Half-Life 2 Message Board

The limbs. They never end, the limbs. It's like the characters in this glitched out playthrough of Half-Life 2 are related to Slenderman or something.Read more...

One of the ways you can wait for a new Half-Life game is to join a roleplaying server, set in Half-Life 2's City 17, and play as a citizen. Made with the Source Filmmaker, Mendelevius' over-the-top example shows that on these servers, surviving can be even harder than, for example, in DayZ.Read more...

Is this... The Valvengers? The Hulk, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Nick Fury, Black Widow, Captain America and Thor (poor Thor) all transformed into Valve characters. With the Scout and the Soldier from Team Fortress 2 and a zombie from Left 4 Dead, teaming up with Gordon Freeman, this team probably wouldn't function smoothly.Read more...

The Stanley Parable is a remake of the fantastic 2011 Half-Life 2 mod about a man named Stanley. The creators, Galactic Cafe, really don't like sharing anything from the game, as you can see in their trailers, so now they've gone even further and created a standalone demo showing off the behind-the-scenes of remaking their game. You can download the demo now on Steam, and get the full game next week.Read more...

There's a catch. There's always a catch.Read more...

Watch as Alyx Vance throws caution into the wind by putting a zen crystal into the Gravity Gun despite lacking a suit—all without quite knowing if the Gravity Gun will work. (It will, of course.)Read more...

I've never read the book Generation Xbox, about video games invading Hollywood. Our columnist Superannuation (who's on a bit of a video game vs Hollywood run at the moment) has, though, and has found something interesting tucked away inside.Read more...

It’s only taken 600 days and 14 people, but Half-Life 2 has finally been completed in under 1 hour and 28 minutes. The speedrun I’ve embedded below is the product of Source Runs team, and it reduces Valve’s opus to a dramatic, comedic relay of astonishing keyboard gymnastics. Each player passes off their best run through to the next, completing the game as a team. There are 200 segments covered in the same time it would take to watch Paranormal Activity. In fact, some might say what you’re about to see is parano – [*snip* We'll have none of that - segue Ed].(more…)

Collectible company Gaming Heads, the same folks behind those awesome Team Fortress 2 statues, have posted a collection of photos showing how one of their upcoming pieces - Half-Life's Gordon Freeman - is coming along at the factory. If you were expecting a fancy Deus Ex-like assembly line full of robots and clean white surfaces, you're out of luck. What you are getting to see is even better: the way that the pieces are, in many stages, still worked on individually, by hand. Which is awesome. Gordon Freeman production images [Gaming Heads, via Toyark]

Oculus Rift owner and YouTuber Vaecon recorded a 15-minute session of Half-Life 2 on Oculus Rift, and the entire experience can be summed up in a few words, spoken less than two minutes into his gameplay demo: "Whoa. This is really cool."

Valve launched official support for Half-Life 2 on the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, in beta form, on Friday. Valve programmer Joe Ludwig cautioned that this beta was "a bit more raw" than Team Fortress 2's Oculus Rift prowess, noting HUD and UI issues.

Vaecon sported some anti-motion-sickness bands during his Half-Life 2 session, since previous games on the system left him woozy. Whether because of the bands or the game itself, Half-Life 2 on Oculus Rift didn't appear to affect Vaecon's stomach.

"This is the perfect scene to show on the Oculus because there's a lot of action, jumping and - oh, I feel like I'm swimming," he said.

Valve has updated Half-Life 2 with Oculus Rift compatibility, Valve programmer Joe Ludwig announced on the device's developer forums. "We just shipped a beta for Half-Life 2 that includes Oculus Rift support," Ludwig writes. "To get it, open the properties for HL2 in Steam, set your command line to '-vr,' and opt-in to the SteamPipe beta. This should ship to everybody in a few weeks."

Ludwig also cautions that Half-Life 2's Oculus Rift support is "a bit more raw" than the implementation found in Valve's other provisionally Rift-supporting game, Team Fortress 2. Specifically, he mentions slight UI issues and acknowledges that the game's HUD is difficult to read, and encourages developers to let Valve know of any issues they encounter while charging around City 17.

[Thanks, Rasmus!]

I hate Adam Foster, creator of last decade’s rapturously-received Half-Life 2 mod series MINERVA (not to be confused with BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den) and more recently a Valve employee. I hate him not because he is talented, not because he works at a cool place and not because I have a pathological distaste for people called ‘Adam.’ (Smith, you’re fired). I hate him because today he has made me feel SO OLD.

One of the first long-form pieces I ever wrote for RPS was an interview with Mr Foster about his excellent, thoughtful mod, and its fine accomplishments in level design and mood. That was in 2007. Now it is 2013. Six years later. And I am posting about MINERVA again. He now works at Valve, and meanwhile I’m still typing words into the same CMS, but older, grimmer, fatter. At least I’ve changed my chair twice since then. Something Foster has also done is repackage and spit’n'polish his mod for a well-deserved re-release on Steam today.(more…)

With Oculus Rift's initial developer unit launch scheduled for next month, the folks at Oculus have understandably been busy. After CES, they went to Hong Kong to oversee the initial manufacturing run of their "pilot" dev kit prototypes - 40 in total - and are on-track to meet their March ship deadline for the final Oculus Rift. Kickstarter backers will receive their units sometime in April.

With the extra time, Oculus added two small features the start-up hopes will make for a better experience: swappable lens caps for the inside viewing area and an adjustable assembly for a more fine-tuned fit. So if you're near-sighted or far-sighted, the three different lens caps will allow you to adjust your depth of focus to meet your vision needs; and with the adjustable assembly, now you can possibly leave your glasses on when using the Oculus Rift and get the best fit possible.

If you're late to the Oculus Rift party, know it's a virtual reality headset that has mesmerized some of the industry's most notable talent, including John Carmack and MineCraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson. In fact, they aren't the only ones - a recent Half-Life 2 head-tracking and gun-tracking mod created by Nathan Andrews, designed for the Oculus Rift, has gotten a lot of attention. Andrews put up his own AMA on Reddit to answer questions and provide more information - if you want to see the mod in action, head past the break for a video demonstration. Trust us, it's totally neat!

#halflife2 What you see above is Nathan Andrews' full head- and weapon tracking mod for Half-Life 2, which he created in preparation for the release of the Oculus Rift virtual reality gaming headset. It looks insane. More »

#halflife The Half-Life 2 Cinematic Mod has been around forever, and in that time has proven fairly divisive. Sure, it adds some lovely effects to the game, but it also makes so many changes that some feel it loses a little of Valve's original vision for City 17 and its surrounding countryside. The "improved" character models are a particular bone of contention. More »

#halflife For years now, there have been rumors and reports of a now-cancelled Half-Life 2 episode called Half-Life 2: Return to Ravenholm. The project, an overview of which can be found at the Combine Overwiki, was to be a collaboration between Valve and Dishonored-makers Arkane, and would, presumably, take players back to the creepy, zombie-infested village of Ravenholm. Return to Ravenholm was confirmed by Valve's Marc Laidlaw in January of last year. More »

NECA's full-size Half-Life 2 Gravity Gun replica can be yours, but getting it won't be easy.

The Gravity Gun will go on sale on Think Geek in April for $150, but there will be a limited quantity. Like the Portal guns that sold out in just 30 minutes last year, once they're sold out, they're gone forever. To give yourself the best chance of scoring a Gravity Gun, sign up for an email alert now on its Think Geek page.

The NECA Gravity Gun is stocked with sound effects and LEDs, and a kickstand for all those times you're not acting out Gordon Freeman fantasies with it. Check out the full run-down on Think Geek, and if you're interested, don't forget to sign up for that email reminder.

With Black Mesa Source somehow now actually released, maybe we need a new impossible mod dream to dream. How about this Jurassic Park-themed mod for Half-Life 2, now six years in the making without any danger of issuing a release date? That’s how PC gaming rolls.

It does have some great footage to show off, though. Clever girl.(more…)

#halflife Sadly, it won't make the holiday shopping season, but toy company NECA's replica Half-Life 2 gravity gun will be available for purchase next Spring. More »

I probably need to leap back into Garry’s Mod. For about a year, it was one of my go-to games/game-like things. If I was feeling bored, I’d find the most elaborate ways possible to pit a single, pistol-armed human NPC against hundreds of languidly slithering legless zombies and cackle until my mental health was severely in question. Eventually, though, I squeezed all the grim carnage I could from even the juiciest of scenarios, so it stopped being my time-waster of choice. But now, it sounds like Garry’s wonderful toybox – in much the same fashion as an infinitely multiplying army of single-frightened-human-hungry Ant Lions – has expanded quite a lot. And more’s on the way. Kinect support, for instance, is right around the corner, and Garry’s released a video of how exactly it’ll work. Flail your arms wildly at the break until something happens. Or just click on it.

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Haha. Yeah, Garry knows what to do. I’ve posted videos of his Kinect experiments below, and you can see exactly why the infamously aberrant Half-Life 2 mod actually needs Kinect support by watching those. Readers with memories will recall that we talked to Garry about his plans for the mod earlier in the year.

The Kinect support will apparently arrive “this week or next”.(more…)

#dishonored Lots of reviews have compared Dishonored to Valve's classic Half-Life 2. Both titles enjoy richly-drawn gameworlds with play mechanics that let you get creative. And they've both got lead characters who don't talk. So, you'd figure that Gordon Freeman served as a model for Dishonored's Corvo, right? Not exactly. More »

“It was never meant to be a big deal. I was just *crag*ing about!” says Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman. His innovative physics-based mod for Half-Life 2 turned out to be a remarkably big deal, not least a forerunner in iterative and community focussed design that’s perennially in Steam’s top twenty game stats. It’s an exercise in giving gamers tools and no direction, one of the few games that makes just messing about a core goal. Its strength is a flexibility that makes it a platform for people to make comics, maps, weapons, even gamemodes. It might have grown by enabling sexually suggestive poses of Valve’s stoic game characters, but six years on there’s so more to GMod than just *crag*ing about. Here’s how it got there. (more…)

#halflife Pandemic is a Half-Life 2 movie made by anklove. While it's got its fair share of effects, this isn't some attempt at a blockbuster action flick. Instead, it does what Eastern European movies do best: turn the screws on a desolate, bleak landscape. More »

#halflife We featured the work of LEGO builder ORRANGE back in 2009, with his brilliant take on Half-Life, but a recent playthrough of the game has got him returning to the universe to take more pictures. More »

Another Half-Life 3 confirmation rumour? Why not. T3 have spotted, on the Gamescom pdf designed to show press what games are appearing, the Half-Life 3 is listed as Valve’s entry. You can see it for yourself right here.

There are a few Half-Life 2 mods that basically constitute The Further Adventures of Gordon Freeman. Sometimes these isolated chapters make me want to dive headfirst back into the unfinished trilogy, and sometimes they’re just a reminder of what Source did well. Other times, though, they manage to articulate More Half-Life 2 while at the same time having a strong whiff of first-order originality, served with their own own flourishes of design brilliance. Minerva was one such outing, and Mission Improbable is another.(more…)

#halflife Half-Life 2 is a vast and interesting game. This YouTuber fragments it into 60 seconds to give you the best, most accurate and important impressions. More »

Scaring someone is a fine art. Scaring someone when they’re expecting to be scared makes it even trickier. So Grey is a big task for the Deppresick team of modders. A total conversion mod for Half-Life 2, it’s a horror game that borrows liberally from every other horror game, movie, book, and scary painting you once saw. I put on my bravest trousers and had a look.

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Joe Martin is a Half-Life 2 obsessive who often wells up with actual tears when he thinks of the content Valve cut during development. Imagine his joy at finding the Missing Information mod, which collects workable snippets from the stolen HL2 beta and assembles them into a Steam-compatible mod. Joe takes a look at the parts of HL2 Valve didn’t intend for us to see, and wonders if the game we got was the best it could have been.

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