the In Deep mod, which you can try an early version of now.

"In Deep takes you through the scrapped version of Half-Life from 1997," as the description says, "re-imagined and revamped. What awaits you is a surreal, fast-paced, and action-packed journey through the old Labs once again!"

The mod tweaks the alpha version by simplifying some of its more obtuse puzzles and making the combat feel a bit closer to that of the finished game. It's Half-Life as it might have been, if some of its early ideas had been polished rather than scrapped and replaced. You can download it from ModDB.

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

While the Half-Life series has a lot of iconic moments, from the lab accident that started it all to learning why we don't go to Ravenholm, none stand out for me as much as leading the resistance to retake City 17 near the end of Half-Life 2.

Gordon's journey does a great job of making you want to get back at the Combine from the very beginning. They're jerks. They hit you with sticks. They make you pick up trash that isn't even yours. Much of the first few hours of the game are spent showing you how bleak and oppressive life has become for humanity since the invasion, with Breen's smug face proclaiming it a paradise. And then you get little glimmers of hope as you're reunited with Barney and start discovering pockets of resistance.

This all culminates when you return to City 17 as the fabled "Anticitizen One", the Combine's most wanted. You've become more than a scientist thrown into extraordinary circumstances at this point, more than a bearded videogame protagonist with a gun. You're an inspirational figure. Alongside you, facing the same daunting odds, are ragtag freedom fighters in weathered jackets and fingerless gloves showing that, for all our faults, we humans refuse to go down fighting when you try to take over our cities with flying knife robots and giant tripod walkers.

As I fought brutally through the streets I felt proud of my resistance comrades. They didn't have plot armor or a gravity gun but they followed me into danger anyway. When I took down a stalker with a rocket launcher, they cheered and surged ahead to press the hard-won advantage. And while at this rate we may never see how the war ends, we won the battle. We at least showed the Combine that Earth doesn't bow to brain bugs without giving them a black eye.

I look forward to bumping into some of these brave men and women around a fire barrel again in the upcoming prequel, even knowing some of them won't survive what's coming. Gordon became a symbol, but they were the real heroes.

Well, OK, that’s not exactly true. Gordon was still the real hero. But they helped!

Update 2: It's official, Half-Life: Alyx is happening. Valve's long-awaited "flagship VR game" will be revealed to the world at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21. The tweet comes from a relatively new account—created June 2019—with a small number of followers, and this is actually its first tweet. It's also odd that Valve would make such a big announcement over a channel that so few people were paying attention to. The official Steam Twitter feed, to compare, has 5.2 million followers. 

But it's verified, and the tweet has been retweeted by a few Valve folks, so we're confident it's legit: A new communications channel for a "new" kind of Valve, maybe.

We'll keep you posted. 

Update: According to a new transcript of the leaked interview, Half-Life: Alyx will be shown at The Game Awards on December 12.

Original story: This November 19 will mark the 21st anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life, and according to rumor it will also be when Valve announce a flagship virtual reality game called Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve are rarely interested in celebrating their own game's anniversaries, so take this rumor with a mouthful of salt. The source is apparently the same leaker responsible for the DOTA Underlords leak, and is quoting from an interview between "Geoff" (Geoff Keighley, in his capacity as the creator of the "Final Hours" documentaries about Valve games), Robin Walker (co-developer of Team Fortress 2 among other games), and an unnamed third person.

"March 2020, "Half-Life: Alyx" comin' out", says Geoff in the transcript.

Responding to the question of whether this game would be available for players without VR headsets, "I mean we would love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard, but like as we said, it began as an exploration of VR," an unnamed person replies.

As for how this entirely hypothetical game would play, the only clue is this statement: "You can see their whole body-- Respond to the situation. You know, panicking, dropping clips on the ground as they fumble their weapons 'cause a zombie's in front of them, all these things, they're just - it's been really fun watching playtests."

Valve have said they'll be releasing a "flagship VR game" this year.

I've reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story if they reply.

Update 2: It's official, Half-Life: Alyx is happening. Valve's long-awaited "flagship VR game" will be revealed to the world at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21. The tweet comes from a relatively new account—created June 2019—with a small number of followers, and this is actually its first tweet. It's also odd that Valve would make such a big announcement over a channel that so few people were paying attention to. The official Steam Twitter feed, to compare, has 5.2 million followers. 

But it's verified, and the tweet has been retweeted by a few Valve folks, so we're confident it's legit: A new communications channel for a "new" kind of Valve, maybe.

We'll keep you posted. 

Update: According to a new transcript of the leaked interview, Half-Life: Alyx will be shown at The Game Awards on December 12.

Original story: This November 19 will mark the 21st anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life, and according to rumor it will also be when Valve announce a flagship virtual reality game called Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve are rarely interested in celebrating their own game's anniversaries, so take this rumor with a mouthful of salt. The source is apparently the same leaker responsible for the DOTA Underlords leak, and is quoting from an interview between "Geoff" (Geoff Keighley, in his capacity as the creator of the "Final Hours" documentaries about Valve games), Robin Walker (co-developer of Team Fortress 2 among other games), and an unnamed third person.

"March 2020, "Half-Life: Alyx" comin' out", says Geoff in the transcript.

Responding to the question of whether this game would be available for players without VR headsets, "I mean we would love to be delivering a version of this that you could play with a mouse and a keyboard, but like as we said, it began as an exploration of VR," an unnamed person replies.

As for how this entirely hypothetical game would play, the only clue is this statement: "You can see their whole body-- Respond to the situation. You know, panicking, dropping clips on the ground as they fumble their weapons 'cause a zombie's in front of them, all these things, they're just - it's been really fun watching playtests."

Valve have said they'll be releasing a "flagship VR game" this year.

I've reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story if they reply.

It's Half-Life 2's 15th Birthday today! On November 16th, 2004 Valve released one of PC Gaming’s most celebrated games, the hotly-anticipated Half-Life 2 would go on to become the foundation of a generation of games and famous mods. The continued adventures of Gordon Freeman were a hallmark First-Person Shooter with a physics-based engine that encouraged you to play with the world around you. (It also launched the pale lighting and muddy tones aesthetic that defined that era of games.) Without Half-Life 2 and its Source Engine, we wouldn’t have a lot of landmark games: Team Fortress 2, Portal, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Insurgency, to name a few.

Half-Life 2 also heralded the launch of Steam’s new look and new role as a storefront for Valve’s games. No longer just a service for multiplayer and updates, Steam has since grown into the primary platform for PC Gamers around the world and an industry juggernaut. To many, the success of Steam has wholly eclipsed the Valve games that launched it.

Half-Life 2 has not dimmed in popularity, though. If you’re looking to get back into it, can I recommend the popular combat enhancement Half-Life 2: MMod? It’s quite good and just updated last month. There’s also long-thought-dead mod Logistique, which re-emerged this year after eight years in torpor and updated just yesterday.

Two quick notes: While it cannot consume alcohol at all, I would like to say that in theory Half-Life 2 can legally purchase and consume alcohol in the Central African Republic. That said, it should be ready to vote and smoke in time for the 2024 United States Federal Election.

On a personal note, I can still remember anxiously pre-ordering the collector’s edition of HL2 months before it released. The Source Engine tech demos and trailers were impressive, but at the time there really was no knowing whether the game would be everything it promised to be: Both cutting edge and easily modded, both innovative and traditional. It’s fascinating to look back now and see the game that inspired a generation of PC gamers and game developers turn 15.

🥳🎂🎈🎉!

Valve may or may not be working on Half-Life 3. (This guy might know, but he's no squealer.) What it is working on, it turns out, is Half-Life. Yesterday—20 years, 10 months, and 19 days after Half-Life was released—Valve released a new update for the game that fixes a surprising number of, admittedly, very minor problems.

Here's the full list of changes:

• Fixed setting monitor refresh rates through -freq when used with -nofbo
• Fixed unnecessary texture rescaling with NPOT textures
• Fixed slist command, will now show servers on the local network
• Fixed erroneous return in SV_ClipToLinks (HL #1685)
• Fixed inability to reload a partially empty weapon after reloading a save game
• Fixed MP5 spread factor, multiplayer factor was being used for single player and single player for multiplayer
• Fixed progress bar for individual files in resource download always showing at 100%
• Added auto-saving of several cvars (HL #2237)
• Fixed missing localizations in spectator UI
• Fixed NPC turn rate when running at >60FPS
• Reordered columns in server browser to prevent game descriptions from being used to fake server player count
• Fixed sv_cheats from being settable by players in a multiplayer game (sv_cheats is controllable by the server)
• Added cl_autowepswitch cvar with values 0/1 to disable/enable auto weapon switching when a new weapon is picked up
• Fix various weapon animation/sound issues
• Security fixes to console commands
• Security fixes to resource loading
• Security fixes to saving/loading

None of these fixes are going to put Half-Life back atop the Steam Top 100 (although it maintains a surprisingly robust player count for a 20-year-old shooter), but it is kind of amusing to see some of the things that have gone unaddressed until now. All this time, for instance, the MP5's singleplayer and multiplayer spread factor has been reversed—how does that happen? Columns in the server browser have also been reordered to keep unscrupulous operators from using game descriptions to fake player counts, which I have to think isn't quite as much of a problem now as it was in, say, 2001.

The Half-Life patch comes just a couple of weeks after a similar out-of-the-blue update arrived for the not-quite-as-but-still-very-old Half-Life 2. And yes, it's a little strange, but Half-Life is a great shooter (and so is HL2), and it's fun to see Valve popping in every now and then to dust and straighten.

If you'd like to sample Half-Life in all its original glory, we can help. Check out our guide to building a fantastic 1998 PC gaming rig, complete with 16MB RAM and super-hot Voodoo 2 technology, right here.

Valve has finally vanquished a few more bugs in Half-Life 2. We might never get to play the conclusion, but at least we can rest easy knowing that NPCs can blink once again. 

Half-Life 2's NPC have been stuck in this nightmare since 2014, when Steam switched to the SteamPipe content distribution system. The change caused problems for a lot of Source mods and games, but the absence of blinking was definitely the most eerie. 

Despite the visibility of the bug and the mountain of threads bringing it up year after year, Valve seemed content to let its NPCs stare for eternity. Unofficial patches solved the issue, but now Valve's finally put out an official fix. An update went out yesterday and deals with a few other lingering issues. 

• Fixed a hitch when saving games
• Fixed SteamVR running when entering the settings menu
• Fixed missing sounds on combine soldiers
• Fixed NPCs not blinking

Half-Life 2: Episode One and Two, Lost Coast and Half-Life: Source have also been updated.

I just started a new game to see for myself, and both the G-Man and the NPCs on the train have full control over their eyelids again. Revolutionary! I'm sure they're very relieved.

Cheers, RPS. 

A YouTube legend named TheMostUpset has been diligently redubbing famous scenes from movies like Back to the Future, The Terminator, and The Shining—as well as the recent TV series Chernobyl—with sounds and voices from Half-Life. 

Hearing Doc Brown talk like a Black Mesa scientist is obviously a perfect match, and redubbing Arnie with the VOX announcement system works pretty well, but some of the other choices for replacements are a bit more left-field and inspired. I'll let you see for yourself in the videos embedded here.

Hearing Arnie shoot up a police station accompanied by a bunch of 1998 videogame gunshot noises is weirdly nostalgic, and yet it's still a potent and effective bit of film-making. Movies, man.

Check out some more over at TheMostUpset's YouTube channel.

The Half-Life 2 modding scene is alive, well and doing some exceptionally silly things. Hosted by Map Labs on Mod DB, Half-Life Abridged is the fifth and most recent in a series of themed HL2 mapping contests, challenging entrants to quickly produce a single level based around a specific theme. This time, it was based around the concept of boiling down an entire chapter of Half-Life (1 or 2) into a single bite-sized level, perfect for the Free Man on the go.

Breaking all prior records for Half-Life 2 jams, there were twenty-five entries in total, all bundled up and ready to play here. Many put tongue firmly in cheek, like Intrasslad by "Salamancer", which re-imagines the entire Nova Prospekt chapter of Half-Life 2 as a trip to Ikea, and replaces Alyx Vance with a lamp. It also won first place in the contest.

Also notable is HWY 17 by "ThatsRidonkulous", which takes the 'abridged' concept perhaps too literally by squashing down the entirety of Highway 17 into a single bridge, breaking all of space and time in the process. Does that make it an Einstein-Rosen bridge, then?

Fun fact: It is never wrong to use theoretical physics jokes in a Half-Life article.

While some play it straight, a bunch of the levels are elaborate jokes. Anomalous Materials by "iiboharz" and "Jackathan" is an easter-egg and secret-laden romp that abridges Half-Life 1's first chapter. Gordon slept in today, and there's only six minutes until he's fired. Get suited up and to the test chamber ASAP, even if the world does seem to be conspiring to slow you down.

Lastly, a personal favourite is Father Grigori's Wild Ride by "RockyB", squishing Ravenholm down into a deeply unsafe haunted house fairground ride. Comfortably sitting in your mine-cart, you can kick back and relax as an animatronic Father Grigori gives you a tour of the headcrab-laden town. You'll occasionally need to use your gravity gun to switch what track you're on, and decapitate some zombies with saw-blades, though. Please keep all limbs inside the car at all times..

Many of these maps have rough edges, on account of being developed with a time limit for a competition, but they're still some of the funniest and most creative levels I've seen for the game. This collection is well worth a look.

Getting all this set up is, thankfully, pretty quick and easy. You don't even need to own Half-Life 2, but you probably should, or you won't get half the gags.

Step 1: Pop open Steam, check the Tools section of your games library and download  Source SDK Base 2013 Single Player.

Step 2: Right click on it in your Steam library, click Properties, Betas, and select the 'upcoming' branch.

Step 3: Download Map Lab #5: Abridged from Mod DB.

Step 4: Unpack it to your Steam\steamapps\sourcemods directory.

Step 5: Restart Steam and look for 'Abridged' in your game library. Have fun!