Technical data
One of the quiet tragedies of Valve's game library is a standalone Ravenholm game that never came to fruition—it was being worked on by Arkane Studios in the late 2000s, and it would've probably been pretty damn good if Valve had the moolah to make it. Over a decade later, an ent
Students of first-person shooter history will likely know that the technology Half-Life runs on—GoldSrc—is a heavily modified version of the Quake engine. It's one of many, many branches of id-tech's ancient technological tree. Indeed, you'll still find tiny fragments of Quake co
We knew when we gave the original Half-Life a 97% way back in 1998 that it was something special that gamers would be playing years from then. But I don't think we ever thought someone would play it on a Nokia phone at 30 FPS, with mouse and keyboard support. Oh, technology can b
Gabe Newell is widely regarded as the big name (and the big brain) behind Valve, and thus Half-Life and all that has sprung forth from it. But Valve, Half-Life, and the gamers who love it owe something of an unspoken debt to another man, a foundational games industry titan himsel
Stop it. Stop trying to make him do it. He won't. He will not do it. He's been very clear with you. Yes, you, seemingly random commenter who's suggested that making Half-Life 3 would be a piece of cake. Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek doesn't reckon it would be. The mythical se
I've always thought Half-Life didn't have enough teenagers in it. I mean, what's an underground research facility for if not navigating the relationship challenges of adolescence? It is, frankly, shocking that Valve so flagrantly neglected this demographic in its depiction of ali
The ongoing legal fight between OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman has seen the release of a treasure-trove of internal documentation from the firm's earliest years. One minor theme has been the presence of Gabe Newell, who gave the company over $20 million and was the s
It always bugged me that you couldn't save the scientists in Half-Life . You'd be trundling through some grey corridor in the bowels of Black Mesa, with one or two or maybe even three lab coat wearing boffins behind you, when they'd suddenly stop for no obvious reason, announcing
Before Valve reinvented cooperative gaming with Left 4 Dead , there was Zombie Panic ! A mod for the original Half-Life, Zombie Panic! pitted groups of players against a single, player-controlled brain-muncher. Which doesn't sound all that challenging, except that any survivors k
Are any of you old enough (or Half-Life -obsessed enough) to remember Zombie Panic ? One of the original, Infected-style PvP experiences that no doubt inspired similar modes in the likes of Halo and Call of Duty, it put a team of single-life, gun-toting survivors against a rival
It's not like the Half-Life 3 rumour mill ever went away, but over the past few years the tinfoil hats have been a-twitching more than ever. If it's not one thing, it's another: the anniversary of Half-Life 2, the latest mention of "HLX" (speculated to be an internal codename) in
There's been a surprisingly strong run of Half-Life total conversions of late, by which I mean there have been two of them. November brought us Diffusion , a massively ambitious sci-fi adventure with some truly eye-popping environment design, especially considering the age of its
It's not often I get to write about Half-Life these days, even if fans are absolutely certain that the threequel is on the way. I still don't think Gabe Newell can count that high, but at least we've got an army of loyal modders to create new experiences for Gordon Freeman to exp
There was a specific moment while playing Diffusion where it shifted from being merely a highly capable Half-Life mod to one of the most remarkable conversions of Valve's classic FPS I've ever played. It's a moment reminiscent of Xen's reveal in Crowbar Collective's remake of Bla
Half-Life revolutionized the first-person shooter when it released in 1998, what with its top shelf storytelling and novel puzzles. But who needs any of that crap? What if there was a game that turned the clock back just like, a year or two—same alien menace, some of the same inn
Half-Life 3 fever might be hotter right now than it has been in years. With the announcement of the new Valve Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR headset, desperate fans have convinced themselves that this is finally the time where the tale of Gordon Freeman and company makes its lo
Half-Life 3 fever has been running hot this week, for reasons—and I use that term loosely— we laid out here , which can very generally be described as "it's November and we're all a little bored and restless." One small bit of pseudo-evidence did catch my eye, though: As PC Gamer
Rumors of Half-Life 3 swirl once more. Could this finally be the time when Valve unleashes a new chapter in its iconic series, hailed among the best FPS games ever to this day? The good news is that there is a new Half-Life story that you can play right now, although this one doe
We're in another grim period for poorly optimised PC games, with the last couple of years bringing us a string of power-hungry virtual slideshows such as 2023's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and, more recently, Borderlands 4 . Corpos like Randy Pitchford think we should stop moaning a
If you followed the Half-Life modding scene at the turn of the Millennium, you undoubtedly encountered They Hunger. Developed by Black Widow Games and released as a PC Gamer exclusive on demo discs in 2000, They Hunger took the tech and design tenets of Half-Life and transposed t