25th Anniversary Update For Half-Life Brings New Content, Steam Deck Support, And More

One of the biggest platform holders, Valve, despite its limited release schedule for the past decade remains fairly active in 2023. The most notable is the recent arrival for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2 which shipped earlier this year. The new title arrived in replacement of the previous with a slew of gameplay & visual improvements.

That is only one part of Valve’s growing involvement this year. Additionally, the Steam owner also announced a new Steam Deck is on the way – the Steam Deck OLED. Similar to the Nintendo Switch OLED Model, it offers a new display for users playing portably. The most significant addition has to be the option to pre-purchase a model with a 1 TB hard drive.

This week, Valve celebrates 25 years of Half-Life with new content and more to commemorate the title that defines Valve and what further evolved the original Source Engine millions of players are familiar with today. You can watch the new ‘25th Anniversary Documentary’ in the video below:

Part of the update that arrived for Half-Life includes a new ‘Uplink’ mini-campaign that was included on original advertisement CDs prior to the game’s release. “Originally released as a CD exclusive for magazines and hardware manufacturers, this mini-campaign was built by the Half-Life team right after the game went gold. As this was many people’s first experience with Half-Life, we thought it was finally time to bundle it with the main game—no sound card purchase necessary.”

The new update also includes four multiplayer maps that expand the game’s capabilities as well featuring Contamination, Pool Party, Disposal, and Rocket Frenzy. Other cut content from ‘Further Data’ has been restored including maps Double Cross, Rust Mill, and Xem DM. Visual enhancements for the game also list wide-screen support, improve lighting, toggle for texture smoothing, and software-rendering features for Linux users.

The update continues with Steam Deck support for the classic Valve title too. “We finally put our game through our own “Verified” tests, and… we failed super hard. So we fixed it! After re-testing the game, Half-Life gets to officially wear the green checkmark. Now you can play Half-Life on the best handheld gaming computer in the world in glorious 800p with improved controls and UI.”

What has you most interested for the 25th Anniversary Update for Half-Life?

Half-Life is out now for PC.

Source: Valve