Half-Life 2: Update looks like a real good reason to revisit City 17

But not Ravenholm… never Ravenholm

For three years, Filip Victor has been working on Half-Life 2: Update, a community-made standalone version of Half-Life 2 that seeks to “fix up, polish, and visually enhance [the game] without ever changing the 2004 original’s core gameplay, or time-tested style.” Noble endeavor.

There’s a brochure explaining the improvements but, in short: better lighting and shadows, high dynamic range, environmental fog, enhanced environment details, and fixes for bugs “including bad triggers causing scenes and battles to not cue properly, or strange-looking character animations breaking believability and player immersion.” Community commentary is in, too.

When Half-Life 2: Update arrives on Steam tomorrow, you’ll need a copy of the original game to download and install it. Definitely something to add to my replay list. Maybe yours too.