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It doesn't seem to be mentioned here, but HL2 (which now includes the sequel episodes) is completely free to claim on Steam until the 18th, if you're new to the
by jsheard 2y ago
It doesn't seem to be mentioned here, but HL2 (which now includes the sequel episodes) is completely free to claim on Steam until the 18th, if you're new to the series.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/
Also try clicking on the gravity gun at the end of the anniversary page.
- XorNot 2y agoAlso I highly recommend Black Mesa, which is the remake of HL1 in the HL2 engine. The Xen levels went from what they were to possibly some of my favorite levels in the game, and the music scoring is top-notch. It feels great to play.
- va1a 2y agoMaybe even in a game period. Beautifully done remake.
- jsheard 2y agoBlack Mesa is also 75% off right now, incidentally. Seems like everything Half Life is either free or on deep discount for the anniversary.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago[flagged]
- jsheard 2y agoAnd when you buy an album on CD you just license it for personal use, you can't play it on the radio or in a commercial space. "Buying" a copy of some intellectual property always had strings attached even in the age of physical media.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoSteam can delete a game from your account, they can't delete a cd that I physically have with me. Why does this even need to be spelled out...
- taeric 2y agoDo they have a record of doing this? Paranoia here is largely warranted. But people had fewer rights than they realized before. And finding a way to play older media is often a rather expensive endeavor. Edit to add: I also find picking on Valve awkward here. Microsoft? Sony? I would be far more inline. Even Nintendo. Valve seems to be much more on favor of empowering users, though.
- Uvix 2y agoMicrosoft, Sony, and Nintendo all have physical releases for most of their games that they can't take from my cold dead hands. Valve has singlehandedly killed that market for PC games.
- taeric 2y agoNintendo has some where you can't rent anymore, because the save data is on cartridge. They all have limitations on regions. Again, Steam /could/ do this. Has it? The others have done the things.
- opan 2y ago3DS saved to the cart and had region-locking. Neither applies to Switch. You can get a JP copy of Splatoon 3, play it on your NA Switch, swap to the NA version of the game, and not lose anything.
- taeric 2y agoAh, that is good to hear. May pick up a switch game for the kids while in Japan, then.
- throw10920 2y agoTangential, irrelevant, "flamebait...generic tangents...internet tropes." "reminder" that the guidelines explicitly say to avoid. Nobody mentioned ownership or licensing or anything tangentially related until you did. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago[flagged]
- dekhn 2y agoIn my decade+ of using steam, this has never been an issue.
- Timon3 2y agoAnd regarding another fan project - turns out the Prologue for Project Borealis has been released on November 11th! They're trying to make HL3 according to the Epistle 3 post from a couple of years ago. https://projectborealis.com/prologue-release/ https://projectborealis.com/prologue-release/ Looks great, and feels pretty close to HL2 mechanics! Definitely has to be optimized more, but a very promising start (albeit short, ~10-15 minutes).
- mepian 2y agoI worked on this in the first year, on the gameplay code. Glad it’s finally bearing some fruit.
- chii 2y agoGood stuff. I have seen a lot of "complaints" from various people that they shouldn't have chosen UE, as it will have made the game much slower to develop since everything needed to be done from scratch. But the graphics looked much nicer in UE and not to mention the tooling is nicer than what one could use with mods. Surely, the upfront cost of porting aspects of HL2 over to UE is not investment lost.
- KronisLV 2y agoHasn't Unreal Engine 5 gotten a bunch of criticism about a lot of the games made with it having high system requirements, and often playing like a stuttery mess? Though it's hard to tell where the technical decisions end and developers not caring much about optimization (or expecting people to use upscaling even for 1080p) starts. Recently, it was revealed that even the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 benchmarks used upscaling and the problems with visually stunning but horribly performing games like The Forever Winter were also pretty obvious. I did very much appreciate what Black Mesa did, though. Maybe Project Borealis will also be a success story in due time.
- talldayo 2y agoIt's complicated. There is Unreal 5 tech that is extremely slow in and of itself (Lumen and Nanite come to mind), but most of the stutter comes from UE5's notorious shader compilation pipeline. Instead of pre-compiling shaders on first launch, UE5 will automatically compile and cache shaders while the user is playing which obviously hits the CPU and causes slowdown in unfamiliar areas. However, it should be noted that this isn't an issue for consoles (where precompiled shaders come with the game) or Steam Deck (where shaders are compiled via Fossilize before the game is even launched). It's most notable on DirectX programs during the first run, which hits benchmarks quite badly but also becomes less stuttery as more shaders are cached.
- throwaway314155 2y agoI had a lot of issues getting black mesa to run on linux natively or via proton. Frequently crashes. Not uncommon per protondb. Food for thought of you're on a linux setup.
- account42 2y agoBlack Mesa is all right but please just play the original if you want to play Half-Life.
- kolbusa 2y agoAlso try playing with the can and the trash bin.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoInside the trash can is the garden gnome from episode 2.
- gordon_freeman 2y agoI think they are also merging Ep1 and Ep2 together into HL2 now and have gradual progression of HL2 to E1 and then to E2. I just browsed my Steam game library and can't find separate copies of E1 and E2 there because of being merged with HL2.
- parasti 2y agoThis is in the article.
- gordon_freeman 2y agoFor folks who don’t read article and come to read comments directly.
- justaj 2y agoSo if I already own HL2, that means I'd automatically be able to access those sequels / episodes?
- dawnerd 2y agoYep they’re actually all just one game now. They’ve bundled them and kinda archived them old standalone.
- justaj 2y agoThat's really nice. This is what I would call a great value-add through goodwill directed at the community. I hope to do something similar if I ever get to run an enterprise.