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community weblog

It's been a while, Mr Freeman

Valve has just updated and rereleased Half-Life 2 in honor of it's 20th anniversary. Included are the add-ons Episodes One and Two, many bugfixes, developer commentary and much more. There's also a 2 hour documentary. And it's free on Steam.
posted by Catblack on Nov 16, 2024 at 12:33 PM

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Aside from Doom, this was the only 1st-person shooter I ever played all the way through, and that was 20 years ago, apparently. (I would have guessed 30!) I'm guessing my reaction times are no longer good enough, and there is already so much stuff I don't get done. I added it to my account just-in-case...
posted by maxwelton at 12:43 PM

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Oh man, I am still stuck on HL2 on Xbox360! I'm in a weapons locker in the prison and they are at me from both sides and I can't get the turrets to stand up against the swat guys. Love this damn game but I'm so bad stuck I haven't played in years. (I'm also stuck under a bridge with a dragon outside in Skyrim).
posted by J.R. Hartley at 12:44 PM

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Metafilter: Stuck under a bridge with a dragon outside.

Also, obligatory "YEAH YEAH, WHERE IS HL3????" comment.
posted by slater at 1:14 PM

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I really liked Anna Washenko's first time ever playthrough. It if really cool to see someone engage with the game so far after it came out, I loved Half-Life 2 when it came out fwiw, but I can see how what was so amazing and innovative then has aged differently.
posted by Carillon at 2:23 PM

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The easy-cheesy way to get through the prison level (with the turrets in the tiny room) is to merely turn the turrets 180° in their lockers, so they face the room and are much, much harder to knock down. You can hide in the extra locker and watch Civil Protection roleplay as Swiss cheese.
posted by Western Infidels at 2:34 PM

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I got this game free with a purchase of my first AMD processor way back when. I got very little work done on my brand new machine for quite some time.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:57 PM

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Oh, I hadn't thought to keep them in the locker. I end up blocking off several of the entries to the prison block to make for a more manageable flood of enemies.

But, yeah, now that you mention it, it's been a while since I made my way through Ravenholm using only the gravity gun...
posted by rmd1023 at 2:58 PM

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Speaking of stuck under a bridge, I'm on the damn hovercraft in 2 and quit after not having figured out how to get the floating ramp thing working and just gave up,I forgot what the issue was and now that I see it I guess I have to start over from before I tried? Or is there a way to solve this. Do I need a tool to get the barrells in to float the ramp?

Anyways, yay Valve!
posted by symbioid at 3:42 PM

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i once played through the original over the course of an entire sleepless night in an underground refrigerated fish laboratory. the concrete, the condensation dripping off all the pipes, the occasional splash of a nocturnal fin... truly one of the experiences of my life. i've been a lifelong fan ever since. how rare is it for a sequel to live up to its primogenitor? to surpass it? i expect we'll still be talking about this game in 20 years, if we're talking about games at all.
posted by LegallyBread at 3:42 PM

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The Half-Life series makes me sad. It's just the kind of game that I would enjoy, but I can't play for more than 10 minutes without puking my guts out from motion sickness. I can't even watch other people play. No other game does this to me.
posted by SunSnork at 3:52 PM

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What timing! I just did a playthrough (HL2, the episodes, Portal, Portal 2) a couple months ago. Is the 20th anniversary version substantially different, other than the commentary?
posted by mittens at 4:40 PM

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(Scroll down to the bottom of that 20th anniversary page and you can pick up the gravity device. And then you can use it.)
posted by nobody at 4:57 PM

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Figuring out how to shoot saw blades at the zombies with the gravity gun remains a top gaming experience for me.
posted by gauche at 4:59 PM

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There's something poetic about them giving HL2 away on Steam now. I have it in my Steam account already, as like many people from that era, purchasing it was my first interaction with Steam, ever. It was a bold move, and obviously it's paid off insanely well for them, but it does make me wonder what the Valve that didn't invent the infinite-money-pipe would have produced these last 20 years.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:04 PM

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The first person who shot me in Metafilter Team Fortress 2 was Frohman as a Sniper. True story.
posted by asok at 5:04 PM

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The Half-Life series makes me sad. It's just the kind of game that I would enjoy, but I can't play for more than 10 minutes without puking my guts out from motion sickness. I can't even watch other people play. No other game does this to me.

Oh god, I remember this happening to me! It was apparently a thing and I followed online advice at the time to tweak the FOV (field of view) and it totally helped me...though I later saw it claimed that it was debunked that was a factor for people. But, anecdotally it worked for me, so... *shrug*
posted by Pryde at 5:20 PM

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I'm still waiting for the VR version with advan-- Hello, Gordon!
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:37 PM

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I don't think I can really explain how big of an impact the E3 2003 demo of Half Life 2 had on me. You can watch it on YouTube for yourself.

The high resolution textures, the expressive character models and faces, the physics engine, the voice acting with lip animations that matched the words... it all really struck me as such a huge leap in games (also at the time I was still playing Doom and Wolfenstein 3D on the family computer that couldn't play Quake and Half Life and other modern games of the day.)

The game still holds up graphically (heh, mostly) and gameplay- and story-wise. The fact that there were no "levels" but the next areas just (for the time) seamlessly loaded into each other made it feel like an action movie you inhabited rather than a video game you were playing.

Or maybe I just associate it with a time when I was 20 years younger.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:55 PM

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The first person who shot me in Metafilter Team Fortress 2 was Frohman as a Sniper. True story.

Oh yes, and the Half Life 2 parody comic Concerned also holds up. (Mostly. It was pretty decent and not-awful for a 2000s web comic humor.)
posted by AlSweigart at 7:57 PM

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Article in the Guardian
posted by jouke at 12:11 AM

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Frohman is still way into Half-Life-- here's his PC Gamer article on trying to glean hints from that documentary on whether Valve will do more Half-Life. (Answer: apparently, only when GabeN thinks there's enough new stuff to play with.)

Fun fact: Frohman got me onto Mefight Club, and thence onto Mefi.
posted by zompist at 12:24 AM

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@AlSweigart Concerned was legit hilarious.
posted by chmmr at 2:41 AM

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SunSnork: I can't play for more than 10 minutes without puking my guts out from motion sickness.

Pryde: It was apparently a thing and I followed online advice at the time to tweak the FOV (field of view) and it totally helped me.

I have a friend who plays at minimum 120FPS on a high-refresh-rate screen (144 is common these days) to counter his motion sickness. YMMV, I reckon it's worth checking out.
posted by k3ninho at 3:04 AM

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Forget half life 3, valve can't even be bothered to spend a month or two of engineering time to port half life 2 to apple silicon. Hell just producing a 64bit Intel build would be enough to run it in wine.
posted by dis_integration at 6:02 AM

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Half Life: Alyx was a pretty good VR experience (except for Jeff; fuck Jeff), and they pretty strongly hinted at a sequel. So maybe in another 10 or so years, we'll get that.
posted by xedrik at 8:32 AM

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