Absolutely timeless.

If my HL2 mods tracked for how many hours I've actually played this game it'd near 500 at least, always a blast to come back to every so often (once a year or so)

The 20th Anniversary combining all the episodes into one, as well as adding the workshop has made this game that much more replayable too, no more having to scrounge around ModDB and GameBanana for mods and campaigns, all of it can be found and accessed much much easier now.

For a game that came out 20+ years ago, it's still a visual marvel and a testament that consistent and intentional art direction for a game can do wonders for helping it look stunning, even now so many years later with so many advancements in technology. I can only imagine actually playing these titles back when they launched and being blown away by just how good these games look, even with some of HL2 having unfinished art in the later chapters, it never misses the mark in immersing you into this rich dystopian world.

My only gripe with the game in it's base form is that the gun sounds are very outdated and weak. I get this game came out in 2004 so I'm not expecting stellar weapon SFX, but every gun sounds rather puny (which to be fair was a pretty common issue with early 2000s shooters) which is why I'll now be playing with some SFX overhaul mods from the workshop as standard (I played MMoD for a good couple of hours over the base game just for this reason). Thats not to say the rest of the sound design in this game is bad, in fact it's consistently good across the board, they just dropped the ball a bit with the guns...

Voice acting in this game is industry best, and I'm sure top of the line for 2004 with very memorable performances throughout. It is a bit jarring having literally every civilian have the same voice (male and female) but given their 1 year redevelopment of the entire game after the 2003 leak, and I imagine strained budget considering this, they don't sound bad at all and have so much style and flair. Michael Shapiro as GMan, especially in Ep2 knocks it out of the park having the most memorable speeches in any video game (imo).

I hope to see this game get a remaster in Source2 one day given how actually gorgeous HL:A looked, but the RTX project looks like a very promising project, and I'm sure will give us a taste of what HL2 would look like given today's graphics technologies.

10/10, a must have for anyone with £8.50 to spare (and even cheaper on the many sales it goes on throughout the year). Stellar story, fun and varied gameplay and very memorable characters and music.

The sun is leaking.

Nie ma skibidi