Valve Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Half-Life 2

Valve has issued a 20th anniversary update for Half-Life 2, and the game is now available for free through November 18. The other titles in the Half-Life series are all on sale, with deep discounts, and there’s a new two-hour documentary about the making of the game.

This celebration comes almost exactly a year after the original Half-Life received a similar update and documentary.

For Half-Life 2, Valve has integrated its two expansions, Episode One and Episode Two, into the main game They’re available from the main menu, and if you play the game through from the beginning, you will move from the original game into each expansion automatically. But the biggest and most welcome change, perhaps, is the interactive developer commentary. When enabled, you’ll see floating balloons throughout the game that can be selected to learn more about that part of the game.

Valve also integrated a workshop feature in Half-Life 2‘s Extras menu so you can browse, install, and play user-created content for the game. There’s a new Game Recording timeline so you can relive key parts of the game after you play. And there was an incredible amount of work done to fix bugs, rebalance the lighting throughout the game, and higher resolution textures and lightmaps, and more. You can switch between the original and updated graphics, get the best possible detail with a new High Quality mode, and play with an Xbox controller or other gamepad using an updated control interface that was first introduced in the Half-Life 1 anniversary update.

There’s so much more. This game still ranks among the very best videogames of all time, and one I’ve played again and again and again, and will now do so yet again. Check out my original review of Half-Life 2 review from 2004/2005, watch the documentary on YouTube, but above all else, head over to Steam and get the game for free if you somehow don’t own it already. And be sure to browse through the entire Half-Life collection, as all the games are on sale. Half-Life Complete, which includes all the games, is just $11.04, for example. No brainer.

And yes, it’s impossible to discuss this game and franchise without bemoaning the sad reality that Valve never wrapped up the story with a Half-Life 2 Episode Three and Half-Life 3. Instead, the company moved onto to Portal, a related title, and then lesser games like Left 4 Dead. And the years ticked by. In 2020, Valve finally released a new Half-Life title, Half-Life: Alyx, but limited its appeal by requiring a VR headset. This massive failure and disappointment is of course addressed in the documentary. And it isn’t surprising that the game’s designers had trouble following up something as historically good as Half-Life 2. But it still hurts, all these years later.

“My personal failure was being stumped,” Valve founder Gabe Newell says in the documentary. “I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward.”

What a waste.

You can learn more on the Half-Life website. But seriously, play the game. It’s the best. All these years later, it’s still the best.