Well, as Stephen Colbert will sometimes joke on The Late Show, the answer... "is potato".
In tech speak, a "potato" is a piece of hardware that has much-too-low specs compared to what someone is trying to utilize it for. In terms of gaming that would equate to trying to play a game on a computer using hardware that likely isn't even quite up to snuff with the minimum requirements, but you're still curious about just what'll happen if you boot the game up regardless; I mean, there's a mod for Doom 3 that lets it run on Windows 98 & a Voodoo2 card... and it's amazing. This is because PC hardware is an ever-evolving thing, while their console brethren are (for the most part) fixed architecture, and it wasn't until the seventh generation in the mid-00s (at the very earliest) that the gap between the two truly lessened, as console manufacturers started to simply rely primarily on PC-based hardware to power their machines. Therefore, when a PC game from the 90s got ported to console at the time it was often a case of having it play on a comparative "potato" when put against the PC tech it was designed to work with. In that regard, Valve has been rather conservative when it comes to releasing its games on console, & that's doubly so when it comes to Half-Life, as the first game only saw one official console port released (for the PlayStation 2), while Half-Life 2 only saw "two" (for the Xbox, & later Xbox 360/PS3 via The Orange Box). Therefore, on this 20th Anniversary year of Half-Life 2's original release on PC, I want to see how well these amazing games still hold up when played in their most potato-y of forms.
For Half-Life 2 that means revisiting it on the original Xbox, which is actually how I first played the game back in the day, but before that we should revisit the original Half-Life & for that it means playing something that wasn't actually released... at least officially.
Back when it launched on November 19, 1998, Half-Life required at minimum a Pentium CPU running at 133 MHz & 24 MB of RAM, with a 3D graphics accelerator card not required but generally considered a must for improved performance & visuals. In comparison, the Sega Dreamcast included a Hitachi SH-4 CPU that ran at 200 MHz (similar to a Pentium II) & could display at 640x480 via VGA (which was the standard resolution of most PCs at the time), but only had 16 MB of RAM, though there was an additional 8 MB for graphic textures & 2 MB for sound. Therefore, Sega's final console likely could have run Half-Life in its original 1998 form, with maybe some concessions to accommodate the lower amount of RAM, but that's not actually what was intended as Valve & publisher Sierra had grander plans in mind. Announced on February 14, 2000, Half-Life for Dreamcast was meant to help usher in a notable update to Valve's first game, as not only were the tech demo experts at Captivation Digital Laboratories hired to port the main game over, but they'd also be updating the visuals to much higher detail & including new lighting effects. Not just that but Gearbox Software, which had previously made the expansion pack Opposing Force, was making another expansion pack, Blue Shift, made specifically for the Dreamcast. Unfortunately, a mix of development delays & the Dreamcast's slowly dwindling market would eventually result in Sierra cancelling the entire port altogether on June 16, 2001, citing "changing market conditions", despite it being so virtually complete that review copies were already sent to publications & Prima had a strategy guide that had already been shipped to stores; Gearbox co-founder & CEO Randy Pitchford even admitted back in 2012 that he had the gold master in his possession. Blue Shift & the visual updates (now called the "High Definition Pack") would see release on PC prior to the Dreamcast port's cancellation, and though Captivation would sadly go out of business without ever releasing a single game the studio's work (more than likely) would still be put to use by Gearbox for the PS2 port of Half-Life that did see official release in November of 2001.
However, on January 10, 2003 warez group Xanadu leaked a build for Dreamcast Half-Life, labeled "1672" & dated May 23, 2001 (just over three weeks prior to the port's official cancellation announcement), and while two other builds have since also been leaked this first one remains the closest to the cancellation date, with most estimating it to be ~98% complete, missing only some final optimizations. While the true 100% complete "gold" build remains a bit of a holy grail that people would love to see released at some point, let's see if playing Half-Life on Dreamcast via the 1672 build still allows the original game to shine through, 21 years after it got leaked.
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| Both campaigns are included on the same disc. |
So, first, let's update our comparative specs, since we should compare the Dreamcast specs to what was required for Blue Shift's standalone release on PC in 2001, since that expansion was developed for the Dreamcast first. That required at minimum a 500 MHz Pentium III CPU & 96 MB of RAM, which is easily well beyond what Sega's console was ever capable of, as the Dreamcast had less than half the CPU clock speed & only 25% of the RAM, if you include the 8 MB for textures. Naturally, this means that some concessions had to be made, and easily the two biggest are framerate & loading. Half-Life for Dreamcast has a fully unlocked framerate so it can range anywhere from a max of 60 fps at best to being in the mid-to-high teens during hectic combat sequences, though it never really enters into anything resembling unplayable; this does change a bit for the very end of the main campaign, but I'll get to that later. If anything, the whole experience here is probably similar to lower spec PCs that tried running the OG version back in 1998, complete with the occasional performance hitch at points. The bigger thing is easily loading, as due to the lower amount of RAM on the console Captivation & Gearbox had to introduce more moments for the game to load level segments, due to Half-Life utilizing a structure where it's meant to be one giant, interconnected path from start to finish, with only a handful of moments where that aim is purposefully broken. Unfortunately, the load times themselves are also infamous for being rather long, and this was something that even the official reviews that managed to get published brought up. Now, to be fair, I played this on a Dreamcast that has an Optical Disc Emulator/ODE in place of a traditional disc drive, which means that the console can effectively load at max speed constantly when needed. However, even then the load times are only reduced so much, so instead of maybe averaging around 15-20 seconds when played on a disc they're now maybe 7-15 seconds via a GDI file played through an ODE; individually it doesn't sound like a major difference, but since there's more loading it definitely adds up over time.
Apparently, there was a fan mod for this port made in the mid-2010s that swapped out all of the character & weapon models for their 1998 originals, and the end result was a much smoother playing game, but it's allegedly been lost to time; there's also allegedly a mod that swapped in the PS2 version's even-higher-quality models, which made it run worse. Still, if it really existed, it would prove what I said earlier in that the Dreamcast could have likely run the OG version of Half-Life (more or less) just fine.
However, the two biggest hurdles from a technical perspective are easily the two things that likely were (hopefully) resolved for the alleged gold master that Randy Pitchford owns: Crashing & Save File Sizes. In the case of this port there's the rare chance that the game will crash, whether it's a case of the game simply locking up or a straight crash that gives you text on the screen indicating as such; I experienced this across both campaigns, but primarily during the main campaign. However, the biggest problem of all was with the penultimate chapter of the main campaign, Interloper, and specifically the section where you enter the factory on Xen. Likely due to its complex nature, I experienced two full-on lock ups & I hit a point where the game would soft crash when I tried to load my game, though I could at least return to the main menu after this; this specific part of the chapter also gave the game its most harsh framerate drops & hitches, by far. Ideally, this is something that Captivation & Gearbox would have fixed for the final gold master, but until that alleged gold master version gets released this is just a hope. As for save file size, that's a bit of a bizarre one & is what kind of makes playing this build of the Dreamcast port (or any build that's been leaked, really) a little tricky. In short, how much space the save file takes up on a VMU more or less depends on how far into a chapter of Half-Life you currently are when you make the save. Therefore, if you save right at the start of a chapter it could be something as small as only nine blocks, but if you save when near the end of that same exact chapter it could require upwards of 90 or even 100+ blocks (my personal record was a little over 130 blocks), and a standard VMU only has 200 blocks; however, the moment you enter the next chapter & save it'll return to requiring much less space. I'm not technically versed enough to really explain why exactly this happens in the pre-release build (if I had to guess it's likely related to how large your current overall environment is), but this is definitely something that would have been standardized for the final release, and if you ever play the 1672 build it's best to simply use an empty VMU, just in case. In fact, advertising boxes sent to retailers meant to imitate what the final packaging would have looked like mention the save file as requiring 95 blocks, or just shy of half of a VMU, so it looks like the devs may have settled on a standardized file size but it was still rather large; at least it wasn't as big as launch title Seventh Cross Evolution, which required roughly 3/4 of an entire VMU to save!
So, after taking all of those caveats into consideration, how does Half-Life on Dreamcast actually play? When it comes to controls, you have two options: Controller or Mouse & Keyboard. Yes, the Dreamcast has its own proprietary mechanical "ball" mouse & keyboard accessories, due to the console's ability to go online at launch & new consoles including a literal internet browser on disc in the box; most, if not all, FPS-es on Dreamcast support these accessories. Simply plug the keyboard into Player 1, the mouse into Player 3, & a controller into Player 2 or 4 (for saving purposes) & Half-Life on Dreamcast can play exactly like it does on PC, complete with WASD for movement (Half-Life was one of the first games to actually use those keys as the default), the appropriate keys for interacting, reloading, jumping, etc. (except that crouch is on Left Ctrl by default, instead of the now standard C), and the mouse for looking around, firing your weapons (left click for primary fire, right click for alt fire), & the third button on the left side defaults to crouch. However, the third mouse button is a little too high up the device for my thumb (I guess I just like holding a mouse lower down the device than others), though I was surprised at how remarkably sensitive the ball & rollers remained, even after roughly 25 years. That being said, I do wish there was a modern-day optical mouse for the Dreamcast, similar to what now exists for the SNES. There was a PS/2 (not "PS2") adapter released for the Dreamcast back in the day, but its support for optical mice is apparently very picky.
If you play on controller, though, it's by no means obtuse... though you do have to adjust to the fact that the Dreamcast only featured one analog stick on its controllers. What this means is that all players effectively have to play southpaw, as the analog stick on the left controls looking, while the face buttons control movement; Dreamcast's face buttons are in the same order as all Xbox controller's would later use. Finally, the right trigger is for firing your weapon, while the d-pad handles jumping, crouching, interacting, & turning on your flashlight. That just leaves the left trigger, which is used as a "Shift", i.e. when held the right trigger & d-pad are used for alt fire, reloading, weapon selection, & walking instead of running. Yes, it's not an ideal way to play, but it's nowhere near as clumsy as some online say it is, and while there is naturally an adjustment period in this day & age it's actually commendable that Captivation was able to make it work as well as it does; there are even alternate control schemes that puts moving forward & backward, or even strafing, on the triggers. Today it's often stated that Sega not offering a second analog stick on the Dreamcast was a boneheaded mistake (though not fully copying the Saturn's 3D Control Pad & offering six face buttons really was boneheaded), but you have to remember that the console launched in Japan in late 1998, only a year after Sony had released the Dual Analog & Dual Shock controllers for the PlayStation, so the concept wasn't a "standard" yet; obviously, Sega was looking at what Nintendo did with the N64 controller's single analog stick. Also, what's now considered the "norm" for dual analog control schemes today didn't really become standardized until the early 00s, as many PS2 games from the first few years still didn't map full camera control to the right analog stick, either. Even Halo, which popularized & codified the dual analog scheme for FPS-es on console, wasn't out yet by the time Sierra cancelled the release of Half-Life for Dreamcast, as the Xbox wouldn't launch for another five months. Yes, playing Half-Life with a Dreamcast controller isn't ideal but it's also not game breaking by any means, and aside from the occasional moment early on where I mixed up an action via the d-pad I got used to it rather easily, and holding the L trigger to "shift" over to other d-pad functions eventually became second nature.
That just leaves the actual experience of playing the game, and... well, it's still Half-Life, in the end. Yeah, the frame rate can be inconsistent at points, you essentially need an entire VMU reserved just for playing this leaked build, & if you don't have a Dreamcast keyboard & mouse you have to adjust to the controller's reliance on using the left trigger to "shift" between various functions, but the core gameplay of Valve's debut title still shines through. The slow start on the tram before you suit up & proceed to cause the "resonance cascade", followed by the first three chapters feeling more like a survival horror game at points before the Marines are introduced in Chapter 4, which slowly gives the game more & more action-oriented sequences alongside the more reserved exploration & puzzle/platforming sequences, result in a truly memorable start to the campaign that even today can sometimes feel remarkably fresh. It's certainly not an absolutely perfect campaign, though, as there are some sections that can drag a little (like the last few chapters taking place on Xen, especially Interloper, & that's not even counting the literal freezes & save game crashing I experienced on Dreamcast), can be a bit too annoying at points (I'm looking at you, Blast Pit & Surface Tension), & the final boss isn't exactly a great fight, but on the whole the main Half-Life campaign starring Gordon Freeman is still an excellent time to be had, even on Dreamcast. As for Blue Shift, it's a much shorter campaign at only six chapters (compared to the main game's 17), but it arguably has a little more of a horror-esque vibe to it, since Barney Calhoun finds himself needing to make his way through more dingy, lesser-explored areas of Black Mesa, compared to Gordon making his way through environments that are (mostly) more regularly traversed by the employees; it certainly isn't anything amazing, but it's still a fun (if short) time. Gearbox also made sure to toss in references to the other Half-Life campaigns here & there, like seeing Gordon a couple times at the start & end, hearing some soldiers talking about "Shepard's squad not making it" (referencing the lead of Opposing Force), & even a cameo visual reference to Decay, the PS2-exclusive co-op campaign that wasn't even out when the Dreamcast port was meant to release.
This port also utilizes an automatic lock-on system where a red dot appears on screen & hovers over an enemy if your aiming reticule is nearby, resulting in you shooting at an enemy without needing to be exact, and it honestly helps out a lot when using a controller; it's also active while using a mouse & keyboard, which is admittedly a bizarre feeling. The Dreamcast version also has a wholly unique emphasis on utilizing three sets of keywords to create password phrases that you can input to either instantly go to specific chapters in both scenarios, which is how I was at least able to experience the endgame of Gordon's campaign, as well as unlock cheat modes you can activate, namely slow motion, infinite ammo, & invincibility. This results in fun little phrases like "Soldiers Eat Tacos", "Gordon Teaches Physics", "Otis Loves Dreamcast", "Fear Finds Gordon", or "Gordon/Barney Goes to Xen" each doing different things, and you can certainly just create phrases that don't do anything but just sound silly, for the hell of it. Again, outside of the technical problems regarding the (admittedly rare) crashes & non-standardized save file sizes, the leaked 1672 build of the Dreamcast port of Half-Life is pretty much as close to final as you can get without being official & you can (technically) play through both campaigns from start to finish, though the very end of the main campaign will certainly fight you over that, especially Interloper. While I fully understand the logic behind Sierra's cancellation of the release, I still think that Half-Life could have potentially been a great seller on the Dreamcast, as while the console had been discontinued by mid-2001 there were still people who had the console in North America (~4.6 million, a little over half of all Dreamcasts worldwide) & a major title like this likely would have sold more than decently well, especially as the PS2 version wouldn't be out until later that same year. Sure, it wouldn't have sold anywhere near best-seller Sonic Adventure's 2.5 million, but I think it could have broken a million in mid-2001, or at least gotten close.
As it is, though, all you can play is what is technically still a pre-release build of Half-Life for the Dreamcast, so I can't be totally judgmental over the penultimate chapter being as problematic as it is from a technical perspective. Obviously, it goes without saying that this specific version isn't the way someone should experience Valve's debut title for the first time, but for those who own a Dreamcast & have played through the game on PC enough times already this does make for a very interesting way to give it another go, that's for sure. Considering the limitations of the hardware, especially when a lot of it was essentially self-imposed due to the higher-quality visuals, it's honestly still a rather impressive port for its time, and if that (alleged) gold master somehow manages to see release one day I'd still be willing to give it a go all over again.
Meanwhile, when Half-Life 2 launched on November 6, 2004 it required at minimum a 1.2 GHz Pentium 4 CPU & 256 MB of RAM, though it was recommended to have 2.4 GHz & 512 MB of RAM. In comparison, the original Xbox had a 733 MHz Pentium III CPU & 64 MB of RAM, though modders have since shown that the console can be upgraded to 128 MB of RAM, which is essential to play Sega Chihiro arcade games, which were based on upgraded Xbox architecture; retail Xbox games can also benefit from the added RAM, as well. No matter how you look at it, Microsoft's PC-based first console was in no way technically capable of running Half-Life 2 in its original PC form, as even with modding it still would only have 50% of the necessary RAM in order to run the game, let alone the CPU only being ~60% as powerful as required, at minimum! Therefore, Valve decided to handle the porting duties in-house & the Xbox port would come out on November 15, 2005, a literal week prior to the Xbox 360's launch in North America. In that regard, one could try to argue that Valve should have simply moved over to the 360 instead, but considering the rocky development of Half-Life 2 itself, which included delays & even an early build getting leaked in late 2002, & the fact that it came out a single year after the initial PC release it's likely that the Xbox port was already well into development by the time 360 dev kits were even being made available to third-parties. Besides, Valve would make up for the seeming 360 snubbing with The Orange Box in late 2007, which included Half-Life 2, both Episode One & Two, Portal, & Team Fortress 2 (the last three of which all being brand new releases), though the generally lackluster PS3 version was done by EA UK (later the now-defunct EA Bright Light), seemingly due to Valve co-founder Gabe Newell's absolute distaste for the PS3 itself; he once stated that Sony should have just started over from scratch because the PS3 was a "total disaster".
So, first, there's the technical aspects to go over, because while today Half-Life 2 on the Xbox is easily the "worst" way to experience the game today it's also arguably the most impressive version. Valve had to do a lot in order to get the original version of the Source engine to work on Xbox, as it would get a notable update in 2007 (which is what the PS360 versions are based on), and that included reducing the visual quality of literally everything so that it could all work with just 64 MB of RAM. The end result is the Xbox version looking notably blurrier & softer than any other version, with maybe even the Dreamcast version of Half-Life looking a little sharper when displayed through VGA, and while it only officially supports up to 480p resolution there is proper anamorphic widescreen support, which is nice; Valve also removed various or simplified bits of redundant or extraneous geometry throughout to reduce the overall load. Much like the previous game in this piece there is also more loading in this Xbox version than in any other version of Half-Life 2, and the load times here are actually pretty similar to what I experienced on the Dreamcast with the ODE installed. There is, though, a massive initial load upon boot, nearly two minutes long, that likely helps with further loading, where the Dreamcast version of the original boots up extremely quick. However, as long as you don't boot up another game between sessions the initial load on Xbox becomes dramatically faster, so Valve obviously used the Xbox's built-in hard drive to effectively act as bonus RAM or cache that data can be loaded into, to some extent. When it comes to framerate the Xbox version looks to have a hard cap of 30 fps, but even then it doesn't really hit that max that often, as this port tends to stick to the mid-20s during general traversal, while during the most intense gunfights or heavy usage of the physics engine it'll drop into the 10s; would have been interesting if this port had been made backwards compatible on later Xbox hardware. However, while the Dreamcast game could reach higher framerates, the Xbox game is a more consistent experience, overall.
As for the controls we now have a controller with dual analog sticks, so there's really no surprises to be found here. Left stick for movement (while clicking in crouches), right stick for aiming (while clicking in zooms in), L & R triggers handle both types of firing, the d-pad lets you swap weapons quickly (with weapons organized into four groups for easy access), & the face buttons handle jumping, reloading, interacting, & switching over to sprinting. Finally, the White button is for your flashlight & the Black button is only used when you gain control over squads for a short period near the end. Really, the only aspect here that's notable is sprinting, because it only lasts as long as you have auxiliary power in Gordon's iconic HEV suit, and that same power is used for your flashlight & underwater breathing. Unlike on the Dreamcast these controls are more or less standard & easy to get used to, but there's also no keyboard & mouse control option on the Xbox. The default control scheme still has a couple of quirks that showcase how standardization still wasn't quite there, like B being for reloading & X for sprinting, but overall playing Half-Life 2 on Xbox feels more or less as natural as any FPS would play on a controller nowadays. Much like the Dreamcast port of the original there is a slight soft lock-on to help out with nailing targets, and when driving a vehicle with a mounted gun the lock-on becomes even more blatant.
Unlike the Dreamcast port previously there's literally nothing extra that was added to the Xbox port of Half-Life 2 (not even any online multiplayer via Xbox Live), so all you get here is the main single-player campaign, & while the bonus Lost Coast level had been released on Steam by this point, it's not included for the Xbox port; to be fair, Lost Coast was more of a tech showpiece, so it'd be kind of pointless to include here. Luckily, Half-Life 2's single-player campaign is iconic for good reason, remains excellent 20 years later, and playing it on the original Xbox honestly still holds up rather well, considering the hardware it had to work on. Sure, the frame rate drops can suck, but it's not as though this was necessarily a fast-paced corridor shooter to start with, instead focusing on giving the player more of cinematic feel as you go through one section to the next. Sometimes that involves an intense gunfight with Combine soldiers & their various technological drones of various types, other times you have to deal with alien creatures that have carried over from the first game (and those that didn't make the trip this time around have been replaced by this game's own memorable fare), & on rare occasion you get both together that results in a bit of a three-way conflict. When you're not in battle, though, you're simply making your way through the environment, taking in the excellent art direction & well thought-out level designs that still connect together in a way where you could (in theory) go in reverse, though this time around there are more moments where it's obvious that Valve wanted to funnel players through the campaign. It's admittedly not a perfect campaign, though, but even the sections that I still found more annoying (like Ravenholm, which is excellent in mood but still a personal low point) are still honestly very good & I can certainly see why they might be someone else's favorite section. Still, while the first game was a rather subdued experience for the most part, Half-Life 2 features a decent amount of set pieces throughout, and for some that may help make it the superior campaign; there's definitely no forgetting combating the Striders in the antepenultimate chapter.
Another aspect that had to be carried over, though, was the legendarily groundbreaking physics simulation, with Half-Life 2 being the game that really made Havok an industry standard, as while the middleware had existed since 1998 it was Source's modified VPhysics that really made Havok a name that everyone recognized from then on out. Today the idea of a realistic physics engine sounds kind of rote & expected, but back in 2004 the simple idea that you could destroy the legs of a platform to drop foes standing on it, pick up objects using a magnetic crane & swing them into enemies or lower a bridge with them, or even stack up objects in a realistic fashion to climb on top of was admittedly mind blowing at the time, and while Half-Life 2 certainly wasn't the first game to attempt this kind of granular detail when it came to physics it was arguably the first one to "get it right", i.e. make it feel natural & seamless, especially for an FPS. This all comes to a head with the game's most iconic weapon, the "Gravity Gun", which literally allows the player to pick up & launch (almost) any item anywhere they wanted, and with proper physics that meant that you could pick up heavy objects & crush foes with them, hurl an explosive barrel at a distant group of monsters, or flip over your buggy when you inevitably take a jump the wrong way & wind up upside-down. The Xbox port of Half-Life 2 maintains all of the physics (seemingly) perfectly, resulting in an experience that's more or less wholly unique for the console, especially among its selection of FPS titles, though this can sometimes result in frame rate drops when a lot of physics calculations have to be made simultaneously, like destroying something that has a lot of nearby enemies and/or objects.
Naturally, the visuals took a hit due to Valve needing to reduce the quality of the textures to the point where I'm pretty sure you couldn't even reproduce the visuals by playing the PC original on the lowest settings. Still, even then, this remains one of the best looking games on the original Xbox, and while looking at certain objects in the environment will obviously show the reduction in quality it's really something you wouldn't normally notice during gameplay. Also, as mentioned earlier, the Xbox port is based on the original 2004 build of the game, and to my knowledge Valve doesn't offer current owners of Half-Life 2 on PC the ability to switch between the 2004 & 2007 builds, though I believe there are fan mods for that. Today the only way to play Half-Life 2 in its original form is to either grab the original CD-ROM version for PC, before Valve made the game Steam-only, or to play it on the original Xbox. In that regard, I'd say that gives this first console port something unique, which is cool.
Like I said at the beginning, the first two Half-Life games are titles that really have no place whatsoever on a blog like this, as they are some of the most iconic, beloved, cherished, & celebrated video games ever made. Therefore, if I wanted to cover them in some fashion then I'd have to look for an angle that would dig deep into the well, hence why I decided to go with the Dreamcast & original Xbox ports, as while they are still known in their own regards, and have been covered elsewhere numerous times before, the idea of using them as the primary way to experience both games in succession is definitely a rare gimmick to go with. In that regard, I honestly have to say that while neither console port is obviously the way to go in the year 2024, both honestly still hold up rather well & showcase the talent behind both ports. Sure, in the end I technically wasn't able to "properly" finish Half-Life on the Dreamcast due to end game crashing becoming too common (to the point where my save game was actually corrupted), but that's something to be expected with what's still technically a prototype, and I can only hope that the alleged gold master that Randy Pitchford owns was able to resolve those problems; also, Blue Shift worked just fine (& arguably performed better than the main campaign) on Dreamcast. While concessions had to be made to play the game on a Dreamcast controller, the experience itself is actually really good, I had a blast plying through ~98% of it, and it really is one of those "if only" scenarios that you wish had come to pass, alongside Capcom vs. SNK 2 not being passed over for English release on Dreamcast.
As for Half-Life 2 on the Xbox, even 19 years later it still feels like one of those "miracle ports" & impresses on just how well Valve managed to get the game working on comparatively underpowered hardware. Sure, the visuals are notably downgraded, the load times are more common, & the performance can be highly variable, but just the simple fact that Half-Life 2 is even playable on a stock Xbox & retains the overall quality of the PC original is astounding. For comparison, fans have since managed to port the original Half-Life to the original Xbox, but even that homebrew port actually requires that the console be modded so that it has 128 MB of RAM, instead of the base 64 MB, in order for it to play well; there does also exist a version that works with the base RAM, but even that has caveats. That right there shows you just how miraculous a port this is, as fans needed to upgrade the RAM on the Xbox just to make the original Half-Life play well on it, while years prior Valve was able to make the sequel work on the same hardware using nothing but its originally intended specs.
In the end, both Half-Life 1 & 2 remain awesome, and that stays true even when each of them are played on their most potato-y of officially released (or, at least, almost for one of them) hardware.
Half-Life (Dreamcast) © 2000-2001 Sierra On-Line, Inc. (now Microsoft Corporation) & Valve LLC
Half-Life 2 (Xbox) © 2005 Valve Corporation
Wisely done, Mr. Horvath. I will see you up ahead.
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