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Revisit City 17 Like Never Before with ‘Half-Life 2: Update’, Coming Free to Steam on March 27th

Modding & Development Half-Life

A little over four years ago, we wrote an article to announce that version 2.0 of a little community-made ‘mod’ going by the name ‘Half Life 2: Update‘ had been released in response to Valve’s infamous 2010 Mac update that brought a weak implementation of HDR (High Dynamic Range) to Half Life 2 and an insane number of crippling bugs.

Half Life 2: Update fixed many of those bugs – unofficially – and enhanced many of the HDR effects in the vanilla game and just today, the lead developer Filip Victor has announced that the third and final iteration will be released for free on Steam this Friday, March 27th.

Originally created in 2009, Half-Life 2: Update 1.0 sought to port the vanilla Half-Life 2 game to the Orange Box engine like it’s console counterparts.

After gaining tremendous praise for its quality, over the past three years Victor has received support from the likes of Nvidia, EVGA, Origin PC, and even Valve themselves to bring the final product to be officially distributed on the Steam Store.

Victor has stated the following in regards to the development of the mod:

“While developing the update, I needed to make sure that no matter what I did, I was improving Half-Life 2’s world without changing its iconic style, tone, or gameplay.” Says Lead Developer Filip Victor “My goal is to create something that will draw new players to the Half-Life series, but not alienate long-time fans. Half-Life 2: Update shouldn’t be seen as a mod, but as a true update to what is already there.”

Half-Life 2: Update 3.0 (now known simply as Half-Life 2: Update) will bring a variety of enhancements, features, and fixes including “improvements in lighting and special effects, increased world detail … and an original Community Commentary mode [that will] bring Half-Life 2 to the same standards as its episodic sequels Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and just a little bit beyond”.

Half-Life 2: Update

Half-Life 2: Update

The commentary included with the standalone update is voiced by YouTubers Caddicarus, Brutalmoose, Rice Pirate, ProJared, and Balrog the Master of Did You Know Gaming? and the voice and creator of the ever popular Freeman’s Mind series, Ross Scott.

Below you can also find a comparison video that was uploaded as part of the announcement, showing off some of the visual differences between the existing Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Update:

Filip also uploaded a release ‘brochure’ which explains Half-Life 2: Update in more detail.

You can head over to the official Steam Store page this Friday to download Half-Life 2: Update 3.0.

4 Comments

  1. very nice

  2. This is great. Filip did an awesome job on this.

  3. Holy crap, that screenshot looks so nice I could use it as my wallpaper

  4. This looks sweet!

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