This Sunday, November 19, marks a full 25 years since its founding Half life first hit (pre-Steam) store shelves. To celebrate the anniversary, Valve has released a “25th anniversary update” feature to the game on Steam, and titled free parking if you pick up this weekend.
Artificial 25th Anniversary Update One page details a bevy of new and modernized features added to the classic first-person shooter, including:
- Four multiplayer maps that “push the limits of what’s possible in Half life engine”
- New graphics systems, including support for wide-screen field-of-view on modern monitors and Open GL Overbright light (still no official ray tracing support, though — leave that to the developers)
- “The right gamepad configuration out of the box” (so dust off that Gravis Gamepad Pro)
- Steam Network Support for easy multiplayer setup
- “Closed” support for the Steam Deck game (“We failed super hard” on the first verification attempt, Valve writes)
- Correct UI scaling for resolutions up to 3840×1600
- Very moderate updates (because 25 years is not enough to have complete meta)
- New item limits that allow mod makers to build more complex mods
- A full software developer for the Linux version of the game
- Various bug fixes
- “Remove now unnecessary ‘Low video quality. Help with slow video card settings'”
Additionally, the latest update includes a host of restored and unseen content, including:
- Three multiplayer maps from the “Half-Life: Data Forward” CD-ROM: Double Cross, Rust Mill, and Xen DM
- Four multiplayer models brought back: Ivan the Space Biker, Proto-Barney (from the alpha house), a skeleton, and Too Much Coffee People (from “More Data”)
- Dozens of “More Data” sliders to mark in your multiple matches
- The original Half-Life: Uplink demo in playable form
“We now consider this anniversary version of Half life to be a defining feature, and one that we will continue to support going forward,” Valve wrote in its update. While 2004 has been revised Half-Life: Source will be available, Valve says it is now “encouraging new Half-Life players to play this version instead.”
The updated version of Half life is also free to keep for all Steam users who add it to their library by the end of the weekend. And if you miss to get it all Half life series for free back in 2020, the rest of the series has been discounted by up to 90% (good news if you don’t want to pay more than $0.99 for Half-Life 2).
Apart from in-game updates, Valve also contributed Secret tape for a one-hour documentary spoke to several of the game’s original developers about their memories of everything from weaponry, character, and level design, to storytelling and voice acting, to those iconic opening levels.
Despite the 25th Anniversary hoopla, Valve has yet to officially acknowledge the 17th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which took place earlier this year. There is no public record of 10 years since the maximum Half life project film announced on stage at DICE 2013 by Valve’s Gabe Newell and Mega-director JJ Abrams. While we’re here basking in nostalgia, check out our tenth anniversary coverage Half life, which was at a time much earlier than the time of Ars Technica. “In the beginning, Half life It should be this quickie FPS that will give the company a jump start and get us on our feet to do whatever the real thing is that we’re going to do,” Valve’s Marc Laidlaw said at the time. “We can learn some of the things that are being done. this, then we’ll do something else.”
Image List by Artificial