Half-Life 2 is currently 100% off for its 20th anniversary, plus a major update

[old woman memories mode]

I remember registering my CD key of HL1 on Steam and was surprised when they gave me the expansions for free. Cool, because I didn't have them.

I remember buying The Orange Box on Steam. I remember it because Steam gave me a warning because I already had Portal - it was free at some point. Was a bit miffed when TF2 went free to play later on.

And I somehow still haven't played HL2 on Steam, I think? I played it about 1/3 way on Xbox 360. Played the shit out of Portal on 360 though.

Well, they implemented some graphical improvements and options, as well as workshop mod support so now would be a good time for a replay.

They've admitted to cancelling ideas before, getting to various stages of production before going back to the drawing board, but always (and appear to still) insist that it is in development on some level. That's why Newell's responses to questions about hl3 are usually some form of "we have nothing new to share." Valve doesn't like sharing until they're in the final stages of development, and hl3 has never made it that far.

They have mentioned before that they gave up on episodic development, which tacitly ditches Episode 3. The episodes ended up not being that much easier or faster to make and in a time when PC games in retail was still kind of relevant, it was a pain to make, distribute, and get shelf space for.

Only those ideas and experiments never came to be. There's still hope

Vann here's what it shows on sync for lemmy:

I can only agree.

If you start with the second one you won't know what's going on and feel like you've missed a bunch of important story.

This is how it felt after playing the first one as well. Half Life 2 is almost an unrelated game. The plots of the two barely line up.

They each stand completely on their own. Start with 1 if you want the whole lore and like 90s PC games. Start with 2 if you want a slightly more modern experience.

Hl1 and hl2 are not really connected plotwise and can be enjoyed separately. There's some small references and a couple characters you wouldn't necessarily know even if you played HL1, because HL1 didn't have much of a focus on that kind of story-telling.

The series is certainly a must play because of how much it influenced the industry. Going back to it now may not seem like it's all that great; but you gotta keep in mind, it was one of the very first FPS games designed this way. Before Half-Life, FPS games were all just basically Doom clones.

Start with 1

I played Half Life first time few years ago, and it has aged really well in my opinnion. I enjoyed it more than Black Mesa. Also I don't think of Black Mesa as a substitute for hl1, but as a good game you can play after beating og.

Start with HL2 on normal difficulty. Then do 2E1 and 2E2 on normal difficulty.

Then repeat all of that on hard.

Then you'll be where I am. Never bothered with 1.

Start with 1, So you can understand what is happening.

Don't forgrt HL2 RTX coming up.

It says they're at full price to me; it's the HL2 anniversary, after all. The Orange Box as a whole is 90% off though.

When I look at the steam store Portal has a price tag of $9.99.

Portal didn't come out until 2007 with the orange box, which also had hl2: episode 2 (and tf2), but the base game of hl2 came out standalone in 2004. This giveaway is a celebration of hl2's 20th anniversary, so maybe they'll do a portal giveaway in 2027.

I'm so hyped to listen to the new commentary.