Half-Life 2 RTX is very impressive, but that’s just how I remember the game looking 

Valve’s Half-Life 2 used to be my favourite game of all time. Now that’s NieR Automata, but that’s a different story. After loving the free Portal RTX remake two years ago, the prospect of a full Half-Life 2 RTX remake was something I was frothing at the mouth for. 

Now that the remake’s free demo is out, giving us access to the amazing Ravenholm section and Nova Prospekt, I adore what’s on display with the new RTX remake. However, I don’t love it because it’s a mind-blowing display of path-tracing PC goodness, but because it’s genuinely how I remember Valve’s mind-blowing FPS game looking over 20 years ago. 

Half-Life 2 RTX looks just as I remember 

Back when Valve released Half-Life 2 in 2004, it was probably the best-looking game I’d ever seen. The game’s pre-baked global illumination was gorgeous and the use of in-game physics for actual puzzle solving was something that felt like the clever version of Halo 2’s hilarious Havok sandbox.

With the new RTX remake of Half-Life 2, I’m not blown away. There’s some fantastic technology on display here such as the way fire illuminates rooms with intense bright light and smoke billows against the ceiling. The intense path-traced shadows now show Headcrab Zombies stumbling from across the room, adding even more drama to the game’s environments. 

On top of that, every asset in the game has been redone with amazing material work. The crossbow bolt is now a light source that can be pinned into surfaces, the health packs now glow with their green goop in a realistic way. Hell, the spinning blade traps now have a proper plastic handle on their levers complete with a mould line from their production. Even the wood textures look phenomenal. 

Unfortunately, I’m now mind-blown by what I’m seeing, not because it’s not an amazing showcase of technology, but because this is how my brain remembers Half-Life 2 looking. If I put the two versions side-by-side, I’m sure I’d see the massive twenty year tech advances and marvel at the difference, but I’m not going to do that because that’s time I’d rather spend doing literally anything else. 

Of course, the real issue with Half-Life 2 RTX is performance. I’m a stupid person who bought an RTX 4060Ti so some of this is likely my fault, but the new remake doesn’t run very well, and that’s to be expected. Path tracing is heavy, very heavy, and the added complexity of Half-Life 2’s game world over the small box levels of Portal take their toll. I can hit 60fps at 1080p without frame-gen, thank God, but it’s clear that this is a future-proof game that will shine like a diamond on hardware a few years from now. In fact, it pretty much runs how the original did 20 years ago! 

I’m glad Half-Life 2 RTX exists, although I’m not happy about its egregious 80GB install size at all. I’ll probably play it to completion when the game finally releases and love it just as much as I loved the game when I bought it on a physical disc. Does it need to exist? Absolutely not! Is it cool? Yeah, it’s pretty cool. 

Maybe games just look too good now for me to really notice. I’ve been replaying Splinter Cell on Xbox Series X in 4K and I’m still blown away by how it looks. Will the upcoming remake technically look better? Probably, yes. But will it make me feel how the original did? Who even knows.

The sign of a great remaster is making players feel like they did when they originally played a game. That’s what Halo 2: Anniversary did, and that’s what Half-Life 2 RTX does. But what comes next?