Half-Life 2
Electronic Arts (GotY edition)
Valve Corporation (digital)
November 16, 2004
Xbox:
November 15, 2005
Xbox 360:
October 10, 2007
PlayStation 3:
December 11, 2007
macOS:
May 26, 2010
Linux:
May 9, 2013
Android
May 12, 2014
Half-Life 2 (abbreviated as HL2) defines a new benchmark in gaming with startling realism and responsiveness. Powered by then-new Source technology, Half-Life 2 features the most sophisticated in-game characters ever witnessed, advanced AI, stunning graphics and physical gameplay. This was the first game requiring installation of Steam when it came out back in 2004.
Half-Life 2 is the sequel to the 1998 Half-Life. A sequel to Half-Life 2 was released in 2006, titled Half-Life 2: Episode One, followed by Episode Two in 2007, being the last Half-Life 2 episode. A virtual reality prequel was released in 2020, titled Half-Life: Alyx.
Half-Life 2 was later ported for the Xbox console in 2005, as well as for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2007, bundled under The Orange Box.
A major update (Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary Update), has been released on November 16, 2024 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game. It adds Steam Workshop support, developer commentary, fixing various bugs, and both episodes (Episode One, Episode Two), aswell as Lost Coast now accessible directly on Half-Life 2 menu. There are also many other changes to the graphics, such as "Very High" shaders that enable Bicubic lightmap filtering, and option to use classic fire/blood particle effect.[1]
Note:Since November 16, 2024, any user who owns 
Half-Life 2 (or any HL2 series game) can play:
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
Half-Life 2: DeathmatchNote:If you encounter issues (such as some textures rendered as white/black or completely transparent) when playing a Source mod which mounts Half-Life 2 files, or installing a custom addon/mod made prior to the update, you might need to downgrade the game to "steam_legacy - Pre-20th Anniversary Build", and/or wait for developers to make the game or mod compatible with changes after 20th Anniversary Update. This is because 20th anniversary update make changes to shaders, such as adding bicubic lightmaps, and other shader changes.Content
- Half-Life 2 content (
hl2) - Half-Life 2: Episode One content (
episodic) - Half-Life 2: Episode Two content (
ep2) - Half-Life 2: Lost Coast content (
lostcoast) - Half-Life 2 Complete (
hl2_complete)- On Steam, the game will be launched with
hl2_complete, allowing users to switch to HL2, EP1, EP2 and Lost Coast through the menu (similar to
The Orange Box on Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3). Running hl2.exedirectly will instead launchhl2, with old UI font and without option for switching games through menu.
- On Steam, the game will be launched with
- Source shared (
hl2) - Source 2013 Singleplayer engine branch
RTX version
A ray-traced version of Half-Life 2 is currently under development by Orbifold Studios, and promoted by 
Nvidia, using Nvidia's RTX Remix tool.
This version aims to remaster the entire game with new RTX lighting, RTX reflections, PBR textures, and a lot more without changing the core gameplay, similar to Portal RTX.
Chapters
| Half-Life 2 Chapters
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 Point Insertion d1_trainstation_01 |
 "A Red Letter Day" d1_trainstation_05 |
 Route Kanal d1_canals_01 |
 Water Hazard d1_canals_06 |
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 Black Mesa East d1_eli_01 |
 "We Don't Go To Ravenholm..." d1_town_01 |
 Highway 17 d2_coast_01 |
 Sandtraps d2_coast_09 |
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 Nova Prospekt d2_prison_02 |
 Entanglement d2_prison_06 |
 Anticitizen One d3_c17_02 |
 "Follow Freeman!" d3_c17_09 |
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 Our Benefactors d3_citadel_01 |
 Dark Energy d3_breen_01 |
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NPCs
Credits
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These are the official credits for "Half-Life 2" as released in October 2004:
Voices:
Voice Casting:
Voice Recording:
Voice recording scheduling and logistics:
Translations:
Crack Legal Team:
Thanks to the following for the use of their faces:
Special thanks to everyone at:
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Limitations/Bugs
- For more Half-Life 2 bugs, see this GitHub page.
This section only list various bugs that are commonly encountered.
☐ Unresolved bugs
None.
☑ Resolved bugs
- Missing lighting on LDR / LDR with Bloom
- Previous version of Half-Life 2 from 2010 to 2023 lacks LDR lighting on multiple game levels (starting from Black Mesa East (
d1_eli_01) until the end of Nova Prospekt). This means that if HDR is disabled (by selecting "None" or "Bloom only" in HDR settings), mat_fullbright will be set to 1, disabling lighting and making everything bright and flat (relevant GitHub issue). Because of this, HDR is required to play the game until this is fixed.
This issue is not affected in the previous version of the game (which uses an older version of Source (Source 2006) and all of the maps lighting are compiled in LDR only), and is fixed in Half-Life 2: Update, aswell as 20th Anniversary update.
- Dropship NPC gun broken
- There was a bug with the Dropship's gun that was unable to turn, this makes the Sandtraps chapter much easier.[2] This bug was introduced with Source 2007 engine branch and later, affecting both the console release of the game on X360/PS3 (remains unfixed) and later in 2010 with the Source 2009 engine update on Mac & PC release.
Fixed in the current Steam version since 2022's the Steam Deck update of Half-Life 2. However, there are many third-party Source mods (including Half-Life 2: Update, Synergy, etc...) which may or may not include this fix, plus the Source 2013 code also does not include this fix by default; this page details how to fix it in your mod.
Other limitations
Important:The macOS (OS X) version of this game does not work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later due to the removal of support for 32-bit-only apps.As of May 26, 2010 (Mac), and later June 2010 on Windows, the branch of Source under which Half-Life 2 originally ran on Source 2006 no longer exists on Steam, and subsequently replaced by the updated Source 2009 (which later was upgraded again to Source 2013). Very old mods which base themselves directly on the game (as opposed to Source SDK Base) are unlikely to work any more.
This also meant that support for running Half-Life 2 on Windows 9x/ME/2000 have been also dropped.
Technical notes
- In the 2006 version of the game, being underwater at d1_canals_01, or in some area on that same map can cause performance drops. Fixed since 2010 with the engine update.
- Although Source mods are often described as being "for Half-Life 2", they actually use the Source SDK Base. SDK Base is available to anyone who owns any Valve Source game and provides all of Half-Life 2's content (except maps and vcd scenes) on a static branch of the engine.
- The Half-Life 2 Collectors Edition, which ships with the 2004 version of the game, does not require Steam to run or update (similar to the latest version), which means that it will run on older systems with Windows 2000 and earlier. Since around 2010 or 2013, Half-Life 2 no longer requires Steam to run after installing it through Steam, but features such as Achievements will be unavailable.
- The 64-bit Windows version of Half-Life 2, which existed around 2005-2006, is no longer available.
System Requirements
Windows (Old Engine):
- OS: Windows 98 / ME, 2000, XP or later
- CPU: 1.2 GHz
- RAM: 256 MB
- Disk space: 4.5 GB
- Nvidia GeForce FX 5700, ATI Radeon 9500 (with 128MB VRAM)
- Direct3D 9.0 compatible video card (with atleast DirectX 7.0 or higher feature level) and 128MB VRAM
- Other: Steam required (except Collector's Edition copies)
Windows (New Engine):
- OS: Vista, 7 or later
- CPU:1.7 GHz and/or Dual-core
- RAM:1GB RAM
- Disk space: 15 GB
- GPU (pre-20th): NVIDIA GeForce 6 series, ATI Radeon X1600, Intel HD Graphics 3000 (with 128MB VRAM)
- GPU (post-20th): NVIDIA GeForce 200 series, ATI Radeon 4000 series, Intel HD Graphics 4000 (with 128MB VRAM)
- Direct3D 9.0 compatible video card (with atleast DirectX 8.0 or higher feature level) and 128MB VRAM
- Other: If you play the previous version of the game (from 2010 to 2023, or New Engine pre-20th anniversary) and run on DirectX 8.0 mode or having HDR disabled, the game will have issues with fullbright lighting due to Valve forgot to compile the maps with both LDR + HDR lighting. This issue has been fixed with 20th anniversary update. Also, if your game runs on DirectX 8 level by default, visit this page for fix.
Note:The latest version is no longer compatible with XP since the 2022 Steam Deck update.User using Windows XP can downgrade to previous version of the game by using the
previous beta branch (dated from Sep 2019). But please note that this older branch does not include all the bug fixes that were introduced with Steam Deck update.
Users with Collector's Edition copies (which runs on Source 2004), can still play the game without Steam (or on Windows 98/ME/2000 which no longer support Steam and newer versions of HL2).
Note:Original disk requirements are 6.5 GB prior to 20th Anniversary Update, which installs Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two content alongside Half-Life 2 and thus increase disk space requirements.
Additionally with 20th anniversary update, the highest settings will be more demanding to run on older hardware due to changes to 3D skybox in some maps (Sandtraps, d2_coast_10) aswell as LOD being disabled.
Note:Due to Steam dropped support on Windows XP/Vista, users need run the game without Steam by running the hl2.exe executable directly.OS X:
- OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.3 (up to 10.14.6)
- CPU: 2.0 GHz and/or Dual-core
- RAM: 1 GB
- Storage: 15 GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx series, ATI Radeon X1600, Intel HD Graphics 3000
OpenGL 2.1 compatible - Audio: OpenAL compatible
- Other: HDR is required to be enabled (
steam_legacy/previousbranch only)
Note:Mac version are no longer supported after macOS Catalina (10.15), due to this game only have 32-bit binaries. Valve later removed macOS binaries in June 12, 2024.User can manually build Intel 64-bit/Apple Silicon version of HL2 by following this guide. Additionally, the above 64-bit/Apple Silicon version currently does not work with 20th anniversary update yet.
Linux:
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04, SteamOS 1.0 or later
Other Linux distros supported. - CPU: 2.0 GHz and/or Dual-core
- RAM: 1 GB
- Storage: 15 GB
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx series, ATI Radeon X1600, Intel HD Graphics 3000
OpenGL 2.1 compatible - Audio: OpenAL compatible
- Other: For
steam_legacy/previousbranch, HDR would be required.
Note:The system requirements for Half-Life 2 on Linux are unofficial, based off Windows/Mac info, as well as other Source games that support Linux, such as Portal 2.See also
- Half-Life 2 level design
- Half-Life 2: Update - a fan-made Steam-released mod aimed at bug-fixing and giving the game a mild visual upgrade.
- Synergy - a fan-made Steam-released co-op mod that allows users to play the entire Half-Life 2's campaign with multiplayer.
- Category:Source mods
External links
Half-Life 2 on Steam Community
GameBanana page
Half-Life 2 on Combine OverWiki- Half-Life 2 on Wikipedia
References
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