gaming

the-return-of-steam-machines?-valve-rolls-out-new-“powered-by-steamos”-branding.

The return of Steam Machines? Valve rolls out new “Powered by SteamOS” branding.

Longtime Valve watchers likely remember Steam Machines, the company’s aborted, pre-Steam Deck attempt at crafting a line of third-party gaming PC hardware based around an early verison of its Linux-based SteamOS. Now, there are strong signs that Valve is on the verge of launching a similar third-party hardware branding effort under the “Powered by SteamOS” label.

The newest sign of those plans come via newly updated branding guidelines posted by Valve on Wednesday (as noticed by the trackers at SteamDB). That update includes the first appearance of a new “Powered by SteamOS” logo intended “for hardware running the SteamOS operating system, implemented in close collaboration with Valve.”

The document goes on to clarify that the new Powered by SteamOS logo “indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device.” That’s distinct from the licensed branding for merely “Steam Compatible” devices, which include “non-Valve input peripherals” that have been reviewed by Valve to work with Steam.

The new guidelines replace an older set of branding guidelines, last revised in late 2017, that included detailed instructions for how to use the old “Steam Machines” name and logo on third-party hardware. That branding has been functionally defunct for years, making Valve’s apparent need to suddenly update it more than a little suspect.

The return of Steam Machines? Valve rolls out new “Powered by SteamOS” branding. Read More »

intel’s-second-generation-arc-b580-gpu-beats-nvidia’s-rtx-4060-for-$249

Intel’s second-generation Arc B580 GPU beats Nvidia’s RTX 4060 for $249

Turnover at the top of the company isn’t stopping Intel from launching new products: Today the company is announcing the first of its next-generation B-series Intel Arc GPUs, the Arc B580 and Arc B570.

Both are decidedly midrange graphics cards that will compete with the likes of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD’s RX 7600 series, but Intel is pricing them competitively: $249 for a B580 with 12GB of RAM and $219 for a B570 with 10GB of RAM. The B580 launches on December 13, while the B570 won’t be available until January 16.

The two cards are Intel’s first dedicated GPUs based on its next-generation “Battlemage” architecture, a successor to the “Alchemist” architecture used in the A-series cards. Intel’s Core Ultra 200 laptop processors were its first products to ship with Battlemage, though they used an integrated version with fewer of Intel’s Xe cores and no dedicated memory. Both B-series GPUs use silicon manufactured on a 5 nm TSMC process, an upgrade from the 6 nm process used for the A-series; as of this writing, no integrated or dedicated Arc GPUs have been manufactured by one of Intel’s factories.

Both cards use a single 8-pin power connector, at least in Intel’s reference design; Intel is offering a first-party limited-edition version of the B580, while it looks like partners like Asus, ASRock, Gunnir, Maxsun, Onix, and Sparkle will be responsible for the B570.

Compared to the original Arc GPUs, both Battlemage cards should benefit from the work Intel has put into its graphics drivers over the last two years—a combination of performance improvements plus translation layers for older versions of DirectX have all improved Arc’s performance quite a bit in older games since late 2022. Hopefully buyers won’t need to wait months or years to get good performance out of the Battlemage cards.

The new cards also come with XeSS 2, the next-generation version of Intel’s upscaling technology (analogous to DLSS for Nvidia cards and FSR for AMD’s). Like DLSS 3 and FSR 3, one of XeSS 2’s main additions is a frame-generation feature that can interpolate additional frames to insert between the frames that are actually being rendered by the graphics card. These kinds of technologies tend to work best when the cards are already running at a reasonably high frame rate, but when they’re working well, they can lead to smoother-looking gameplay. A related technology, Xe Low Latency, aims to reduce the increase in latency that comes with frame-generation technologies, similar to Nvidia’s Reflex and AMD’s Anti-Lag.

Intel’s second-generation Arc B580 GPU beats Nvidia’s RTX 4060 for $249 Read More »

the-raspberry-pi-5-now-works-as-a-smaller,-faster-kind-of-steam-link

The Raspberry Pi 5 now works as a smaller, faster kind of Steam Link

The Steam Link was a little box ahead of its time. It streamed games from a PC to a TV, ran 1,500 0f them natively, offered a strange (if somewhat lovable) little controller, and essentially required a great network, Ethernet cables, and a good deal of fiddling.

Valve quietly discontinued the Steam Link gear in November 2018, but it didn’t give up. These days, a Steam Link app can be found on most platforms, and Valve’s sustained effort to move Linux-based (i.e., non-Windows-controlled) gaming forward has paid real dividends. If you still want a dedicated device to stream Steam games, however? A Raspberry Pi 5 (with some help from Valve) can be a Substitute Steam Link.

As detailed in the Raspberry Pi blog, there were previously means of getting Steam Link working on Raspberry Pi devices, but the platform’s move away from proprietary Broadcom libraries—and from X to Wayland display systems—required “a different approach.” Sam Lantinga from Valve worked with the Raspberry Pi team on optimizing for the Raspberry Pi 5 hardware. As of Steam Link 1.3.13 for the little board, Raspberry Pi 5 units could support up to 1080p at 144 frames per second (FPS) on the H.264 protocol and 4k at 60 FPS or 1080p at 240 FPS, presuming your primary gaming computer and network can support that.

Jeff Geerling’s test of Steam Link on Raspberry Pi 5, showing some rather smooth Red Dead movement.

I have a documented preference for a Moonlight/Sunshine game streaming setup over Steam Link because I have better luck getting games streaming at their best on it. But it’s hard to beat Steam Link for ease of setup, given that it only requires Steam to be running on the host PC, plus a relatively simple configuration on the client screen. A Raspberry Pi 5 is an easy device to hide near your TV. And, of course, if you don’t end up using it, you only have 450 other things you can do with it.

The Raspberry Pi 5 now works as a smaller, faster kind of Steam Link Read More »

blizzard’s-pulling-of-warcraft-i-&-ii-tests-gog’s-new-preservation-program

Blizzard’s pulling of Warcraft I & II tests GOG’s new Preservation Program

GOG’s version goes a bit beyond the classic versions that were on sale on Blizzard.net. Beyond the broad promise that “this is the best version of this game you can buy on any PC platform,” GOG has made specific tweaks to the networking code for Warcraft I and fixed up the DirectX wrapper for Warcraft II to improve its scaling on modern monitor resolutions.

It’s quite a novel commitment, keeping non-revenue-generating games playable for buyers, even after a publisher no longer makes them available for sale. The Warcraft titles certainly won’t be the only games for which publisher enthusiasm lags behind GOG and its classic gamers.

As noted at the Preservation Program’s launch, for some titles, GOG does not have the rights to modify a game’s build, and only its original developers can do so. So if GOG can’t make it work in, say, DOSBox, extraordinary efforts may be required.

A screenshot from Blizzard's Warcraft II: Remastered release, showing brick keeps, archers, footsoldiers, dragons around a roost, and knights on horseback units.

Warcraft II: Remastered lets you switch back and forth between classic and remastered graphics and promises to offer better support for widescreen monitors and more units selected at once.

Credit: Blizzard

Warcraft II: Remastered lets you switch back and forth between classic and remastered graphics and promises to offer better support for widescreen monitors and more units selected at once. Credit: Blizzard

Beyond being tied to Blizzard’s Battle.net service in perpetuity, there are other reasons Warcraft fans might want to hold onto the originals. Blizzard’s 2020 release of Warcraft III Reforged was widely panned as uneven, unfinished, and in some ways unfair, as it, too, removed the original Warcraft III from stores. Reforged was still in rough shape a year later, leading Ars’ list of 2020’s most disappointing games. A 2.0 update promised a total reboot, but fans remain torn on the new art styles and are somewhat wary.

Then again, you can now select more units in the first two Warcraft games’ remasters, and you get “numerous visual updates for the UI.”

Blizzard’s pulling of Warcraft I & II tests GOG’s new Preservation Program Read More »

the-atari-7800+-is-a-no-frills-glimpse-into-a-forgotten-gaming-era

The Atari 7800+ is a no-frills glimpse into a forgotten gaming era


Awkward controls and a lack of features make a device for Atari completists only.

Shiny and chrome? In this economy? Credit: Kyle Orland

Like a lot of children of the ’80s, my early gaming nostalgia has a huge hole where the Atari 7800 might have lived. While practically everyone I knew had an NES during my childhood—and a few uncles and friends’ older siblings even had an Atari 2600 gathering dust in their dens—I was only vaguely aware of the 7800, Atari’s backward compatible, late ’80s attempt to maintain relevance in the quickly changing console market.

Absent that kind of nostalgia, the Atari 7800+ comes across as a real oddity. Fiddling with the system’s extremely cumbersome controllers and pixelated, arcade-port-heavy software library from a modern perspective is like peering into a fallen alternate universe, one where Nintendo wasn’t able to swoop in and revive a flailing Western home video game industry with the NES.

Even for those with fond memories of Atari 7800-filled childhoods, I’m not sure that this bare-bones package justifies its $130 price. There are many more full-featured ways to get your retro gaming fix, even for those still invested in the tail end of Atari’s dead-end branch of the gaming console’s evolutionary tree.

7800HD

Much like last year’s Atari 2600+, the 7800+ shell is a slightly slimmed-down version of Atari’s nostalgic hardware design. This time, Atari took design inspiration from the rainbow-adorned European version of the 7800 console (which released a year later), rather than the bulkier, less colorful US release.

A reverse angle showing how 7800 cartridges stick out with the art facing away from the front. Kyle Orland

The 7800+ plays any of the 58 officially licensed Atari 7800 cartridges released decades ago, as well as the dozens of homebrew cartridges released by coders in more recent years (some of which are now being sold for $30 each by the modern Atari corporation itself; more on those later). The data on those cartridges is run via the open source ProSystem emulator, which seems more than up to the job of re-creating the relatively ancient 7800 tech without any apparent slowdown, input lag, or graphical inconsistencies. The 15 to 30 seconds of loading time when you first plug in a new cartridge is more than a bit annoying, though.

The HDMI output from the 7800+ is the updated console’s main selling point, if anything is. The sharp, upscaled images work best on games with lots of horizontal and/or vertical lines and bright, single-colored sprites. But blowing up decades-old low-resolution graphics can also hurt the visual appeal of games designed to take advantage of the smoother edges and blended color gradients inherent to older cathode ray tube TVs.

Atari’s new console doesn’t offer the kind of scanline emulation or graphical filters that can help recreate that CRT glow in countless other emulation solutions (though a hardware switch does let you extend the standard 4:3 graphics to a sickeningly stretched-out 16:9). That means many of the sprites in games like Food Fight and Fatal Run end up looking like blocky riots of color when blown up to HD resolutions on the 7800+.

Beyond graphics, the 7800+ also doesn’t offer any modern emulation conveniences like save states, fast-forward and rewind, slow-mo, controller customization, or high-score tracking across sessions. Authenticity seems to have taken precedence over modern conveniences here.

Much like the original Atari 7800, the 7800+ is also backward-compatible with older Atari 2600 cartridges and controllers (re-created through the able Stella emulator). That’s a nice touch but also a little galling for anyone who already invested money in last year’s Atari 2600+, which the company is still selling for roughly the same price as the 7800+. Aside from the nostalgic styling of the box itself, we can’t see any reason why the less-capable 2600+ still needs to exist at all at this point.

A mess of a controller

In the US, the original Atari 7800 came with an oddly designed “ProLine” joystick featuring two buttons on either side of the base, designed to be hit with the thumb and index finger of your off hand. For the 7800+, Atari instead went with a controller modeled after the CX78 joypad released with the European version of the console.

This pad represents an odd inflection point in video game history, with a hard plastic thumbstick sticking out above a standard eight-way D-pad. Years before analog thumbsticks would become a console standard, this thumbstick feels incredibly fiddly for the console’s completely digital directional inputs. In a game like Asteroid Deluxe, for instance, I found turning to the right or left frequently led to thrusting forward with an accidental “up” push as well.

The CX78 pad was also the first packaged Atari controller with two face buttons, a la the familiar NES controller. Unfortunately, those buttons are spaced just far enough apart to make it extremely awkward to hit both at once using a single thumb, which is practically required in newer titles like Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest. The whole thing seems designed for placing the controller in front of you and hitting the buttons with two separate fingers, which I found less than convenient.

The Atari 7800+ does feature two standard Atari console plugs in the front, making it compatible with pretty much all classic and revamped Atari controllers (and, oddly enough, Sega Genesis pads). Be wary, though; if a 7800 game requires two buttons, a lot of single-button Atari control options will prove insufficient.

The CX78+’s included wireless receivers (which plug into those controller ports) mean you don’t have to run any long cables from the system to your couch while playing the Atari 7800+. But a few important controls like pause and reset are stuck on the console itself—just as they were on the original Atari 7800—meaning you’ll probably want to have the system nearby anyway. It would have been nice to have additional buttons for these options on the controller itself, even if that would have diminished the authenticity of the controllers.

There are better versions of these games

The VIP package Atari sent me, along with a selection of cartridges. Credit: Kyle Orland

Since I’ve never owned an Atari 7800 cartridge, Atari sent me eight titles from its current line of retro cartridges to test alongside the updated hardware. This included a mix of original titles released in the ’80s and “homebrew elevation” cartridges that the company says are now “getting a well-deserved official Atari release.”

The titles I had to test were definitely a step up from the few dozen Atari 2600 games that I’ve accumulated and grown to tolerate over the years. A game like Asteroids Deluxe on the 7800 doesn’t quite match the vector graphics of the arcade original, but it comes a lot closer than the odd, colorful blobs of Asteroids on the 2600. The same goes for Frenzy on the 7800, which is a big step up from Berzerk on the 2600.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel that these arcade ports are better experienced these days on one of the many MAME-based or FPGA-based emulation boxes that can do justice to the original quarter munchers. And the more original titles I’ve sampled mostly ended up feeling like pale shadows of the NES games I knew and loved.

The new Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest (which is included with the 7800+ package) comes across as an oversimplified knock-off of Adventure Island, for instance. And the rough vehicular combat of Fatal Run is much less engaging than the NES port of Atari’s own similar but superior Roadblasters arcade cabinet. The one exception to this rule that I found was Ninja Golf, a wacky, original mix of decent golfing and engaging run-and-punch combat.

Of course, I’m not really the target audience here. The ideal Atari 7800+ buyer is someone who still has nostalgic memories of the Atari 7800 games they played as a child and has held onto at least a few of them (and/or bought more modern homebrew cartridges) in the intervening decades.

If those retro gamers want an authentic but no-frills box that will upscale those cartridges for an HDTV, the Atari 7800+ will do the job and look cute on your mantel while it does. But any number of emulation solutions will probably do the job just as well and with more features to boot.

Photo of Kyle Orland

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

The Atari 7800+ is a no-frills glimpse into a forgotten gaming era Read More »

sony-is-reportedly-working-on-a-ps5-portable

Sony is reportedly working on a PS5 portable

Bloomberg reports that Sony is “in the early stages” of work on a fully portable console that can play PlayStation 5 software. The device is still “likely years away from launch,” according to “people familiar with its development” that spoke to Bloomberg anonymously.

The report comes less than a year after the launch of the PlayStation Portal, a Sony portable device designed to stream PS5 games running on a console on the same local network. Recently, Sony updated the Portal firmware to let PlayStation Plus subscribers also stream PS5 games from Sony’s centralized servers at up to 1080p and 60 fps.

Sony’s reported PS5 portable plans also come after months of rumors that Microsoft has also been working on a new Xbox console with a portable form factor. In June, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer added fuel to those rumors by directly saying, “I think we should have a handheld, too… I like my ROG Ally, my Lenovo Legion Go, my Steam Deck… I think being able to play games locally is really important.”

Nintendo’s follow-up to the Switch, which will be formally announced in the next few months, is also widely expected to mimic the hybrid portable/console design of Nintendo’s last console.

Sony first dipped its toes in the portable gaming arena with 2005’s PlayStation Portable, which is still the only major handheld console to make use of optical discs (in Sony’s own proprietary UMD format). Sony followed that up with 2012’s PlayStation Vita, a well-loved console that brought a full analog stick and a larger high-resolution screen to the portable console space. But both efforts struggled to find much market success compared to the sales juggernauts of Nintendo’s cheaper Nintendo DS and 3DS hardware lines.

Sony is reportedly working on a PS5 portable Read More »

obsidian’s-avowed-is-the-cure-for-“souls-like”-action-rpg-fatigue

Obsidian’s Avowed is the cure for “Souls-like” action-RPG fatigue

The early dialogue trees offer plenty of opportunities to explore the political lore and historical backstory of the world. You can also stumble on some interesting side stories, including one where you end up playing impromptu relationship counselor to a troubled human who has fallen into a forbidden relationship with one of the beasts bedeviling the town.

After taming a few of the more fearsome infected beasts troubling Paradis, you discover a mystical stone that lets you actually talk to the sentient fungus that’s causing all of this trouble; it describes itself as “mycelia twining through the loam, taking and giving in equal measure.” That first conversation with the reluctant infection itself is full of the kind of heavy-handed mysticism and flowery language that quickly had me tuning out of the story. I’m hopeful that the full game will stay more focused on the more interesting human interactions instead.

Daggers, bows, and spells

If you’re used to games like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you’ll find the first-person melee-based combat in Avowed to be downright zippy. You start with a simple dagger that’s great for multiple quick thrusts or for a slower, charged attack that lets you lunge in from a few paces out. Getting in close with the dagger can open you up to dangerous counterattacks, though, which are best avoided with a quick sideways or backward dodge. The window for those dodges can be pretty tight, though, and a few stray attacks is enough to leave you struggling to survive with a limited “second wind” recovery.

Pretty quickly, you’ll stumble on a bow and a seemingly unlimited supply of arrows, which can be fired quickly or charged for a more powerful volley. This is the safest way to attack most early grunt enemies, as you can keep your distance from foes that can’t do much from afar but throw rocks. But the safer option is also the duller one, as lobbing arrow after arrow from a relatively safe distance quickly starts to feel a bit tedious.

Obsidian’s Avowed is the cure for “Souls-like” action-RPG fatigue Read More »

microsoft-flight-simulator-2024-arrives-with-a-“full-digital-twin”-of-earth

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 arrives with a “full digital twin” of Earth

You’re getting pretty close to the ground there, chief. But the good news is, you’re generating terrain for other players.

Credit: Microsoft

You’re getting pretty close to the ground there, chief. But the good news is, you’re generating terrain for other players. Credit: Microsoft

AI learning was used for 2024‘s world mapping. It allowed for a (possibly hyperbolic) “4,000 times more” detail in textures and terrain meshes, Wloch told TechRadar. Players will see this mainly when they’re closer to ground, with the terrain generating detail on demand. Machine learning is run against tens of thousands of tiles of Earth terrains, and it does picture analysis to generate, say, wet gravel or nighttime grasslands during winter. Data generated from a player is streamed into other pilots’ games, Neumann told Rock Paper Shotgun.

Hot air balloons across a night sky.

Throw a little engine on that balloon and you’ve got yourself a Flydoo, a word I learned today.

Credit: Microsoft

Throw a little engine on that balloon and you’ve got yourself a Flydoo, a word I learned today. Credit: Microsoft

You can fly a balloon and a “Flydoo,” the latter of which is a balloon with a tiny engine. Aircraft and airports you customized or purchased are carried over from 2020 into 2024. EuroGamer has a list of every aircraft in the game, which includes a Joby VTOL air taxi.

Father figure pointing out an approaching helicopter to his child on a mountain ridge.

When will hikers learn to stick to the trails in Zoar Valley?

Credit: Microsoft

When will hikers learn to stick to the trails in Zoar Valley? Credit: Microsoft

A new Career Mode, with 26 different paths, adds some structure to the pre-existing challenges and rewards. You can start out as a rookie and work through up to 54 training courses. You then decide exactly what kind of ace you want to be. You can be a regional airline pilot, a global specialist in VIP helicopter rides, a cropduster, a firefighter, or some other kind. You can own a fleet and expand your business or stick to being a jockey for hire.

There are many animals with realistic behavior, ported in from Planet ZooNeumann previously worked at Frontier, the company behind Planet Zoo (and Elite: Dangerous). Wanting some of that old “animals doing things” energy, Neumann said he called Frontier’s CEO and said, “Can I have your animals?” Neumann told Sports Illustrated. So now sheep head inside when it’s raining, birds migrate, and elephants will finally be impressed with your low-level flybys—maybe.

Flight Simulator 2020 will continue to get support, according to a FAQ on the developer’s site. It’s a valid question of what “support” will look like after 2024 is released and if it matches up with the initial promise of “10 years of support.”

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 arrives with a “full digital twin” of Earth Read More »

valve-developers-discuss-why-half-life-2:-episode-3-was-abandoned

Valve developers discuss why Half Life 2: Episode 3 was abandoned

Despite the new weapons and mechanics that were already in the works for Episode 3, many developers quoted in the documentary cite a kind of fatigue that had set in after so much time and effort focused on a single franchise. “A lot of us had been doing Half-Life for eight-plus years” designer and composer Kelly Bailey noted.

That lengthy focus on a single franchise helps explain why some Valve developers were eager to work on anything else by that time in their careers. “I think everybody that worked on Half-Life misses working on that thing,” Engineer Scott Dalton said. “But it’s also hard not to be like, ‘Man, I’ve kind of seen every way that you can fight an Antlion,’ or whatever. And so you wanna get some space away from it until you can come back to it with fresh eyes.”

After the first two Half-Life 2 episodes were received less well than the base game itself, many developers cited in the documentary also said they felt pressure to go “much bigger” for Episode 3. Living up to that pressure, and doing justice to the fan expectations for the conclusion of the three-episode saga, proved to be too much for the team.

“You can’t get lazy and say, ‘Oh, we’re moving the story forward,’ Valve co-founder Gabe Newell said of the pressure. “That’s copping out of your obligation to gamers, right? Yes, of course they love the story. They love many, many aspects of it. But sort of saying that your reason to do it is because people want to know what happens next… you know, we could’ve shipped it, like, it wouldn’t have been that hard.

“You know, the failure was—my personal failure was being stumped,” Newell continued. “Like, I couldn’t figure out why doing Episode 3 was pushing anything forward.”

Valve developers discuss why Half Life 2: Episode 3 was abandoned Read More »

these-are-the-lasting-things-that-half-life-2-gave-us,-besides-headcrabs-and-crowbars

These are the lasting things that Half-Life 2 gave us, besides headcrabs and crowbars


Beyond the game itself (which rocks), Half-Life 2 had a big impact on PC gaming.

This article is part of our 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 series. Credit: Aurich Lawson

It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.

“Well, I just hate the idea that our games might waste people’s time. Why spend four years of your life building something that isn’t innovative and is basically pointless?”

Valve software founder Gabe Newell is quoted by Geoff Keighley—yes, the Game Awards guy, back then a GameSpot writer—as saying this in June 1999, six months after the original Half-Life launched. Newell gave his team no real budget or deadline, only the assignment to “follow up the best PC game of all time” and redefine the genre.

When Half-Life 2 arrived in November 2004, the Collector’s Edition contained about 2.6GB of files. The game, however, contained so many things that would seem brand new in gaming, or just brave, that it’s hard to even list them.

Except I’m going to try that right here. Some will be hard to pin definitively in time to Half-Life 2 (HL2). But like many great games, HL2 refined existing ideas, borrowed others, and had a few of its own to show off.

Note that some aspects of the game itself, its status as Steam’s big push title, and what it’s like to play it today, are covered by other writers during Ars’ multi-day celebration of the game’s 20th anniversary. That includes the Gravity Gun.

How many film and gaming careers were launched by people learning how to make the Scout do something goofy?

Credit: Valve

How many film and gaming careers were launched by people learning how to make the Scout do something goofy? Credit: Valve

The Source Engine

It’s hard to imagine another game developer building an engine with such a forward-thinking mission as Source. Rather than just build the thing that runs their next game, Valve crafted Source to be modular, such that its core could be continually improved (and shipped out over Steam), and newer technologies could be optionally ported into games both new and old, while not breaking any older titles working perfectly fine.

Source started development during the late stages of the original Half-Life, but its impact goes far beyond the series. Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Portal 1/2, and Left 4 Dead, from Valve alone, take up multiple slots on lists of the all-time best games. The Stanley Parable, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, and a whole lot of other games used Source, too. Countless future game developers, level designers, and mod makers cut their teeth on the very open and freely available Source code tools.

And then, of course, where would we be as a society were it not for Source Filmmaker and Garry’s Mod, without which we would never have Save as .dmx and Skibidi Toilet.

Half-Life: Alyx is a technical marvel of the VR age, but it’s pulled along by the emotional bonds of Alyx and Russell, and the quest to save Eli Vance.

Credit: Valve

Half-Life: Alyx is a technical marvel of the VR age, but it’s pulled along by the emotional bonds of Alyx and Russell, and the quest to save Eli Vance. Credit: Valve

A shooter with family dynamics

Novelist Marc Laidlaw has made it clear, multiple times, that he did not truly create the Half-Life story when he joined Valve; it was “all there when I got there, in embryo,” he told Rock Paper Shotgun. Laidlaw helped the developers tell their story through level design and wrote short, funny, unnerving dialogue.

For Half-Life 2, Laidlaw and the devs were tasked with creating some honest-to-goodness characters, something you didn’t get very often in first-person shooters (they were all dead in 1994’s System Shock). So in walked that father/daughter team of Eli and Alyx Vance, and the extended Black Mesa family, including folks like Dr. Kleiner.

These real and makeshift family members gave the mute protagonist Gordon Freeman stakes in wanting to fix the future. And Laidlaw’s “basic dramatic unit” set a precedent for lots of shooty-yet-soft-hearted games down the road: Mass Effect, The Last of Us, Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption, and far more.

Remember when a Boston-area medical manufacturing firm, run by a Half-Life fan, got everyone thinking a sequel was coming? Fun times. Credit: Black Mesa

Intense speculation about what Valve is actually doing

Another unique thing Laidlaw helped develop in PC gaming: intense grief and longing for a sequel that both does and does not exist, channeled through endless speculation about Valve’s processes and general radio silence.

Half-Life 2 got “Episodes” but never a true numbered Half-Life 3 sequel. The likelihood of 3 took a hit when Laidlaw unexpectedly announced his retirement in January 2016. Then it got even less likely, or maybe just sad, when Laidlaw posted a barely disguised “snapshot of a dream” of “Epistle 3” to his blog (since deleted and later transposed on Pastebin).

Laidlaw has expressed regret about this move. Fans have expressed regret that Half-Life 3 somehow seems even less likely, having seen Valve’s premiere writer post such a seemingly despondent bit of primary source fan fiction.

“Fans of popular game eager for sequel” isn’t itself a unique thing, but it is for Half-Life 3’s quantum existence. Valve published its new employee handbook from around 2012 on the web, and in it, you can read about the company’s boldly flat structure. To summarize greatly: Projects only get started if someone can get enough fellow employees to wheel their desks over and work on it with them. The company doesn’t take canceled or stalled games to heart; in its handbook, it’s almost celebrated that it killed Prospero as one of its first major decisions.

So the fact that Half-Life 3 exists only as something that hasn’t been formally canceled is uniquely frustrating. HL2’s last (chronological) chapter left off on a global-scale cliffhanger, and the only reason a sequel doesn’t exist is because too many other things are more appealing than developing a new first-person shooter. If you worked at Valve, you tell yourself, maybe you could change this! Maybe.

What, you’re telling me now it’s illegal to break in, take source code, and then ask for a job? This is a police state!

Credit: Valve

What, you’re telling me now it’s illegal to break in, take source code, and then ask for a job? This is a police state! Credit: Valve

Source code leak drama

The Wikipedia pages “List of commercial video games with available source code” and its cousin “Later released source code” show that, up until 2003, most of the notable games whose source code became publicly available were either altruistic efforts at preservation or, for some reason, accidental inclusions of source code on demos or in dummy files on the game disc.

And then, in late 2003, Valve and Half-Life superfan Axel Gembe hacked into Valve’s servers, grabbed the Half-Life 2 source code that existed at the time and posted it to the web. It not only showed off parts of the game Valve wanted to keep under wraps, but it showed just how far behind the game’s development was relative to the release date that had blown by weeks earlier. Valve’s response was typically atypical: they acknowledged the source code as real, asked their biggest fans for help, and then released the game a year later, to critical and commercial success.

The leak further ensconced Valve as a different kind of company, one with a particularly dedicated fanbase. It also seems to have taught companies a lesson about hardening their servers and development environments. Early builds of games still leak—witness Space Marine 2 this past July—but full source code leaks, coming from network intrusions, are something you don’t see quite so often.

Pre-loading a game before release

It would be hard to go back in time and tell our pre-broadband selves about pre-loading. You download entire games, over the Internet, and then they’re ready to play one second after the release time—no store lines, no drive back home, no stuffed servers or crashed discs. It seems like a remarkable bit of trust, though it’s really just a way to lessen server load on release day.

It’s hard to pin down which game first offered pre-loading in the modern sense, but HL2, being a major launch title for Valve’s Steam service and a title with heavy demand, definitely popularized the concept.

Always-online for single-player games

Here’s one way that Half-Life 2 moved the industry forward that some folks might want to move back.

Technically, you can play HL2 without an Internet connection, and maybe for long periods of time. But for most people, playing HL2 without a persistent net connection involves activating the game on Steam, letting it fully update, and then turning on Steam’s “Offline Mode” to play it. There’s no time limit, but you need to keep Steam active while playing.

It’s not so much the particular connection demands of HL2 that make it notable, but the pathway that it, and Steam, created on which other companies moved ahead, treating gaming as something that, by default, happens with at least a connection, and preferably a persistent one.

It’s Game of the Year. Which year? Most of them, really (until Disco Elysium shows up).

Credit: Valve

It’s Game of the Year. Which year? Most of them, really (until Disco Elysium shows up). Credit: Valve

A place on “All-time” video game rankings forever

Half-Life 2 introduced many ground-breaking things at once—deep facial animations and expressions, an accessible physics engine, a compelling global-scale but family-minded story—while also being tremendously enjoyable game to play through. This has made it hard for anyone to suggest another game to go above it on any “All-time greatest games” list, especially those with a PC focus.

Not that they don’t try. PC Gamer has HL2 at 7 out of 100, mostly because it has lost an understandable amount of “Hotness” in 20 years. IGN has it at No. 9 (while its descendant Portal 2 takes third place). Metacritic, however fallible, slots it in universal second place for PC games.

So give Half-Life 2 even more credit for fostering innovation in the “arbitrary ranked list of games” genre. Rock Paper Shotgun’s top 100 is cited as the best “to play on PC today,” as they have “paid no mind to what was important or influential.” And yet, Half-Life 2, as a game you can play in 2024, is still on that list. It’s really something, that game.

Photo of Kevin Purdy

Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.

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I played Half-Life 2 for the first time this year—here’s how it went


Wake up and smell the ashes, Ms. Washenko.

This article is part of our 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 series. Credit: Aurich Lawson

It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.

The time has finally come to close one of the most notable gaps in my gaming history. Despite more than a decade of writing about video games and even more years enjoying them, I never got around to playing Half-Life 2.

Not only have I not played it, but I’ve managed to keep myself in the dark about pretty much everything to do with it. I always assumed that one day I would get around to playing this classic, and I wanted the experience to be as close as possible to it would have been back in 2004. So my only knowledge about Half-Life 2 before starting this project was 1) the game is set in the same universe as Portal, a game I love, 2) the protagonist is named Gordon Freeman, and he looks uncannily like a silent, spectacled young Hugh Laurie, and 3) there’s something called the Gravity Gun.

That’s it. I didn’t even know exactly what the Gravity Gun did, only that it existed.

So, the time has come for me to learn what the fuss is all about. I’ve cataloged my off-the-cuff reactions as well as my more analytical thoughts about Half-Life 2, both as a standalone project and as a catalyst for setting new standards in design. But if you’re looking for the TL;DR of whether I think the game holds up, my answer is: it depends.

Beginning a classic with a clunk

A red letter day indeed! Time to experience this iconic piece of video game history. I spend most of the intro sequence in the train station soaking in the atmosphere of the dystopian City 17. A few minutes in, though, I think I’m supposed to sneak past a guard. Because I’m a fugitive trying to escape this freaky Big Brother building, and I swear Barney told me to avoid detection. Instead, the guard immediately sees me and whomps me on the head for not putting a bottle into the trash. Not an auspicious beginning.

I make it to Dr. Kleiner’s lab for a little bit of story exposition. I like this rag-tag group of geniuses and the whole vibe of a secret scientific rebellion. I also appreciate that it’s not a static cutscene, so I can poke around the lab while I listen or observe the characters interacting.

After a failed teleport and getting a crowbar from Barney, I then spend a long time getting shot and dying in a train yard. Like, an embarrassingly long time. Perhaps I was assuming at this early stage that Half-Life 2 would be like Portal with real guns, because I figured this area had to be a puzzle. I’m not sure how I missed the one portion of the environment that I could slip through, but I convinced myself that I was supposed to leap across the tops of the train cars, Frogger style. And Gordon might have many skills, but his jumping leaves something to be desired.

Finally, I realize that there’s a gap in the cars, and I move along. This canal setting is striking, but I keep being unsure which areas of the map I can access. I’ve heard that the level design is one of the most lauded parts of Half-Life 2, but this is proving to be a genuine struggle with the game.

When I played Portal, I sometimes was unsure how to progress, but because that game is presented in the austere confines of a science experiment, I felt like I was supposed to be challenged. In Half-Life 2, though, where there are higher stakes and I’m running for my life, getting stuck just makes me feel dumb and annoyed. And I’m doubly annoyed because this escape sequence would probably feel amazing if I didn’t keep getting lost. Again, not the thrilling start I was hoping for.

Killing a barnacle by feeding it an explosive barrel is a definite high point. I may have cackled. This is the sort of clever environmental interaction I expected to see from the minds that later made Portal.

Headcrabs, on the other hand, are just obnoxious. My dinky little pea shooter pistol doesn’t feel like great protection. What’s a rogue physicist gotta do to get a shotgun?

From airboats to zombies

After a break, I return armed with a renewed determination to grok this game and, more importantly, with an airboat. For 90 percent of the Water Hazard chapter, I am feeling like a badass. I’m cruising in my watery ride, flying over ramps, and watching a silo collapse overhead. Especially in those rare moments when the 2000s electro jams punctuate my fights, I feel like a true action hero.

A helicopter hovers over an airboat in Half-Life 2

The airboat sequence was divisive in 2004, but this writer enjoyed it. Credit: Anna Washenko

Next I reach the Black Mesa East chapter, which is a perfect interlude. The game’s approach to world-building is probably the area where my feelings align most closely with those of Half-Life 2 veterans. It is spectacular. Heading down into the lab may be the best elevator ride I’ve taken in a game. Judith is talking science, and outside the shaft, I see humans and vortigaunts conducting fascinating experiments. Small vignettes like those are a perfect way to introduce more information about the rebellion. They give subtle context to a game that doesn’t do much to explain itself and doesn’t need to.

Also, Dog is the best boy. Seriously, I’ve seen modern games where the animations didn’t have as much personality as when Alyx treats her robot protector like an actual dog, and he shakes in delight. My only sadness is that Dog doesn’t accompany me to Ravenholm.

Dog and Alyx standing together at Black Mesa East

Dog is, in fact, the best boy. Credit: Valve

I do wish Dog had come with me to Ravenholm. I learned after the fact that this chapter is one of the most iconic and beloved, but I had the opposite reaction. Survival horror is not my jam. These whirling death traps are sweet, but I hate jump scares, and I don’t love any of my weapons for the encounters.

That brings me to something I don’t want to say, but in the spirit of journalistic honesty, I must: I don’t adore the Gravity Gun. Obviously it was the game’s signature creation here and probably what most of you recall most fondly, but I did not fully grasp its potential immediately. Based on the tutorial in Black Mesa East, I assumed it would mostly be a component to puzzle-solving and traversal rather than a key part of combat. I only started using it as a weapon in Ravenholm because I ran out of ammo for everything else.

It’s not that I don’t get the appeal. Slicing zombies up with a saw blade or bashing them with paint cans is satisfying—no complaints there. But I found the tool inconsistent, which discouraged me from experimenting as much as the developers may have hoped. I’m pretty sure I do as much damage to myself as to enemies trying to lob exploding barrels. I want to be able to fling corpses around and can’t (for reasons that became apparent later, but in the moment felt limiting). Later chapters reinforced my uncertainty, when I couldn’t pull a car to me, yet a push blast had enough power to overturn the vehicle.

And once again, I had a rough time with navigation. Maybe I was missing what other people would have seen as obvious cues, the way I’m attuned to finding climbing paths marked by color in modern games—controversial as that yellow marking convention may be, its absence is noted when you’re struggling to read the environment with a visual language for the game that emphasizes realism over readability. Or maybe I’ve gotten over-reliant on the tools of the sprawling RPGs I favor these days, where you have a mini-map and quest markers to help you manage all the threads. But for an agonizingly long time, I stared at an electrified fence and wires that seemed to lead to nowhere before realizing that I was supposed to enter the building where Father Grigori first appeared on the balcony. A giant bonfire of corpses out front seemed like a clear ‘do not enter’ sign, so it didn’t occur to me that I could go inside. Alas.

Speaking of which, Father Grigori is the best part of the section. He’s a total bro, giving me a shotgun at long last. I feel kind of bad when I just abandon him to his murderous flock at the end of the chapter. I hope he survives?

Familiarity and finding my footing

The new weapons are coming fast and furious now. I’m impressed at how good the combat feel is. I like the pulse rifle a lot, and that has become my go-to for most long-distance enemies. I wish I could aim down sights, but at least this feels impactful at range. Although I don’t usually favor the slow cadence of a revolver in other games, I also enjoy the magnum. The SMG serves well as a workhorse, while the rocket launcher and crossbow are satisfying tools when the right situation arises.

But my favorite weapon, far more than the Gravity Gun, is the shotgun. Especially at point-blank range and into a fast zombie’s head. Chef’s kiss. Maybe it’s my love of Doom (2016) peeking through, but any time I can go charging into a crowd with my shotgun, I’m a happy camper.

While the worldbuilding in Half-Life 2 is stellar, I don’t think the writing matches that high. Just about every brief encounter with allies starts with someone breathlessly gasping, “Gordon? Gordon Freeman?” It’s the sort of repetition that would make for an effective and dangerous drinking game.

I was surprised when I entered another vehicle section. I liked the airboat, even though the chapter ran a touch long, but this dune buggy feels a lot jankier. At least it starts with a gun attached.

I love the idea of this magnet crane puzzle. I wish it didn’t control like something from Octodad, but I do get my buggy up out of the sand.

A metal sheet is placed on the sand by the gravity gun

The “floor is lava” sequence involves placing objects with the Gravity Gun to avoid disturbing an army of angry antlions by stepping on the sand. Credit: Anna Washenko

Things start turning around for me once I reach the sandy version of ‘the floor is lava.’ That’s a cute idea. Although I keep wanting to rotate objects and have a more controlled placement with the Gravity Gun like I could when I did these kinds of tasks with the Ultrahand ability during The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I understand that Half-Life 2 crawled so TotK could run, but that knowledge doesn’t mean I have a better time using the mechanic. Toward the end of the sequence, I got bored by the slow pace of creating a bridge and just barrelled ahead, willing to face a firefight just to move things along.

At this point, however, things take a decided turn for the better when I get my other favorite weapon of the game: My own antlion army! Commanding them is so fabulously ridiculous. The scene where hordes of antlions leap over high walls to attack gunmen on the towers leading into Nova Prospekt may be my favorite moment so far in the entire game. If this is how all of you felt flinging radiators around with the Gravity Gun back in the day, then I get why you love it so. I’m sure I won’t be able to keep this glorious power indefinitely, but I would happily finish the rest of the story with just antlions and a shotgun if they’d let me.

The Nova Prospekt area is the first time I really see a clear line connecting Half-Life 2 to Portal. None of the puzzles or characters thus far gave me Portal vibes, but I definitely get them here, especially once turrets come into play. By this point, I’m finally navigating the space with some confidence. That might be the result of logging enough hours or maybe it was just the sense that GLaDOS could start talking to me at any moment. Whatever the reason, I think I’m finding my groove at last.

A dialogue subtitle instructs a shotgun-wielding Gordon to start setting up turrets in an alien prison

Nova Prospekt is one of the first areas Valve made when it developed Half-Life 2, so it’s not surprising it bears a lot of similarity to environments and vibes in both the original Half-Life and in Portal. Credit: Anna Washenko

Somehow I am not surprised by Judith’s sudden but inevitable betrayal in this chapter. Alyx not getting along with her in the Black Mesa East chapter felt pretty telling. But then she’s just going to let Judith enter teleport coordinates unsupervised? Alyx, you’re supposed to be smart!

What do you know—now Judith has re-kidnapped Eli. Color me shocked.

Onward and upward to the end

It’s nice having human minions. They’re no antlions, but I like how the world has shifted to a real uprising. It reminds me of the big charge at the end of Mass Effect 3, running and gunning through a bombed-out city with bug-like baddies overhead.

Snipers are not a welcome addition to the enemy roster. Not sure why Barney’s whining so much. You could throw some grenades, too, my dude.

Barney tags along with my minions as we reach the Overwatch Nexus. Destroying floor turrets is probably the first time I’ve struggled with combat. These are the least precise grenades of all time. Once we make it through the interior sequence, it’s time to face down the striders. I can’t imagine how you’d play this section bringing down the swarm of them on a harder difficulty. My health takes a beating as I run around the wreckage desperately looking for ammo reloads and medkits. In theory, this is probably a great setpiece, but I’m just stressed out. Things go a little better once the combat is paired with traversal, and the final showdown on the roof does feel like a gratifying close to a boss fight.

On to the Citadel. Why on earth would I get into one of these pods? That’s a terrible idea. But apparently that’s what I’m going to do. I hope I’m not supposed to be navigating this pod in any way, because I’m just taking in the vibes. It’s another transit moment with glimpses into what the enemies have been getting up to while the rebellion rages outside. It’s eerie; I like it.

A strider looms over the player as the player switches weapons

Battling the striders as the game moves toward its finale. Credit: Anna Washenko

The Gravity Gun is the core of Half-Life 2, so it makes sense that a supercharged version is all I have for the final push. I appreciate that I can use it to fling bodies, but my reaction is a little muted since this was an idea I’d had from the start. But I do find the new angle of sucking up energy orbs to be pretty rad.

I arrive in Dr. Breen’s office, and it looks grim for our heroes. Judith redeeming herself surprises me more than her betrayal, which is nice. When he runs off, I’m mentally preparing myself as I chase him for a final boss showdown. Surely, something extra bonkers with the Gravity Gun awaits me. I climb the teleportation tower, I pelt Breen’s device with energy orbs, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, and…

Huh?

Context is everything

In the moment, I was torn between feeling that the opaque ending was genius and that it was an absolute cop-out. It was certainly not how I expected the game to end.

But on reflection, that wound up being a fitting final thought as the credits rolled, because I think ‘expectations’ were at the heart of my conflicted reactions to finally playing Half-Life 2. I’ve rarely felt so much pressure to have a particular response. I wanted to love this game. I wanted to share the awe that so many players feel for it. I wanted to have an epic experience that matched the epic legacy Half-Life 2 has in gaming history.

I didn’t.

Instead, I had whiplash, swinging between moments of delight and stretches of being stymied or even downright pissed off. I was tense, often dreading rather than eagerly awaiting each next twist. Aside from a handful of high points, I’m not sure I’d say playing Half-Life 2 was fun.

As I mentioned at the start, the big question I felt I had to answer was whether Half-Life 2 felt relevant today or whether it only holds up under the rosy glow of nostalgia. And my answer is, “It depends.” As an enigmatic person once said, “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.” It’s all in the context.

Moments that were jaw-dropping in 2004 have less impact for someone like me who’s played the many titles that copied, standardized, and perfected Half-Life 2‘s revelations. Intellectually, I understand that the Gravity Gun was a literal game-changer and that a physics engine deployed at this scale was unheard of. But funnily enough, a modern player is even less likely to see those innovations as so, well, innovative when a game has as much polish as Half-Life 2 does. Half-Life 2 has almost no rough edges in the execution. Everything works the way it was intended.

Since that polish means the new ideas don’t feel like experiments, and since I’ve seen them in other games in the intervening years, they don’t register as notable.

Just as you don’t need to be a fan of Aristotle’s Poetics to appreciate drama, you don’t need to love Half-Life 2 to appreciate its legacy. As a fun game to play, whether it holds up will come down to you and your context. However, as a showcase of the technology of the time and a masterclass in world-building, yes, Half-Life 2 holds up today.

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Half-Life 2 pushed Steam on the gaming masses… and the masses pushed back

It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day leading up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.

When millions of eager gamers first installed Half-Life 2 20 years ago, many, if not most, of them found they needed to install another piece of software alongside it. Few at the time could imagine that piece of companion software–with the pithy name Steam–would eventually become the key distribution point and social networking center for the entire PC gaming ecosystem, making the idea of physical PC games an anachronism in the process.

While Half-Life 2 wasn’t the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. That requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games (and, eventually, games from other developers). But 2004-era Steam also faced a vociferous backlash from players who saw the software as a piece of nuisance DRM (digital rights management) that did little to justify its existence at the time.

Free (from Vivendi) at last

Years before Half-Life 2’s release, Valve revealed Steam to the world at the 2002 Game Developers Conference, announcing “a broadband business platform for direct software delivery and content management” in a press release. Valve’s vision for a new suite of developer tools for content publishing, billing, version control, and anti-piracy was all present and stressed in that initial announcement.

Perhaps the largest goal for Steam, though, was removing the middlemen of retail game distribution and giving more direct control to game developers, including Valve. “By eliminating the overhead of physical goods distribution, developers will be able to leverage the efficiency of broadband to improve customer service and increase operating margins,” Valve wrote in its 2002 announcement.

Valve’s Gabe Newell on stage unveiling Steam at GDC 2002. Credit: 4Gamer

On stage at GDC, Valve founder Gabe Newell took things even further, positioning himself as “a new-age Robin Hood who wanted to take from the greedy publishers what independent game developers deserved: a larger piece of the revenue pie,” as Gamespot’s Final Days of Half-Life 2 feature summed it up. Cutting out the publishers and retailers, Newell said, could be the difference between a developer taking home $7 or $30 on a full-price game (which generally ran $50 at the time).

Half-Life 2 pushed Steam on the gaming masses… and the masses pushed back Read More »