
Every classic Half-Life game is now free on Steam - close04
https://store.steampowered.com/news/57848/
======
Thev00d00
Do yourself a favour and check out the amazing community remake of HL1, Black
Mesa!
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/362890/Black_Mesa/)

~~~
aschismatic
I just started playing Half-Life for the first time a few days ago. Would you
recommend playing Black Mesa in lieu of Half-Life, or in addition to it?

~~~
throwaway8941
"A few days ago"? It only takes like 20 minutes to finish it.

[https://youtu.be/VtI5HM7GVGY](https://youtu.be/VtI5HM7GVGY)

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Speedrunning is not really a viable way to judge the game's completion time.
Howlongtobeat.com rates the original Half-Life at about 10-12 hours, which
seems to gel more with my memory. My own Steam record says I logged about 10
hours on it.

~~~
asutekku
It was most likely a joke.

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aequitas
I can advise anyone to (re)play these games with the developer commentary on.
It goes into a lot of details on technical and game design stuff and really
lets you experience the game with a whole different view. Like how certain
parts of the map are setup to teach certain mechanics and the huge role
gametesting played in determining the final layout of the game.

~~~
somehnguy
The part in the dev commentary that during play testing they found that
players tend to never look up unless prompted is ingrained in my brain
forever. I always look up now :)

~~~
83457
In games or in life? There are so many skylights and other things that I've
missed for years in a real life building and then one day I look up. On
multiple occasions I'll ask the person I'm with if that skylight, chandelier,
etc has always been there.

For games this one surprised me given just how many times I've stood right
under it...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3g6dh9/has...](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3g6dh9/has_the_roof_on_mirage_palace_always_been_like/)

~~~
mercer
A friend of mine used to be a rather... prolific graffiti artist and he once
explained to me how, once he's up on a scaffold somewhere, he can basically do
whatever he wants because nobody bothers to look up. So I'd say it's true in
real life too.

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jpm_sd
Half-Life came out when I was in engineering school, and I told myself I'd get
around to playing it when I graduated. Somehow the demands of school, career,
and family have added up to more than 20 years, it's probably time to give it
a go!

~~~
sebasmurphy
HL2 is probably my favorite game of all time. Also worth noting that HL1 looks
dated as hell now and Its probably worth paying for and playing Black-Mesa
instead. Only thing you'll miss is Xen which is a just a tiny fraction of the
original campaign.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_\(video_game\))

~~~
Aardwolf
I loved HL2 as well, though I found the start of the game a bit linear, almost
rail-shooter-ish (in fact even with actual narrow enclosed train rails, and
vehicles that moved linearly). But that improved drastically mid game and
beyond and in the next episodes :)

Just such a shame episode 2 ended with a cliffhanger that never got fulfilled,
as almost everyone knows

~~~
robohoe
At this point Half Life 3 became a running joke :)

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simjue
It's not free forever, only until march when Alyx launch's.

~~~
s_dev
I imagine they will make it free forever. We're nearly approaching two decades
of the game being sold and it was one of the first digitally distributed games
as well. Can't imagine there are many Steam accounts without HL2 and I don't
imagine there are many PC gamers without a Steam account.

It would great incentive offered by Valve to simply have a Steam account.

~~~
majewsky
I actually created my Steam account after receiving a coupon for a "free game"
from a Steam representative at the 2008 Leipzig Games Convention. When
redeeming the coupon, the "free game" turned out to be the Orange Box.

That coupon was certainly a good business decision for Valve. My library now
contains 100+ games.

~~~
WorldMaker
IIRC, my Steam account dates back to a bundle code in a CD for what I believe
was an HL: Blue Shift bundle and an encouragement to use Steam for multiplayer
because of better anti-cheat protection, around when that was new enough (it
came out in 2001 and Steam officially launched in 2003, so it was maybe two or
three years after the original launch as a bundle?), that code included all of
HL1 up to that point. It's weird to recall there was a period where I had the
entire Steam catalog unlocked, but it's also been a long time since the entire
Steam catalog was just HL1 and its expansions and mods.

This was back in an ancient dial up age when downloading a CD's worth of game
seemed crazy, but I liked the idea of having a "backup" of the CD accessible
just in case.

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peruvian
Don't play FPS much any more but HL1 (and Deathmatch) had a big impact on me
as a child in terms of what video games could do for story telling and
immersion. I hope younger people give it a shot.

~~~
untog
Same. Many fond memories of HL1 and playing Counterstrike over dial up. HL1
drew me in in a way that Unreal never did... it was hyped beyond belief and
_was_ technically incredible, but the game itself felt flat. Half-Life on the
other hand... incredible.

Even by the time HL2 rolled around I wasn't playing FPSes so much. I played
and enjoyed it, but the experience doesn't compare to HL1.

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classified
Not exactly. You can play the game for free until March but you cannot
download it for free.

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kasperni
OSX Catalina not supported for those that have upgraded.

~~~
aequitas
Luckily Steam tells us which games will be incompatible with Catalina. For me
it's a big part of my library and some are even recent (-5 years). I doubt
these game will ever get updates or Apple will provide a compatiblity layer
ala rosetta stone like they did for the PPC to X86 switch. A lot of old games
are already lost to me because of this.

~~~
galad87
But it's up to the games developers to set up the compatibility flag, and many
are wrong. See
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DkOsI9AwAT4dzPkLmun...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17DkOsI9AwAT4dzPkLmunYJJmUpf1FuWR62Q1vAEfJzM/edit#gid=1334813227)

~~~
aequitas
I have not looked into this, but if it's a flag you might be able to change it
yourself in the info.plist file. Unless code signing get in the way.

~~~
galad87
It's an issue in Steam database, not in the games. It shows the "this game is
not compatible" message, but the games can still run.

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BuildTheRobots
Slightly annoyed as I bought Half Life a couple of weeks ago. Even more
annoyed, as it turned out that it doesn't run on Windows 10 - it installs and
launches, but isn't capable of any sort of useful FPS. I ended up installing
Windows XP in a virtual machine and then installing HL on that - I get native
resolution and fps that matches my monitor.

Steam does have history selling games that can't be played. I bought Max Payne
a few years ago at only to find that doesn't run on Windows 10 either (iirc I
used WINE that time).

~~~
jki275
I've played HL and HL2 on Windows 10 and not had any of the issues you
describe -- what hardware are you using?

~~~
BuildTheRobots
HL2 is absolutely fine. HL1 is not. It's a 6-core 4ghz processor with a
gtx-970 graphics. No problems with other titles. See link below or just google
for "half life 1 fps windows 10"

[https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/257985440075...](https://steamcommunity.com/app/70/discussions/0/2579854400753165815/)

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whalesalad
The Steam support rollercoaster I went through recently to unlock these games
was kind of insane but also wonderful at the same time. I went back and forth
for an eternity with support trying to get access to an account that I no
longer had email access for.

When the support person finally handed over the keys to the kingdom after like
15 years of not being able to login I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe that
they basically helped me out on what really came down to the honor system.

Now all these games are free. Go figure =)

I’ve been reviving an old 3770k as of late, getting back into overclocking and
desktop PCs in general. My goal is to build a decent little desktop side rig
for compiling nerves/rpi kernels. The integrated graphics can’t do 4K, so I
knew I needed an actual GPU. Getting back into this scene has been really
nostalgic from the high school years. I started with a cheap RX570 that whines
and cried under load like a thousand dying rats (coil whine?). So I returned
that and took big green for a spin w/ a GTX 1650 from EVGA which is by no
means a top dog card but it has worked really well to drive my 4K display.

I fired up HL2 this weekend on Linux and played it for a few minutes. So
nostalgic! The weird noises and radio crackles really hammer home the
dystopian future. I can’t get the game to run full screen though (Linux
problems) but it works okay in windowed mode. I don’t know how people game on
Linux because despite the progress it’s still so far from being sane.

~~~
unixhero
1\. Install Linux Mint

2\. Install Steam and enable compatibility mode in settings

(And Gog Galaxy and special shout out to Lutris which should be installed as
well)

3\. Profit

~~~
myself248
I need to give Mint a try. I recently built a Ryzen box specifically for
gaming (my first gaming-centric build ever, and my first PC build in a decade,
talk about future shock!), and installed Ubuntu on it. Steam works well enough
but Cities:Skylines crashes when I fullscreen it, and there are cryptic error
messages about video memory allocation failures.

I got bogged down trying to install new Mesa libraries and just resigned
myself to playing windowed, until such time as folks with more skills fix the
mainline and I can just upgrade to it.

For some reason it never occurred to me to try a different distro. Mint might
be in my future!

~~~
arminiusreturns
Maybe also consider Manjaro. The hardware detector works extremely well.

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skizm
Small note: free to play till launch. I don't think you get them forever. That
said, they're great games and playing them only makes me sad they never made a
true HL3.

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rawbot
Anyone that is considering replaying HL2, should give SMOD [1] a look. It
works on top of the original campaign, but it is highly customizable and makes
for some interesting gameplay, e.g. Duke Nukem kick melee attack without
changing weapons, completely customizable bullet-time (own speed, own
projectiles speed, enemy speed, etc.), etc.

1: [https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod](https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod)

~~~
StavrosK
I'd love to, but how? I don't see installation instructions or even a download
link there. The site is so full of link bars, toolbars and sidebars that I
might easily be missing the link, though.

~~~
rawbot
When the Orange Box came out, it broke many mods, SMOD being one of them. I
believe this version should work with the current HL2 version distributed by
Steam:

[https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod/downloads/smod-40a-piped](https://www.moddb.com/mods/smod/downloads/smod-40a-piped)

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ramshorns
Not including Opposing Force and Blue Shift. I guess we can't get our hopes up
about Adrian Shephard being awoken to be Alyx's first sidekick, or anything
like that.

~~~
anoncake
Does Valve actually own them? AFAIK at least one of them was developed by a
different company.

~~~
RandomOpinion
Both were by Gearbox, IIRC, probably best known recently for the Borderlands
series.

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Shivetya
Half Life 1 & 2 are still flagged as not compatible with Catalina, though I
think there are a few games flagged as such which actually run

~~~
anoncake
Doesn't Proton ("Steam Play") work on Mac OS?

~~~
diffeomorphism
Keyword "Catalina". It works just fine on non-Catalina MacOS.

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klingonopera
Oh boy, I'm excited that the chain of events around this might also move CSGO
closer to finally being ported to the Source 2 engine... :D

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JadoJodo
I run a yearly Halfvember (Novembda?) playthrough event of these games with
friends/co-workers because they're such great games. Highly recommend playing
through, if you've not yet done so.

And if you have, I recommend the aforementioned Black Mesa edition of Half-
Life, as well as the Community Edition of Half-Life 2.

~~~
thebigshane
I play HL1/HL2 every 4 years or so since they came out. I still haven't
finished HL2 Episode 2 though :(

I can't find anything about "Community Edition of Half-Life 2", what is that?

EDIT: Maybe you mean "HL2 Update"? ...
[https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8302337/half-
life-2-update...](https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/27/8302337/half-
life-2-update-mod-valve)

There is also the "HL2 Cinematic Mod" but that looks ridiculous (pretty much a
scantily dressed Alyx) ...
[https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/FakeFactory%27s_Cinema...](https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/FakeFactory%27s_Cinematic_Mod)

~~~
JadoJodo
Yeah, the HL2 Update was what I meant. I think I've heard it referenced as
'Community Edition' due to it's inclusion of the community commentary.

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tantalor
now free -> free for now

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fit2rule
I can't find it in Steam for free -does anyone have a specific link to the
Steam store somehow? There are a lot of fan-made versions which are Free, but
that's not what this is about is it?

~~~
SloopJon
As some of the other comments have noted, this is like a free-to-play weekend,
but longer. It does not appear that you can associate it with your account for
free.

I was surprised that I don't already own Half-Life on Steam. I have the Orange
Box, but I guess I only have boxed copies of the older games and expansions.

------
ufo
Does anyone know what is the difference between "Half-Life 2" and "Half-Life
2: Episode One"?

Did they start counting from zero or is the latter a subset of the former?

~~~
nudemanonbike
Valve experimented with episodic games with half life. The idea was to release
small, couple hour episodes as a continuation of the story frequently, instead
of waiting a long time to make a half life 3.

Clearly that didn't happen.

What you need to know is that it's more campaign for half life 2. If HL2 is a
movie, episode one is the first episode of the TV show. Smaller, but still
good.

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sammorrowdrums
They missed having an actual half-life release schedule by 4 years :-/

1998 HL -> 2004 HL2 (6 years) -> 2020 HL3 (16 years)

At least improvements in VR tech might make overlook that...

~~~
asutekku
HL Alyx is not a HL3 though, it is a prequel.

~~~
sammorrowdrums
True, but regardless it's too late. I'd just accepted Alyx as the third major
installment of Half-Life, that's really what I meant.

Technically there were the episode releases too, and so it doesn't really hold
up to scrutiny. I just liked the idea that they released one full game on
schedule befitting the name.

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cowmix
I'm not a huge gamer but, for some reason, I have purchased the HL2 series
like 5 times in the past 15+ years.

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odiroot
Do they work under Linux?

~~~
6581
HL1 has a native Linux version, HL2 works with Proton.

Edit: As cosarara correctly points out, HL2 also runs natively.

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cosarara
HL2 works natively too.

~~~
6581
For some reason only Windows and OS X are listed on the HL2 Steam store page.
But you're right of course, HL2 runs natively too.

~~~
non-entity
Some games seem to use Steamplay automatically. For example, I was able to
install and run the old Star Wars Battelfront 2 on Linux without doing
anything while I had to grab Proton to run other games

~~~
anoncake
What do you mean with "grab Proton"? By default Steam only uses Proton for
games where it was tested to work but there's a setting to enable it for all
that aren't available natively.

You can also force it to use Proton when a native version does exist which is
useful for bad ports.

~~~
non-entity
I think I had to grab a specific version for a game

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gordon_freeman
Just wanted to remind folks here that Half-Life is the game that single
handedly popularized the entire genre of First Person Shooter (FPS). That in
itself is a big achievement but the game is much more than that with its
intricate puzzle style with giving minimum instructions to the player and let
the player figure out things.

Edit: OK...I see folks reminding me about other classic FPS games that came
before HL but I was too young when those games came out so my first FPS
experience was with HL. Also by the time I started playing video games those
games were too old graphics-wise to entice me to play. But fair point!

~~~
0xffff2
My video game history isn't all that great, but... what? Wolfenstein 3D
(1992)? Doom (1993)? Quake (1996)?

~~~
clarry
Unreal also came out before HL in 1998. And I think it looks, plays, and
sounds better. The only things HL does better is scripted storytelling and
realism.

Unreal is a game I enjoy today and will probably play again sometime this
year; HL's linear scripting is something I only need to see once, and its
realism hasn't aged so well.

