Valve have made their original Half-Life titles all the way up to Half-Life 2: Episode Two free to play for a few months.
This is to build up excitement for their VR-only title, Half-Life: Alyx, which releases in March. Which we still don't know if it will support Linux or not, I'll be speaking to Valve more about that closer to the time. It likely all depends on the state of SteamVR at the time.
So you can now enjoy these completely free:
- Half-Life
- Half-Life 2
- Half-Life 2: Episode One
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two
From their wording, this is not free to keep if you grab it now, it's just temporarily free to play. Still, that's quite a long time.
Half-Life: Alyx is set before the events of Half-Life 2 and the episodes, but the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible.
Valve
You can see the official news post here.
The Half-Life games are definitely something you need to experience even if you're not going to get Half-Life: Alyx. I only personally played through them to the fullest a few years back, when they arrived on Linux as part of Valve's original push and absolutely enjoyed the experience to the point of writing a small bit about Half-Life 2—ah memories.
Additionally, Valve are holding a Reddit AMA (Ask me anything) at around 5PM UTC on Jan 22nd.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Mohandevir Jan 21, 2020
In the first wave of games I completed when Steam launched on Linux.
Ah... Good ol' times! :)
Ah... Good ol' times! :)
7 Likes, Who?
In the first wave of games I completed when Steam launched on Linux.ol' times?
Ah... Good ol' times! :)
I played those games on linux before there was a thing called steam. Or I've never seen it I think. Can't really remember. It was a let down that all episodes never were continued. Like SiN: Episode one, that was a great start of a story.
Hmmm, yes, I think there was some client. I played stuff with winex, cedega, pol. Tried crossover even, but that never worked. I sponsor crossover for years, but it never works for me. But yeah, that's years before Steam and all Valve games were officially released on linux.
I did replay them though... half-life has a great story.
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Mohandevir Jan 21, 2020
In the first wave of games I completed when Steam launched on Linux.ol' times?
Ah... Good ol' times! :)
I played those games on linux before there was a thing called steam. Or I've never seen it I think. Can't really remember. It was a let down that all episodes never were continued. Like SiN: Episode one, that was a great start of a story.
Hmmm, yes, I think there was some client. I played stuff with winex, cedega, pol. Tried crossover even, but that never worked. I sponsor crossover for years, but it never works for me. But yeah, that's years before Steam and all Valve games were officially released on linux.
I did replay them though... half-life has a great story.
"Good ol' times" like in "These were the early days of Steam on Linux when native builds of games were pouring on our platform with only good news all over the place." :)
Ok, just "barely" exagerated, but still, it was all about new stuff and new possibilities, at that time.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 21 January 2020 at 9:24 pm UTC
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TheRiddick Jan 22, 2020
Still good games that hold up well today. I do wonder if Alex is using Source 3.0 engine (has that been announced yet)
One thing for sure, EPIC games has lit a fire under Valves arse by showing them that MAKING games and exclusive deals still matter. Motivated Valve to start making games again which is great news people! We may yet see a HL3 come to life!
Last edited by TheRiddick on 22 January 2020 at 2:15 am UTC
One thing for sure, EPIC games has lit a fire under Valves arse by showing them that MAKING games and exclusive deals still matter. Motivated Valve to start making games again which is great news people! We may yet see a HL3 come to life!
Last edited by TheRiddick on 22 January 2020 at 2:15 am UTC
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I can't remember if I ever played through all of the original Half-Life, but I have completed all the others. They were great. They are old, though, and I would not tell someone 15 years younger than me that they had to play them or they were missing out on life. If we're talking about Dragon Age: Origins, the Mass Effect series, The Witcher 2 and 3, then it'd be a different story. Don't take what I say too far. I would say they are worth playing if you hadn't before. But I wouldn't expect someone to think of me as a better human being because I pointed them to Half-Life.
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I wonder if they now get review bombed for making the new one VR only. OTOH, the people who dislike this move the most will already own the game...
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I'm currently replaying the series for the first time in a very long time.
Black Mesa was great.
Now close to the end of HL2 (base game).
Imho, this game has aged particularly well.
Also, I don't mind the linearity that's very often criticised (by younger gamers?).
I love good handcrafted stories and this one is undoubtedly extremely well executed.
Maybe that's one reason I'm not that much into open-world/sandbox games, where content is
too a large extend very repetitive or procedurally generated.
(Exception: I LOVED 'Breath of the Wild'!)
Hope the Index is available again soon.
Black Mesa was great.
Now close to the end of HL2 (base game).
Imho, this game has aged particularly well.
Also, I don't mind the linearity that's very often criticised (by younger gamers?).
I love good handcrafted stories and this one is undoubtedly extremely well executed.
Maybe that's one reason I'm not that much into open-world/sandbox games, where content is
too a large extend very repetitive or procedurally generated.
(Exception: I LOVED 'Breath of the Wild'!)
Hope the Index is available again soon.
4 Likes, Who?
Still good games that hold up well today. I do wonder if Alex is using Source 3.0 engine (has that been announced yet)
One thing for sure, EPIC games has lit a fire under Valves arse by showing them that MAKING games and exclusive deals still matter. Motivated Valve to start making games again which is great news people! We may yet see a HL3 come to life!
Source 3? It's using Source 2.
Epic has nothing to do with this.
1 Likes, Who?
Valve are doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5PM UTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/
3 Likes, Who?
Mohandevir Jan 22, 2020
Valve are doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5PM UTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/
An AMA on Half Life only? It would have been nice to have more details about the ChromeOS thing...
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Valve are doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5PM UTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/
Please limit jokes about Half-Life 3, this will be focused on Half-Life: Alyx.
:-D
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Valve are doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5PM UTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/
Did you join the AMA, Liam? :)
I hope we get an answer to if our beloved platform will be supported.
So far none of the many questions regarding Linux have been answered.
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Yeah, I asked, as I can see a few others did. No reply to any Linux question that I can see, but difficult since there's so many questions.Valve are doing an AMA on Reddit today at 5PM UTC: https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/
Did you join the AMA, Liam? :)
I hope we get an answer to if our beloved platform will be supported.
So far none of the many questions regarding Linux have been answered.
2 Likes, Who?
Unfortunately (well, not really), I purchased Half-Life: Game of the Year Edition and played through it in 1999. I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 when that came out (was it 2004?), and I got Episode 1 and 2 along with a bunch of other Valve stuff during some Steam sale a little while back. My purchase of Half-Life 2 also marked the creation of my Steam account. Some time later I added my original Half-Life license to my Steam account.
Though I used Linux and even played games on it by 1999 I actually played Half-Life and Half-Life 2 on Windows when I first played them; I didn't wait for them to run correctly through Wine. These days I don't generally bother with games I can't play on Linux though.
Though I used Linux and even played games on it by 1999 I actually played Half-Life and Half-Life 2 on Windows when I first played them; I didn't wait for them to run correctly through Wine. These days I don't generally bother with games I can't play on Linux though.
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Has anyone scanned through the AMA answers?
Didn't find anything new for us Linux folks.
Tend to think it's not due to the sheer amount of questions. :/
Didn't find anything new for us Linux folks.
Tend to think it's not due to the sheer amount of questions. :/
0 Likes
I'm currently replaying the series for the first time in a very long time.
Black Mesa was great.
Now close to the end of HL2 (base game).
Imho, this game has aged particularly well.
Also, I don't mind the linearity that's very often criticised (by younger gamers?).
I love good handcrafted stories and this one is undoubtedly extremely well executed.
Maybe that's one reason I'm not that much into open-world/sandbox games, where content is
too a large extend very repetitive or procedurally generated.
(Exception: I LOVED 'Breath of the Wild'!)
Hope the Index is available again soon.
Linear games are severely underrated and it's shame that a new game that isn't open-world (or that isn't online multiplayer) gets so bashed by gamers. Most of the time the open-worldness as you say is just slapped on by repeating a few things over and over and over.
1 Likes, Who?
There's no argument to be made about which is better, linear or open. They are very different approaches that aim for very different things. It's like comparing apples to a dog.
Linear games very much have a place in modern gaming and the future. I recently played Hellblade and I had an absolute blast, and made my kinda miss linear games.
It's all up to personal preference, and even tho I prefer open games, a good linear game from time to time is very welcome.
I don't think that either of us are against open world games. It's just that the current expectation that every single game should be open world more or less forces game devs to implement open world into games where it does not fit or work so you get a lot of open world games that would probably have been much better if they would have stayed linear.
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I got the impression that the first reboot Tomb Raider did something right with this respect. The world felt open to me, but the story always led me. So what I played was linear, but I never felt... encaged.
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I got the impression that the first reboot Tomb Raider did something right with this respect. The world felt open to me, but the story always led me. So what I played was linear, but I never felt... encaged.
Oh indeed, I really liked all of the trilogy reboot.
Very well executed, despite being completely linear.
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