The cult game Half-Life 2 became a real breakthrough in 2004, thanks to its revolutionary physics, exciting storyline and atmospheric world. However, time does not stand still, and even classics need to be updated. Half-Life 2 RTX is an ambitious fan project in collaboration with NVIDIA that uses RTX Remix technology to give the game modern graphics with ray tracing and improved textures. But did the developers manage to preserve the spirit of the original while breathing new life into the game?
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More than 20 years ago, PC gaming was about to undergo a real revolution, opening a portal not only to Zen, but also to other previously unseen gaming experiences at home. Or in a basement computer club somewhere around the corner from school. Yes, the entry threshold was low, thanks to the Source engine, the game could even be run on a calculator (well, almost). But in order to enjoy the riot of normal maps, parallax mapping, and the Havoc engine, you needed a top-of-the-line PC… which didn’t exist yet. Hello, Crysis!
So it became possible for an average player to play in full size just in time for the release of the expansion pack with the telling title Episode One. In 2007, the second and currently the last one left a bitter taste of the series cliffhanger. The game gained the status of a cult and national game. A decade later, a powerful fan movement created a remake of the first part of the adventures of the Black Mesa scientist Gordon Freeman.
A couple of years ago, the announcement we were waiting for happened! І March 18 The Half-Life 2 RTX demo is now available on Steam. This is the result of the collaboration of four teams of modders who joined forces under the name Orbifold Studios. They used RTX Remix tools to update the game. The honorable gentlemen and ladies from Nvidia give a standing ovation and suggest buying the new 5000 series as soon as possible. Happiness for everyone? For free?
First, this is not a FULL game, but a FREE tech demo with two levels: Ravenholm (a horror level that can still give you the shivers) and Nova Prospect (an action movie about storming a prison). Secondly, you will need the original Steam game to install. You can buy it as part of the legendary Orange Box can be purchased for 41 hryvnia (≈1 US dollar).
Let’s have a closer look at the PC system requirements:
Here are the minimum required:
And deployed by Nvidia with recommendations:
Gluttonous? Yes, but who would be surprised by that today? We are ready for this challenge and have prepared the following test bench, which will become our time machine:
From words to deeds! Hold on tight to your assembly crowbars, we’re about to start!
We launch the game and are immediately greeted by a big bull with a valve on the back of his head: something hasn’t changed. And then there are the settings that have not changed since 2004. There are tabs where you can select the required level of difficulty, customize the game rodent, reassign keys on the keyboard, change the resolution, gamma, and that’s it?
The most interesting things are waiting for us at the command of the Alt+X key combination. Graphic settings.
As you can see, there is room for maneuver. During the testing, the author of these lines went through the entire demo (all the following videos are presented in chronological order), juggling resolutions from 1080p to 4K and going through all possible settings.
Going to a horror movie today is a kind of attraction because unfortunately, in reality, much worse things happen. So, will we be scared by this abandoned town? Or will we get tired of Father Hryhorii’s monologues?
Everything looks pretty good. The work with the textures is immediately noticeable, they were injected with graphic botox and now look decent. But at most it is, of course, current-gen. «And your Galya is spoiled!», — you will say and you will be wrong. A cosmetic lift, these are the first impressions. Yes, there are rays, and they make a certain magic of immersion and immersion.
At the 08:10 mark, a puzzle in the spirit of classic Half-Life begins, when one non-obvious conclusion stops the entire gameplay for a couple of minutes. There are no guidelines or hints. It’s old school. You just need to feel the vibe and everything will go right. On the gameplay.
The adrenaline action still works, it’s not for nothing that this game was considered a benchmark representative of the genre. As for the technical condition of the demo, everything is fine. No technical bugs/anomalies or anything else have been found. Only textures that get stuck in the ground or wall. But this is a feature of 2000s games!
Next, I switch to 1440p and continue my journey through the corridor ghost town. On Ultra settings with DLSS and Frame Generator enabled, I get stable 88-92 fps. You can squeeze out 120 fps by selecting Performance mode.
The game opens in 4K resolution. The 3D artists and the whole team are great. The work is visible to the naked eye. But only for Nvidia cards because DLSS is the best here. All other alternatives: «soap» and «ladders». It’s a silent horror. Although you can turn it on for the atmosphere. Just kidding, of course.
However, even «green» graphics cards have their limits. To paraphrase a joke from the movie «Avengers»: who are you without your DLSS and Frame Generation? 5-7 fps on Ultra settings without DLSS and FG. That’s not much.
Now imagine if it was PhysX instead of Havoc physics engine. 1-2 fps? The question is rhetorical.
This is where the chapter comes to a close. It took us a little more than fifty minutes to do this.
Then, with the support of ant lions (an insectophobe’s nightmare), we will break through the rebel prison. The adrenaline rush continues, and we will start in the classic way: with FullHD. Successfully and without going through combinations of graphic settings.
The situation here is similar. And the indicators are the same. There were no FPS drops, no freezes, except for intra-level reloads at checkpoints.
Speaking of checkpoints. Sometimes they are placed in a strange way, so it’s better to remember to manually save them, so you don’t end up like me. Especially on the hardest difficulty level. Watch the video (here we switched to 1440p) and cheer from the bottom of your heart!
In 4K, we have «native» 10 fps, but accelerating the scientific and technological progress from Mr. Huang, we have stable 68-72 fps without compromising picture clarity. Everything is on Ultra settings. Each step gives a slight increase in frames, so the main resource eater here are the rays. He was able to heat the processor to 71 degrees, which even creation GSC studio.
Let’s not forget about the unobvious ways to get there. Instead of a frontal assault, I should have just looked to the side… Yes, at the game’s trademark, the crowbar — ventilation shaft. And then solve a simple physical puzzle.
Since this is a demo, it makes sense that the authors give Gordon the whole arsenal for fun (except for the ferropod (remember what it is!) to control our winged allies). Firing a crossbow, launching ping-pong fireballs, and throwing grenades into a crowd of baddies — is just as fun as ever. The dynamics do not sag at all.
And finally, the final. As you can see, there are no technical problems in the passage. But the question arises: when third episode a full-fledged game? Authors the exact date They don’t call them that.
The table below shows the average number of frames per second (FPS) for Half-Life 2 RTX at different resolution settings and DLSS and Frame Generation technologies. Testing was performed at the maximum graphics settings (Ultra) with vertical synchronization turned off (V-Sync: Off).
| Separate ability | DLSS – OFF FG — OFF | DLSS – QUALITY FG — OFF | DLSS – QUALITY FG — ON | DLSS – Balanced FG — ON | DLSS – Performance FG — ON | DLSS – Ultra Performance FG — ON |
| 1080p | 39 fps | 52 fps | 117 fps | 134 fps | 152 fps | 178 fps |
| 1440p | 24 fps | 43 fps | 82 fps | 91 fps | 103 fps | 122 fps |
| 2160p | 7 fps | 20 fps | 34 fps | 45 fps | 64 fps | 101 fps |
As a longtime admirer of Gordon Freeman, who, like a true stoic, overcomes obstacles with the help of good words silence and a gun, I couldn’t pass by such an event. For almost 20 years now, Half-Life has been powered by fans and continues to evolve. What is the long-awaited Black Mesa on the Source engine, or VR version Half-Life 2: VR Mode. Not to mention the exclusive — Half-Life: Alyx, for chosen ones owners of VR helmets.
I decided to test Half-Life 2: RTX on MSI’s NVIDIA RTX 4060 and the brand new AMD RX 9070, which is positioned as a direct competitor to the NVIDIA RTX 5070. So get ready, a real battle of technologies awaits you!
Testing recently AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT I emphasized that in the future, due to the physical limitations of technological processes, the main battle for the wallets of PC gamers will take place at the level of neural upscaling and frame generation technologies. They allow owners to RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti enjoy the rays of Jensen Huang.
I tried to run Half-Life 2: RTX on two more configurations so that gamers could better understand what awaits them with different budgets and platforms. As it turned out, Gordon Freeman has gained weight with age and manages to slow down even on expensive graphics cards.
| Test bench №1 | Test bench #2 |
| Video card Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GAMING | Video card MSI PCI-E GeForce RTX4060 |
| Motherboard MSI MEG Z890 ACE; | Motherboard ASUS PRIME B450M-A II; |
| Processor Intel Core Ultra 9 285K; | Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700; |
| Cooling MSI MAG CORELIQUID I360; | Cooling Box; |
| Drive Samsung SSD 980 1TB; | Drive Samsung SSD 980 1TB; |
| RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 CK 2x24Gb Royal; | DDR4 Dual Channel RAM; |
| Power supply MSI MPG A1000G PCIE5 1000W; | Power supply Xilence 750W; |
| Body MSI MPG GUNGNIR 300R AIRFLOW. | MSI MAG 100M. |
I installed a video card on a top-of-the-line Intel platform Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GAMING in the hope of recording a better FPS. However, the trouble came from where it was not expected. When I saw the first footage from Ravenholm, I realized that the picture was rendered at a much lower resolution, which means that multisampling had previously taken place.
Another surprise awaited me in the settings — the game does not support AMD FSR. Instead, internal upscaling technologies are available for Radeon: NIS and TAA-U. The first one turns the image into a «oversharpened» pixel mishmash. The latter, in turn, simply demonstrates incredible soap.
If we try to turn off «enhancers», we get 20 frames per second. This is even a little nostalgic and brings back the days when a Radeon 9600 video card had this many frames in 2004. Indoors, the situation is slightly better and the frame counter shows about 35 FPS. So I have bad news for owners of AMD graphics cards. The only hope is to wait for the mercy of developers who implement FSR support.
Now let’s move on to the most budget-friendly configuration, which is built on the outdated AM4 platform with DDR4 memory and a veteran processor — AMD Ryzen 7 5700. We have an RTX 4060 video card on board, which, although it doesn’t catch stars from the sky, supports DLSS. And then a second surprise awaited me.
The picture looked much clearer because Half-Life 2: RTX supports DLSS. The frame counter at FullHD, DLSS — Quality, and the medium preset settings reached 76 fps. With «and» improvers completely turned off, we get 46 fps. Moreover, in QuadHD we have 50 fps with DLSS, but the framerate, judging by the overlay, is very «choppy». The game consumes 6.8 GB of video memory.
So, Mr. Freeman, it’s too early for you to come out of stasis. We’d rather wait a bit longer until the developers learn how to optimize games, otherwise, instead of asking a question: «Will Crysis run?», we’ll have an alternative: «But Half-Life will definitely slow down».
Half-Life 2 is a game that defined a generation of games, and any changes to it are always perceived with special attention by a community of millions. The original fascinated with its plot, atmosphere, gloomy City-17 and the feeling of almost hopeless struggle.
Half-Life 2 RTX is an interesting experiment that gives the classic game a new visual life, but does not change its essence. The RTX Remix brought updated textures, improved lighting, and realistic reflections, but the game’s foundation/base/ground remained untouched.
In terms of performance, this is a real challenge for hardware. Without DLSS and Frame Generation, even top-of-the-line graphics cards may flinch. If you own a modern RTX solution, you will be able to see Half-Life 2 as it was imagined back in 2004 🙂 For fans of the series, this is nostalgia in a new wrapper. For newcomers, it’s an opportunity to get acquainted with the legend in a more visually appealing way.
But did this RTX version manage to capture the spirit of the original? Yes, but with nuances. The game remained in the past in terms of level design, mechanics, and atmosphere. And although the graphics have become modern, there was no revolution here.
