The 25th anniversary of the release of the original Half-Life lands on November 19, and developer Valve is celebrating with a massive update that restores cut content, adds new maps, and fixes old bugs for the classic FPS.
The biggest additions in this update include Half-Life: Uplink, an original mini-campaign that was first distributed to serve as a demo for the game. There are also four brand-new multiplayer maps designed by Valve that "push the limits of what's possible in the Half-Life engine." Valve has even restored the original main menu artwork and logo intro video.
You can head over to the official site for a full list of all the smaller tweaks and bug fixes, but they include things as substantial as improved physics for grenade throwing. The game's UI now scales better at higher resolutions, and proper out-of-the-box support for gamepads and Steam Networking alike has been introduced. And, yes, Half-Life is now Steam Deck verified, just in time for you to play on your Steam Deck OLED.
"We now consider this anniversary version of Half Life to be the definitive version, and the one we'll continue to support going forward," Valve says. Half-Life: Source will still be available, but the devs will be "reducing the visibility" of that version going forward.
If you're one of the three people in the world left who doesn't own Half-Life on Steam, there's good news on that front - it's now completely free for a limited time. Much of the rest of the series is also deeply discounted until November 21.
As if all that wasn't enough, Valve also took this opportunity to release an hour-long documentary on the making of Half-Life. The project was directed by Danny O'Dwyer of the excellent NoClip series, which you may remember as the source of all that Half-Life 2: Ravenholm footage from years ago. All this is almost enough to give you hope that Valve has finally learned how to count to three.
You'll find a whole lot of Half-Life in our list of the best FPS games.
