A new Half-Life overhaul is here, aiming to be spiritually in keeping with Valve’s 1998 FPS game, while improving and changing some core mechanics to feel closer to a modern, 2023 shooter. Called Half-Life Mmod, it might look awfully similar at a glance, but subtle tweaks to the visuals, gunplay, AI, and SFX make this arguably the definitive way to play.
The Half-Life overhaul mod has been in the works for some time, and all you need is the 1998 original to download this new version and add it to your Steam library. Developer Gunship Mark II also has similar projects for the likes of Half-Life 2 as well, if you want to give another Valve classic a new coat of paint.
Check out the newest footage of the Half-Life Mmod release below.
Half-Life Mmod built-in features
There are a lot of extra features in Half-Life Mmod, and while they’re in keeping with Valve’s original FPS game, they can make your experience feel as new as ever.
- Camera adjustments
- Jump/Land Jolt
- Camera view roll
- In-game FOV
- Detail textures
- Weapon inertia
- Performance-intensive light effects
- First-person legs
- Project Bullets
- Death effect
- Fancy crossbow scope
- Extra HEV voice lines
- Extra HEV messages
- Chapter select
- Firing range
- AI tweaks
- New animations
- Visual, atmospheric, and pacing-related map tweaks and additions (work in progress)
- New arsenal, special weapon functions (silencers, addons, fire modes)
- Plenty of bug fixes
- VFX redesign (explosions, bullet impacts, muzzle flashes, monster effects, etc)
I missed the boat on the original Half-Life by quite a distance and have tried going back to it for years, and while the Black Mesa fan-remake is still an excellent option for the Valve game, Half-Life Mmod had me hooked straight away with these small changes.
While it’s obviously down to plenty of Valve’s work, all of these additions work well together to age-up Half-Life a fair bit, enough, in my opinion, to make it still feel like a classic, but one that hasn’t aged as bad as you might think. It’s difficult to tell too, with the improvements only becoming apparent with a side-by-side comparison, but Half-Life Mmod is a marvel.
We’ve also got a list of the best old games you can play easily right now if Half-Life Mmod isn’t enough, alongside the answers to whatever happened to Half-Life 3, in case you were wondering.
