Turning 20 this year, Half-Life 2 is held aloft as one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made. While the 2004 game still holds up visually, a team of modders has been hard at work giving Valve’s classic a bit of a spit-shine.
At CES 2024, the Half-Life 2 RTX Remix project released a new trailer, showing the work that’s so far gone into the Nvidia-powered graphical improvement. In this instance, we get to see what Ravenholm looks like in all its shiny glory.
It’s an impressive mod, with the comparisons in the video showing the difference between the OG game and the RTX remix. We get a glimpse of all that lovely ray tracing, DLSS 3.5 image upscaling, and remastered assets. Ooh…ahh, etc.
Such moody lighting
Ravenholm is one of the most notorious sections in Half-Life 2. Something of a gear shift, this part of the story turns the game into a creepy horror that takes place in an abandoned mining town. It’s where we meet Father Grigori and also get to see the destructive power of the gravity gun when you add in a rusty saw blade.
As for when the RTX project will be available, there doesn’t seem to be a release date yet. However, according to the Nvidia website, the open beta for the RTX Remix toolkit begins January 22. Maybe that’s when we’ll get to play it, or at least get an update on when this boosted version of HL2 will be available.
In the meantime, there’s Portal RTX to check out if you want to go “ooh” and “ahh” at a different Valve game for a bit.
