I love how it has this lovely sound effect for echoes that no other version has. it also has some effects intact that are gone from Orange box updated version of PC/X360 HL2. Like eye gleam/shine in characters. Most noticeable on Gman during intro.
@@777malkavian Sound is ignored and incredibly mediocre in so many games, even enviromental physics too, seems all focus is on visuals alone and nothing else. Its both lack of effects like this, and sub-par sounds for stuff vehicles or weapons to a point most games just pale in comparison to those 2000s tech pushing games, be it Half Life 2, GTA 4, Crysis or any other akin to them. Racing games also fail to match games like Most Wanted or Grid racedriver games in terms of sound, physics or handling. Its like devs/studios dont even try and just slap mediocre ready systems in place and call it a day. Especially when its stuff on Unreal engine. Its just sad :/
Audio processing is one area where in the PC version HL2 was a bit lackluster compared to it's predecessor. HL1 had Aureal A3D and EAX, while HL2 much improved sample quality it lacked the sofisticated audio technology of the first game and we didn't really get anything similar until very recently in valve games again with the audio positioning stuff in Counter Strike 2.
@@olnnnTBF Microsoft has a big hand in setting back PC Gaming audio for years with the release of Windows Vista circa 2006. Most of the cool audio stuff we had before (like A3D) was only possible thanks to how low level the audio drivers could go in the old days. When Microsoft introduced their Windows Driver Model, most of that stuff got killed off. Especially when Vista reworked the audio stack making audio accelerators basically unfeasible by moving most audio processing to the CPU instead. Microsoft did it because moving off the hardware does enable a lot of good things we take for granted nowadays (routing audio from any input to any output, muting an individual application, not crashing the whole system when the audio driver crashes, etc) but it also meant the end of custom hardware extensions like Aureal A3D. For those who are unfamiliar, A3D was very similar in concept to what Sony's Tempest Engine for the PS5 and was introduced in 1996! Thanks to Microsoft (and Creative tbh) positional audio in gaming was set back over 20 years!
It was genuinely jarring to see gameplay videos of HL2 using the original 2004 build of the Source Engine and playing the game on Steam afterwards, using The Orange Box build.
I know the guy who designed the audio architecture for the Xbox, he is the smartest man I have ever met, by far. Look up the music from the Black Knight 2000 pinball machine, which he programmed in assembly language in the 80's, before he joined microsoft. Just an absolute wizard when it comes to digital audio.
@@larsu-gx579holy shit thats one of my favourite “video game” songs (even if pinball doesnt count as a video game lol) No wonder i love the way this port sounds.
There WERE additional changes aside from the texture reduction. Alot of prop, vehicle, and character geometry was reduced (airboat handle bars, barrels, etc), walls were added or replaced mesh fences to allow for additional loading screens and less to draw onscreen, and while certain audio effects were taken advantage of from the Xbox's audio hardware, certain sounds and voicelines have a reduced bitrate (Gman's speech at the endgame).
One change I noticed was during the mounted-gun sequence they used to show the difference between the stock and modded Xbox. On PC, the wall on the right is a chain-link fence that looks down onto the canal. On Xbox they changed it to, as you said, a solid wall, presumably to save on draw time.
As impressive as this port is, there's a TON more loading screens. They pop up very often, especially when you're a veteran who plays the game pretty fast.
Love that your experience of HL2 was exactly the same as mine. Having to install multiple CDs only to then have to install some crappy program called "Steam" that wouldn't run on my crap internet, then finally getting it to run at like 640*480 with low settings and it still being absolutely the best thing I'd ever played
That was my first experience too, our PC could handle HL2 somehow and it ran pretty well, but Steam was a bad taste in my mouth. It took until 2009 or 2010 for me to finally warm up to it and begin buying games again, that's why I don't have an old account from 2004 or 2005 on Steam despite using it back then.
I played it fine at 1280x1024 at probably mixed mid settings on my 2004 ATI 9600XT that cost less than 100€ so only a MAGNITUDE better than nowadays since that was less than 1/4th of a month of salary back then and nowadays that would probably be like playing at 1440P so let's say a RTX4070 which cost close to a full month of salary here. Also in the same day I got the PC I never even bothered testing the original GPU that came on it, I upgraded right away to the 9600 XT and sold the original ATI 9250 or some crap like that to a friend for like 20€ never used and he finally could play Far Cry 1 on his crap intel Celeron 500€ PC even though all on low settings 😁
I didn't have a PC back then so I played it on the original Xbox. I honestly don't remember any performance issues because I was so immersed in the game, such a masterpiece.
I was one of those who knew, and bought it. I don't remember the lag - I just recall being super impressed by the physics, which even Halo 2 didn't really have, as graphically impressive as that was at the time.
I don't remember the lag in a lot of games from when I was younger... I definitely do remember playing through the original Max Payne in single digit fps on my aunts PC though lol.
@@Shockload i honestly just played it on the original xbox yesterday. if it makes sense the lag is a lot more noticeable watching footage of it than it is while playing it. when you're playing it all you really notice is how amazing it is that it works as well as it does
@@s2601dit's a miracle they run at playable framerates at all. That said, I do agree it probably runs awful lol, there's very low framerates in even Max Payne 1.
I still argue the xbox port of Doom 3 is a bit better than the PC release, if unintentionally, cutting out portions of levels made it feel more evenly placed, and a bit less bloated before the hell levels.
@@guitarzilla555 The fact that they added actual proper coop to the Xbox version is still shocking to me. I don't think anyone even expected that. I remember playing DOOM 3 on PC with my brother with a coop mod in 2005 over LAN, fun as hell but buggy at the time.
One of my favorite aspects are certainly the audio, it sounds so good. And it being older and frozen in time, many exploits still exist. You can get out of bounds very easily.
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Wow, those combine sounds in the hallway at 7:04 could be straight from hl:alyx. Incredible audio processing for the time. Wish there was more focus on audio in today's game development
I actually initially thought game has some weird bug or something when I first tried OG Xbox version. I was so accustomed to PC audio. Took me awhile to realize it's some form of EAX thing on it. In all honesty I did dislike it a bit. To me it added few notches too much of that echo effect.
@@jothain Yeah the echo sounds cool, but as you said, it's a tad too much. Same goes for the train station you initially arrive in. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory also used EAX on PC and it sounds about the same, to the point i just turn it off. Would be cool to be able to control the amount of reverberation, instead of just having 2 levels, "off" and "the sun is screaming".
@@rewire6468 True. I don't remember the card I got and games, but I've dropped EAX style effects off completely in some titles back in the days. I might remember fully wrong, but one could've been Thief, maybe? Anyway title had some let's say quite large cathedral/stone church style structures, but it just felt like effects where so overdone. Like instead of that building player would've been in gigantic thin steel drum.
I had no clue it existed until i found a copy at a thrift store a few years ago. I had to boot it up and didn’t play much because i thought it looked so bad but now i really want to give it a full playthrough. That audio difference is insanely cool.
That audio is amazing. I can see how a 2005 gamer would exit that train and be immediately immersed and enchanted into the world. just watching it reminds me of the first time playing Bioshock.
Speaking of Bioshock, don't you think there was a missed opportunity to make a deep RPG/shooting game rather than just an FPS where you shoot stuff? That elaborate world and lore was wasted on an action game.
@@BeaugosseRicheThat's exactly what Bioshock was during it's earlier stages of development, before it got butchered trying to "make it appealing to a wider audience".
HL2 blew my mind back in the day. It came with my new GPU (css available straight away and HL2 when it came out) and ran nicely at 1024x768 on high. The animations and facial expressions were amazing!
@@excess.subiefl0w I had a Yamaha TSS-@0Yamaha TSS-10. (I don't have it anymore) At the time everyone was recommending that. Xbox's Dolby Digital 5.1 was an unsung hero most people didn't realize Xbox had a great sound system capable of 5.1 gaming. PS2 at the time could do 5.1 only during the FMV cut scenes.
I remember that back in 2004 when I got my PC copy of HL2 it wasn’t able to run well on my older system at the time. I couldn’t afford to upgrade it, so the XBox port was the only way I could play it and I remember renting it at Blockbuster for a week straight. I honestly didn’t notice any of those issues you shown back then, it was an amazing experience.
This is how I had to play HL2 for the first time. I had a PC but it would’ve melted down if I tried playing HL2. Even as a kid I always wondered how the hell they put it on an XBox. Pretty impressive
Never would have expected the audio improvements only on the Xbox! Reminds me of how the textures for GTA3 on Xbox get ported over to other platforms as the Xbox ended up getting the most detailed textures, even better than the PC build.
Finally someone has talked about the audio improvements in the Xbox version! Whenever I see people talking about the Xbox version, most people overlook the audio differences!
This port is super fascinating, especially with the modding community cracking this game open and getting other source engine assets to work like Garry’s Mod maps. It feels like we’ve only scratched the surface. Great video MVG!
I did know about and bought this port because I saw it on the rental shelf when I worked at Hollywood Video back in the day. I was blown away by it. Seeing that the audio is still the best in this version is mind blowing. I wonder why they haven't been able to replicate it with today's current hardware and sound systems.
I've known of the Xbox port of HL2 for a while, but I've never heard the audio processing for it. The Breen speech sounds so much more realistic. I'm kind of blown away. It's like the original reverb in HL1, but without that tinny ring at the end
the xbox audio is stunning. dr. breen talking, the way the sound reflects and reverberates around the room. the hallway acoustics too omg. would be nice to have an option to use/mod the xbox audio with the pc version!
I remember those moments where in the xbox version, you'll see the devs placed a brick wall instead of a mesh fence like in the pc version. A good way to reduce models to pop in the game. Example of this is the following part of this video 8:27. The wall on the right would be a mesh fence on the pc version Man, I miss the older gen consoles. For me, gaming peaked when it reached xbox 360 / ps3 era.
Oh yeah. It was on a steady uphill climb for a long time. Guitar Hero 3 making Guitar Hero **massive*, CoD rapidly growing in popularity, GTA 4... What a time it was!
I think if we were to compare console gaming to comic books then the 6th generation (PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast) was the Golden Age while the 7th generation (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii) was the Silver Age. The 6th generation was a time of experimentation and innovation as consoles were finally capable of good 3D graphics and good physics but were still quite limited in what they could do so developers had to get creative to deal with those limitations. The 7th generation felt more like the devs understood what worked and didn't work from the previous generation so they simply refined and expanded upon what worked during the 6th generation for the 7th generation (apart from Nintendo who basically perfected motion control gaming during this time with the Wii and they had the DS as well so they were definitely experimenting and innovating during this time). Meanwhile PC gamers on one hand had Crysis, F.E.A.R, Half-Life 2 etc while on the other they suffered from bad PC ports of console games such as GTA IV, Saints Row 2 etc.
I mean, games look better, and do have some nice modern mechanics. That said, I'd say the 360 era was a balance between technology getting pretty good, and before things like battlepasses/microtransactions took the soul out of game devs. I don't think modern devs are bad, I just think the modern industry doesn't let them show their true potential, or have passion projects.
Something worth noting is that this port also has about twice the number of loading screens in comparison to the other ports. And to give some perspective on how little RAM the OG Xbox has, it doesn't even have enough RAM for the minimum specifications to run the first Half-Life game. There's a homebrew mod of HL1 for the original Xbox and without modding the console to add more RAM, no player or NPC textures are visible.
Well, to be fair the first Half Life runs on PS2 and Dreamcast which had way less ram. RAM isnt the same when talking about consoles since games tend to be better optimized than on PC.
I bought a modded OG Xbox this year, largely thanks to you. I played Half-Life 2 on it not knowing that there was a port and I remember being very impressed. It's cool how you made a video about this
@@EmeraldMage7188 Bought it unmodded from a local retro game shop, then sent it in to Pence PC to mod it. I recommend them if you're in the US, but it never hurts to shop around
Max Payne and Max Payne 2 are amazing. Max Payne is, for me, the best action game of its time, at least in terms of games that were available for PC. Max Payne was a real trend setter at the time, and extremely well made (the PC version in particular is really impressive, and ran well on a wide range of hardware), and the developer of Max Payne (Remedy) is still a highly regarded and influential game developer to this day.
The version was my first play through of HL2, and the sound - in 5.1 - was the most impressive experience I had heard, and the thing that always stuck out to me. Even though I eventually got a PC that could run it and played on the same surround speakers, I was always aware the sound just didn’t stack up and left me disappointed, but I never knew why until now. Flying through the canals in the air boat while distant shots were fired, and explosions happened around you; and being in warehouse rooms when explosions went off releasing swinging beams knocking barrels and stuff all over, was just the pinnacle of cinematic surround sound intensity.
Considering minimal requirements on PC, it was a masterpiece how well the game ran, and it even looked better than what you could achieve on low settings on PC, all of that with just 512MB shared memory of the xbox.
Seconding this request. It's a 2016 game that couldn't be maxed out on even new midrange cards at the time, so for it to run well on a 2005 Xbox 360 is nothing short of impressive. Even Steam declares its minimum requirements to need 6GB of RAM, and the Xbox 360 had 512mb.
I knew about it! My friends rented it, and found the performance to be disappointing, but they did play through it. I remember thinking that it was impressive that they did it with 64 MB of RAM. I do agree that if it had been launched in 2004 along with the PC version, it would have probably been received much better. I picked up a copy for my Xbox a couple of years ago, and I am very glad that I have it.
The icing on the cake is that most CRT's at the time would've added greatly to this port's visual experience in so many ways relative to most gaming setups today.
The year is 2005 or 2006, was 9 or 10 at this point. This was the first time had ever seen HALF-LIFE 2 in this capacity on a Crt or equivalent screen it was totally acceptable for this period watching someone else play it was very fun to witness
@@lfesky It was my first way of playing it as well, and i noticed the drops immediately, has nothing to do with not playing it on PC, nor the passage of time, framerate drops always sucked, and there's always been people like you damage controlling it which results in devs never fixing it. So thanks for that.
I had a friend who let me borrow their Xbox about a decade ago and this was the first time I played and finished Half Life 2. I was very impressed despite the low, chunky framerates. I've heard of half life before but I've never known much about it until then. It helped that I had a massive CRT that supported S-video and it looked very clean and clear. Later on another friend sold me his Xbox 360 and I ended up getting the Orange Box digitally (so, no orange box... it was a metaphorical box I guess lol) I don't have that specific 360 now but I did get another eventually, the Shiny super slim model and I was able to redownload everything from my account and I still have that console to this day.
I’m really glad you covered this. I’ve always thought this was an awesome port, it doesn’t really run the best but the fact it exists at all considering the original Xbox’s hardware is incredibly cool. And I never noticed the difference in audio but I think that despite the performance and visual sacrifices the audio alone enhances the atmosphere so much that it’s worth a play for that alone
Why even mention that it doesn’t run great? That’s already implied lol. The whole point of this video is to praise the fact that they were able to get this running on that hardware and not have it look like a slideshow 😂.
@@chiarosuburekeni9325 uh, because it does run like crap on original hardware, my point was that i think the enhanced audio makes it worth playing in my opinion despite the performance issues. i didn't know i was going to have people doing in depth analysis on my comment that was mainly regarding the impressiveness of the port overall and the fact that the enhanced audio is really cool 😂i was merely sharing my own opinion on the game with the knowledge of what mvg said in the video
Along with Doom 3, this is one of the games that REALLY made me want to buy an Xbox. Granted, around that time, my uncle gave us his used laptop and it was fairly good for it's time, it had a 800p widescreen panel and it had a decent Pentium 4 CPU, it definitely could handle HL2 in dx7 mode at much better framerates than the Xbox version could handle and I even played plenty of Counter-Strike: Source on that thing for many years until I saved up for a better PC.
This port is how 13 year old me had his first Half Life series experience. My jaw was on the floor the entire game! I liked it so much that when I got my first PC capable of playing games the first game I got was Half Life 2, along with the first Half Life.
@@rustymixer2886 in reality, episode 3 was cancelled due to limitations of the episodic format, developers were adding a lot into "episodes" which just became new games then hl3 was delayed until source 2 was finished
I wanted a DreamX so bad back in the day. I saw that the Xbox CPU interposer has now been released under GPL that may open up the possibility of upgrading Xbox's again. It seemed to be like magic, a drop in boost to games and we can see it so well here with Half Life 2. Halo got a big boost on those consoles too.
I actually ended up playing this version of Half Life 2 first before playing it on the PC. I can't remember exactly how that happened, but I think it was a result of not being super familiar with the Half Life series at the time of its release and seeing it for rent in my local Blockbuster. I didn't realize how vivid HL2's visuals were at the time, so I didn't think much of the herculean task of porting HL2 to the original Xbox. I think I got all the way through the game up to Ravenholm level before giving it a try on the PC. I don't remember the frame rate being unplayable for the most part but it eventually became apparent to me that the developers had to make some sacrifices to get it working on the original Xbox. Funny enough, I also played Half Life 1 on the PS2 before playing it on the PC. Funny how it worked out that way. Awesome video!
Dude I was literally thinking to myself last night if you had made a video on the Half Life 2 Xbox Port, only to come to RUclips and discover you've just made one. Incredible.
I remember that the PC version of the original Half Life utilized EAX, and it sounded AWESOME. Team it up with a Creative 4.1 surround speakers... BLISS! I'm pretty sure EAX was part of HL2, but just checked and it's now not on the options screen? "Might be worth a google" 🙂
I remember the same, I've only played the "echoey" EAX version on PC. As EAX is mostly gone, we began loosing these features. It will happen the same with Raytracing "RTX" HW and drivers as more and more devs begin using the frameworks and stop "wasting time" doing the regular "hacky, screen-space" implementations, as soon as the HW changes to a new trend, we will only have the "no light/no fallbacks" implementations.
I played this version when it was new and loved it both for the game's design and for how it pushed the hardware. It's one of those games that comes late in a console generation that makes it easier to wait for the next generation.
For whatever reason, this is the only platform I have ever finished HL2 on. I remember absolutely loving it, and I still consider HL2 one of my favourite games of all time.
I wonder if you're planning on doing a video on the Playstation 2 port of the Original Half-Life/ The cancelled Dreamcast port. I think that port is also very impressive for the time, especially the Dreamcast version, such a shame it was cancelled. It would be a great video for your Impossible Port series.
@@ColonelNegativeда , братишка, знаю . Я пробовал его . Долгие загрузки я ещё могу терпеть ,но частота кадров уж больно скачет. Интересные эти порты! Прям видно ,что разработчики задницы себе рвали чтобы игру впихнуть на ту или иную консоль
I agree, they upgraded the visuals like models, map geometry, water wave and light casting on the water. they even fixed some geometry mistakes like lamp floating on the ceeling and etc. Its a very well made port.
The first time I ever played Half-Life 2 was on Xbox in the form of a demo disk from the Official Xbox Magazine. The demo was a segment of the level "We Don't Go to Ravenholm". I will never forget that first moment walking into that environment with the music swelling, the severed legs dangling from the tree, and peeking inside the first room to see the sawblade stuck into the wall, suspending the torso of a dead zombie above it's lower half on the floor.
The quote from Jay Stelly at 4:08 is so funny because he was lying out his ass. The leaked game and engine code from 2003 had zero references to the Xbox whatsoever. The generally believed claim is that the only reason Half-Life 2 released for the Xbox is because there was allegedly a deal that Valve struck with Microsoft back during Half-Life 1's development where they had to develop a game for the Xbox and waited until the last possible second to do it.
not everything has to be synced on perforce at all times. they could have worked on it without checking in changes. don't call out people on lies with so little proof
6:28 I actually didn't know about the audio tech on Xbox. By comparison on the PC version it sounds like I'm playing Dr. Breen's speech on my Sony Walkman™
0:35 yeah I remember that as well, I remember my friend coming across a offline installer that allowed you to bypass steam to install you game off the discs, The odd thing about Doom3 is the performance can be greatly improved if you just increase the cache settings in the Doom3.cfg file on older original hardware from the time, you can go from low quality to high by increasing the settings from the default 40 to 256 or higher
I saw a copy in a used disc store several years ago (Deja Vu Discs), and being surprised that it existed. I will say looking back on it, it is impressive given that they managed to squeeze it onto both the original and the 360. Ironically I bought the PS2 port of Half-Life 1 from the same store, and that was my first experience with the game.
This was the way I first played Half-Life 2 back in 2009. I had a Mickey Mouse CRT (the one with speakers for ears) with an original Xbox hooked up via composite and a Duke controller. I remember playing it through 3 times absolutely loving it for its storytelling. The depth of the story and how well it executes it really is why it's my favorite game of all time to this day. I actually hadn't played Half-Life so I had to gather parts of the story from context clues and Combine OverWiki articles. It was amazing and coming from playing primarily on GameCube, PS2 and late 90s PC games it was the best looking game I'd ever played. Oh how times change. I recently booted up the Xbox version on my 360 and it was so jarring how different it felt having played on PC with maxed settings for nearly a decade. A truly impossible port, we're lucky we got it running as well as we do. I bet the community given enough time, effort, and tweaking could get it running at 60 fps but they'd need to decompile it first and optimize it further. Now I'm just eagerly awaiting Half-Life 2 RTX.
back then I didn't know they were releasing the 360 and I bought the OG in 2005. I only had the ps1 and a windows 95 pc so the jump was amazing. I played HL2, DOOM 3, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. It felt like the future.
@@fawkesnake Those last two in particular got pretty stunning re-releases on the Xbox 360 as well. The water effects in _Far_ _Cry_ rivaled those of the PC. _Riddick_ had some amazing lighting details.
I just got an OG Xbox with first time recently and I didn’t grow up with one. When I was looking for games, I did see half-life two and I was very surprised knowing of the hardware specs of the Xbox. Thank you for doing this retrospective and bringing light to this port.
Great Video! I got myself HL² for my OG XBox a while ago and i do enjoy it quite a bit. Question though: At 7:45 you say "no real reductions aside from Textures", but didn't they also cut back on geometry quite a bit here and there, walling off some areas that have background geometry to save on polygons etc?
Great video, the Xbox version of HL2 was the first one I ever played and it was mind blowing at the time. I went back a few years ago when I was digging my old systems out and I never noticed how laggy it was back in the day I had to turn it off after a few minutes of playing. I was so grateful for this I must not have minded back then.
Wow, i had no idea this game was on the OG Xbox; my first introduction was actually through The Orange Box with all the episodes on the Xbox 360 (with TF2 and Portal of course) I love coming across these kinds of videos and learning interesting things about these older ports
I never knew the game existed on XBox, it's quite a feat. I'm always amazed by the performance you can squeeze out of limited hardware with some dedication and a lot of ingenuity (an technical know-how). I was quite impressed by the sound spatialization.
its strange how environmental audio has regressed on PC's over time. I seem to recall a lot of patent/licensing issues possibly being a factor which would be a shame if that is the reason.
Part of it was a new driver model introduced in Windows Vista that made it harder to use hardware acceleration for audio (and a long-standing lack of support for it in Windows in general certainly didn't help). Creative Labs, being one of the last hold-outs for actually including hardware acceleration for audio, did make a program called ALchemy (the capitalisation being a reference to OpenAL, which they own) which could make EAX work on Vista and 7, though. Alas, motherboard manufacturers moved to integrated audio and only included barebones AC97 and Intel HD Audio chipsets, which were only designed for simple playback and nothing else.
This version was actually my first ever exposure to Half-Life 2. A childhood friend of mine had it and I watched him play through the part where you assault the beach with the ant-lions
In 2005 everybody who had xbox was happy to see HL2 on their platform, even if it was so choppy. In 2023 every body is upset that they can play Batman on Switch because of choppyness.
As someone who lived that era, framerate was something it was taked into account and could be criticized (i mean, if even Doom on SNES in the 90s was criticized, why HL2 on Xbox not).
I played this version first way back in 05, and the sound coming out of my Logitech 5.1 surround stereo was mind blowing, when all I'd heard previously was the PC version on cheap headphones.
I got into the orange box collection for xbox 360 a few year late when I borrowed it from a friend when I brought up portal and he asked if I ever played half-life. I had no idea about it, but immediately fell in love with the whole series after that. Had no idea this was available for the og xbox, and it's definitely impressive what they were able to pull off with the old tech, even if the frame rates neared unplayable at times.
I didn't have a PC that could even come close to playing Half Life 2 until about 6 or 7 years ago, so I was absolutely thrilled by the OG Xbox port. I played it through at least a half dozen times. Really thrilled to learn more about how they managed to squeeze it all into the big X.
Half life 2 on the og Xbox is how I discovered Gordon freeman as a kid long before I had my own pc. I wish I could go back and play it for the first time one more time.
Me too! I never actually got to beat the entire HL2 campaign back on the 360, but when I got the Valve collection on steam for like $5, I completed all of HL2 and the episodes in a day and felt really satisfied.
same here, i never really understood the game because i was like eight years old, so i got lost constantly and couldn't progress very far but i do remember playing specifically the episodes and having fun with the gravity gun and just exploring the maps
I love this port. My family didn't have a PC powerful enough to run Half-Life 2, so the Xbox port was the first way I ever played the game, and it still holds a special place in my heart.
The xbox version was my first time playing Half Life 2, on a tiny little CRT in France, wired directly into the socket... it got fried after being bumped. I also had Half Life, Blue Shift, Opposing Forces, and TeamFortress Classic via the anthology. Weirdly, I don't remember the framedrops being so bad, also would be rather surprised if the game is aware of anything other than the CPU speed increase, games tend to need patching to work properly with xbox unified memory expansions.
The XBox was how I first got to play Half Life 2 as a kid. I tried playing the PC version but couldn't since I didn't have internet and it was impossible to use Steam. Was pretty pissed off when that happened but I'm glad I was at least able to enjoy it on the PC and then again on The Orange Box for the 360.
Beautiful deep dive into how awesome this release was! I was a PS2 guy during the Xbox's heyday and never really had any experience with it. Now if I had unlimited room for my retro hobbies I'd definitely own one :)
Technically speaking it's possible to further upgrade the double-RAM double-speed XBOX CPU. It turns out that there are Tualatin Celeron chips clocked at 1.5GHz, while Tualatin Pentium 3 chips only went to 1.4GHz. But Celerons do have less L2 cache and some other stuff that I don't know how an XBOX would handle. However, Tualatin Celerons have a very good use case outside the XBOX. If you have a late-run version of the PC-9821Ra433 (made from 2000 to 2003, you want the 2003 one here due to voltage stuff), (a machine that shipped with a 433MHz Celeron), you can put a 1.5GHz Celeron in it, and since some PC games require 1.5GHz and don't work on 1.4GHz, a Tualatin Celeron at 1.5GHz improves game compatibility of very late PC98s. Mind you, the PC98 bus has significant bottlenecks even in late-model Ra43s, but since many games ask the CPU what speed it is, a 1.5GHz Tualatin Celeron will make some games boot that don't boot on a Tualatin Pentium 3 in all its 1.4GHz glory at maximum. So if you're a PC98 enthusiast and have the tail end of the final PC98 model, you can boot more games and apps on it than you would be able to on a Pentium 3 at maximum. Oh also, while PC98 only went to Windows 2000, the ReactOS developers are making a PC98 port for Pentium 1 and higher, as well as an XBOX port. ReactOS is basically XP but clean-room reverse-engineered.
Actually incredible... the sound difference really blew me away. I really need to learn more about how the Xbox handles sound. Were there other games that have stand-out sound quality like this on the Xbox or was this just a standard unknown to me? Amazing video, I learn so much from your videos, thank you!
it feels weird that sound quality in general has gone down in PC games since sound cards died, you'd think they could just have a CPU core dedicated to replicating those awesome effects.
Im one of those people that got its first introduction with the half life series with this particular port, and even though it may not show today, for someone with no pc experience at the time, this port was absolutely amazing, it truly felt like the future of video games and words cannot describe how i look back at the first time i booted up this game on my good ol xbox...
Thanks for covering this. These console versions are how I first played the Half Life games. I still have my discs for HL1 on PS2, HL2 on Xbox and the Orange Box on 360.
Thanks for making a video on this. Besides playing a bit on the orange box on 360, I was unfamiliar with the Half Life series until the recent 25th half life anniversary has got me playing both 1 and 2. This is very informative.
Awesome video. I first played HL2 at a friend’s house on his XBOX I think. I got the original Xbox for my 10th birthday after being blown away by Halo, GTA, and many others. I loved it. I didn’t own a copy of HL2 until orange box on 360. Went back to finish it in lockdown . All those years later I still thought it was incredible. Definitely ahead of its time. I’d love to play the first one. Just watched a documentary on that game. Clearly a special time in gaming. 👏👍
This was the first time I ever played it and I'm annoyed so many people now try and say it was an awful port, it played well enough that I could enjoy the game without an internet connection in 2005.
I love how it has this lovely sound effect for echoes that no other version has. it also has some effects intact that are gone from Orange box updated version of PC/X360 HL2. Like eye gleam/shine in characters. Most noticeable on Gman during intro.
More games should simulate sound physics.
@@777malkavian Sound is ignored and incredibly mediocre in so many games, even enviromental physics too, seems all focus is on visuals alone and nothing else. Its both lack of effects like this, and sub-par sounds for stuff vehicles or weapons to a point most games just pale in comparison to those 2000s tech pushing games, be it Half Life 2, GTA 4, Crysis or any other akin to them. Racing games also fail to match games like Most Wanted or Grid racedriver games in terms of sound, physics or handling. Its like devs/studios dont even try and just slap mediocre ready systems in place and call it a day. Especially when its stuff on Unreal engine. Its just sad :/
Audio processing is one area where in the PC version HL2 was a bit lackluster compared to it's predecessor. HL1 had Aureal A3D and EAX, while HL2 much improved sample quality it lacked the sofisticated audio technology of the first game and we didn't really get anything similar until very recently in valve games again with the audio positioning stuff in Counter Strike 2.
@@olnnnTBF Microsoft has a big hand in setting back PC Gaming audio for years with the release of Windows Vista circa 2006. Most of the cool audio stuff we had before (like A3D) was only possible thanks to how low level the audio drivers could go in the old days. When Microsoft introduced their Windows Driver Model, most of that stuff got killed off. Especially when Vista reworked the audio stack making audio accelerators basically unfeasible by moving most audio processing to the CPU instead.
Microsoft did it because moving off the hardware does enable a lot of good things we take for granted nowadays (routing audio from any input to any output, muting an individual application, not crashing the whole system when the audio driver crashes, etc) but it also meant the end of custom hardware extensions like Aureal A3D.
For those who are unfamiliar, A3D was very similar in concept to what Sony's Tempest Engine for the PS5 and was introduced in 1996! Thanks to Microsoft (and Creative tbh) positional audio in gaming was set back over 20 years!
It was genuinely jarring to see gameplay videos of HL2 using the original 2004 build of the Source Engine and playing the game on Steam afterwards, using The Orange Box build.
The audio difference is actually insane and caught me by surprise seeing them played back to back
I know the guy who designed the audio architecture for the Xbox, he is the smartest man I have ever met, by far. Look up the music from the Black Knight 2000 pinball machine, which he programmed in assembly language in the 80's, before he joined microsoft. Just an absolute wizard when it comes to digital audio.
Would they have used EAX like in HL1 it would have had better effects. Today everything is done in software.
@@larsu-gx579His name Dan Forden?
@@gowanlore2434 No, Brian Schmidt
@@larsu-gx579holy shit thats one of my favourite “video game” songs (even if pinball doesnt count as a video game lol)
No wonder i love the way this port sounds.
There WERE additional changes aside from the texture reduction. Alot of prop, vehicle, and character geometry was reduced (airboat handle bars, barrels, etc), walls were added or replaced mesh fences to allow for additional loading screens and less to draw onscreen, and while certain audio effects were taken advantage of from the Xbox's audio hardware, certain sounds and voicelines have a reduced bitrate (Gman's speech at the endgame).
One change I noticed was during the mounted-gun sequence they used to show the difference between the stock and modded Xbox. On PC, the wall on the right is a chain-link fence that looks down onto the canal. On Xbox they changed it to, as you said, a solid wall, presumably to save on draw time.
Also the binoculars to spy on Gman in highway 17 was completely removed
@@almroache intendi per xbox moddata?
As impressive as this port is, there's a TON more loading screens. They pop up very often, especially when you're a veteran who plays the game pretty fast.
Love that your experience of HL2 was exactly the same as mine. Having to install multiple CDs only to then have to install some crappy program called "Steam" that wouldn't run on my crap internet, then finally getting it to run at like 640*480 with low settings and it still being absolutely the best thing I'd ever played
That was my first experience too, our PC could handle HL2 somehow and it ran pretty well, but Steam was a bad taste in my mouth. It took until 2009 or 2010 for me to finally warm up to it and begin buying games again, that's why I don't have an old account from 2004 or 2005 on Steam despite using it back then.
Im so grateful i got to experience that era of gaming.
I played it fine at 1280x1024 at probably mixed mid settings on my 2004 ATI 9600XT that cost less than 100€ so only a MAGNITUDE better than nowadays since that was less than 1/4th of a month of salary back then and nowadays that would probably be like playing at 1440P so let's say a RTX4070 which cost close to a full month of salary here.
Also in the same day I got the PC I never even bothered testing the original GPU that came on it, I upgraded right away to the 9600 XT and sold the original ATI 9250 or some crap like that to a friend for like 20€ never used and he finally could play Far Cry 1 on his crap intel Celeron 500€ PC even though all on low settings 😁
i wish i can share this experience, but unless i pirate it i will probably never play Half Life 1/2
@@ahmed4363dude the whole game is like, 5 dollar during a sale
I didn't have a PC back then so I played it on the original Xbox. I honestly don't remember any performance issues because I was so immersed in the game, such a masterpiece.
Different times. I Remember 5fps in Golden Eye.
Exactly.
Source engine somehow make me sick.
@@strategicfooyouagencyfirst8197 must be a source of sickness 4 u.
@@shadowman_390How did you overclock your N64? Mine ran at 3 fps, max.
I was one of those who knew, and bought it.
I don't remember the lag - I just recall being super impressed by the physics, which even Halo 2 didn't really have, as graphically impressive as that was at the time.
Same! I don't remember the low fps and lag like showcased.. wierd but I was young
I don't remember the lag in a lot of games from when I was younger... I definitely do remember playing through the original Max Payne in single digit fps on my aunts PC though lol.
We all don't remember tha lag when we were younger, afterall nostalgia is one hell of a drug, go boot the game right now and see the difference
@@Shockload i honestly just played it on the original xbox yesterday. if it makes sense the lag is a lot more noticeable watching footage of it than it is while playing it. when you're playing it all you really notice is how amazing it is that it works as well as it does
Not only did I know this game existed, the game was also backwards compatible on the 360 very early on, which is even more incredible in my opinion.
Now I have to look up if it's playable on the One/Series BC.
@Coolman13355 well no. Only orange box
@@IFibreOpticI That would be the more important one.
Yeah but unfortunately, moustly games on X360 backwards compatible from OG, runs the same, or sometimes even worse then on original hardware
@@s2601dit's a miracle they run at playable framerates at all. That said, I do agree it probably runs awful lol, there's very low framerates in even Max Payne 1.
wish we could get a mod too replicate those audio effects. Damn i love that
Worst case scenario at least for Breen, you could just take the audio and bake the echo into it.
same man
now it exists
@@lunsine proof?
@@gumballegal its on the steam workshop i saw it as one of the top mods
Xbox ports like this and Doom 3 are always so interesting, seeing what compromises they came up with to get it running!
2004-2005 was an exciting period for console gaming.
I still argue the xbox port of Doom 3 is a bit better than the PC release, if unintentionally, cutting out portions of levels made it feel more evenly placed, and a bit less bloated before the hell levels.
Doom 3 looked straight up amazing for an Xbox game, plus it had co-op over LAN. My friend and I had a blast tearing through the campaign.
@@guitarzilla555 The fact that they added actual proper coop to the Xbox version is still shocking to me. I don't think anyone even expected that. I remember playing DOOM 3 on PC with my brother with a coop mod in 2005 over LAN, fun as hell but buggy at the time.
The Xbox ports are still the only versions of these games I've played.
One of my favorite aspects are certainly the audio, it sounds so good. And it being older and frozen in time, many exploits still exist. You can get out of bounds very easily.
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Wow, those combine sounds in the hallway at 7:04 could be straight from hl:alyx. Incredible audio processing for the time. Wish there was more focus on audio in today's game development
I actually initially thought game has some weird bug or something when I first tried OG Xbox version. I was so accustomed to PC audio. Took me awhile to realize it's some form of EAX thing on it. In all honesty I did dislike it a bit. To me it added few notches too much of that echo effect.
@@jothain Yeah the echo sounds cool, but as you said, it's a tad too much. Same goes for the train station you initially arrive in. Splinter Cell Chaos Theory also used EAX on PC and it sounds about the same, to the point i just turn it off. Would be cool to be able to control the amount of reverberation, instead of just having 2 levels, "off" and "the sun is screaming".
@@rewire6468 True. I don't remember the card I got and games, but I've dropped EAX style effects off completely in some titles back in the days. I might remember fully wrong, but one could've been Thief, maybe? Anyway title had some let's say quite large cathedral/stone church style structures, but it just felt like effects where so overdone. Like instead of that building player would've been in gigantic thin steel drum.
Hellblade has some fantastic audio, especially if you play with headphones. I imagine the sequel will be even better.
@@jothaindsoal emutales eax at software level, check it out
I had no clue it existed until i found a copy at a thrift store a few years ago. I had to boot it up and didn’t play much because i thought it looked so bad but now i really want to give it a full playthrough. That audio difference is insanely cool.
That audio is amazing. I can see how a 2005 gamer would exit that train and be immediately immersed and enchanted into the world. just watching it reminds me of the first time playing Bioshock.
Speaking of Bioshock, don't you think there was a missed opportunity to make a deep RPG/shooting game rather than just an FPS where you shoot stuff? That elaborate world and lore was wasted on an action game.
@@BeaugosseRicheThat's exactly what Bioshock was during it's earlier stages of development, before it got butchered trying to "make it appealing to a wider audience".
HL2 blew my mind back in the day. It came with my new GPU (css available straight away and HL2 when it came out) and ran nicely at 1024x768 on high.
The animations and facial expressions were amazing!
I remembered playing it on my 5.1 home audio system the experience was truly out of this world.
Did you have that xbox 5.1 system? Cant remember who manufactured them
@@excess.subiefl0w I had a Yamaha TSS-@0Yamaha TSS-10. (I don't have it anymore) At the time everyone was recommending that. Xbox's Dolby Digital 5.1 was an unsung hero most people didn't realize Xbox had a great sound system capable of 5.1 gaming. PS2 at the time could do 5.1 only during the FMV cut scenes.
@@excess.subiefl0w why would anyone buy the xbox 5.1 lol tons of brands out there with real experience in sound
@@Marco-717 back in 2001 it was pretty good value iirc.
I remember that back in 2004 when I got my PC copy of HL2 it wasn’t able to run well on my older system at the time. I couldn’t afford to upgrade it, so the XBox port was the only way I could play it and I remember renting it at Blockbuster for a week straight. I honestly didn’t notice any of those issues you shown back then, it was an amazing experience.
This is how I had to play HL2 for the first time. I had a PC but it would’ve melted down if I tried playing HL2. Even as a kid I always wondered how the hell they put it on an XBox. Pretty impressive
Never would have expected the audio improvements only on the Xbox! Reminds me of how the textures for GTA3 on Xbox get ported over to other platforms as the Xbox ended up getting the most detailed textures, even better than the PC build.
Finally someone has talked about the audio improvements in the Xbox version! Whenever I see people talking about the Xbox version, most people overlook the audio differences!
This was how I experienced Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 and was very happy with both back then.
Same with me . This and Doom 3 made me so happy I jumped over from PlayStation lol
This port is super fascinating, especially with the modding community cracking this game open and getting other source engine assets to work like Garry’s Mod maps. It feels like we’ve only scratched the surface. Great video MVG!
I did know about and bought this port because I saw it on the rental shelf when I worked at Hollywood Video back in the day. I was blown away by it. Seeing that the audio is still the best in this version is mind blowing. I wonder why they haven't been able to replicate it with today's current hardware and sound systems.
It's probably not that they can't. They just don't have the need or want to.
I've known of the Xbox port of HL2 for a while, but I've never heard the audio processing for it. The Breen speech sounds so much more realistic. I'm kind of blown away. It's like the original reverb in HL1, but without that tinny ring at the end
the xbox audio is stunning. dr. breen talking, the way the sound reflects and reverberates around the room. the hallway acoustics too omg. would be nice to have an option to use/mod the xbox audio with the pc version!
I remember those moments where in the xbox version, you'll see the devs placed a brick wall instead of a mesh fence like in the pc version. A good way to reduce models to pop in the game. Example of this is the following part of this video 8:27. The wall on the right would be a mesh fence on the pc version
Man, I miss the older gen consoles. For me, gaming peaked when it reached xbox 360 / ps3 era.
Oh yeah. It was on a steady uphill climb for a long time. Guitar Hero 3 making Guitar Hero **massive*, CoD rapidly growing in popularity, GTA 4... What a time it was!
also gta v was techincally a ps3/360 era game@@holyjewel
@@obscene-c1 It was! I rented it to play the campaign on my PS3; I finished it, then never played the game again until its PC release.
I think if we were to compare console gaming to comic books then the 6th generation (PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast) was the Golden Age while the 7th generation (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii) was the Silver Age. The 6th generation was a time of experimentation and innovation as consoles were finally capable of good 3D graphics and good physics but were still quite limited in what they could do so developers had to get creative to deal with those limitations. The 7th generation felt more like the devs understood what worked and didn't work from the previous generation so they simply refined and expanded upon what worked during the 6th generation for the 7th generation (apart from Nintendo who basically perfected motion control gaming during this time with the Wii and they had the DS as well so they were definitely experimenting and innovating during this time).
Meanwhile PC gamers on one hand had Crysis, F.E.A.R, Half-Life 2 etc while on the other they suffered from bad PC ports of console games such as GTA IV, Saints Row 2 etc.
I mean, games look better, and do have some nice modern mechanics. That said, I'd say the 360 era was a balance between technology getting pretty good, and before things like battlepasses/microtransactions took the soul out of game devs. I don't think modern devs are bad, I just think the modern industry doesn't let them show their true potential, or have passion projects.
Came here to look at HL2 footage, learnt about the Xbox CPU update, nice! Thank you for that new knowledge MVG!
This was my first experience with Half Life 2 and I played it all the way through. I loved every minute of it.
Something worth noting is that this port also has about twice the number of loading screens in comparison to the other ports.
And to give some perspective on how little RAM the OG Xbox has, it doesn't even have enough RAM for the minimum specifications to run the first Half-Life game. There's a homebrew mod of HL1 for the original Xbox and without modding the console to add more RAM, no player or NPC textures are visible.
Well, to be fair the first Half Life runs on PS2 and Dreamcast which had way less ram.
RAM isnt the same when talking about consoles since games tend to be better optimized than on PC.
@@sebastiankulche That is a fair point.
I bought a modded OG Xbox this year, largely thanks to you. I played Half-Life 2 on it not knowing that there was a port and I remember being very impressed. It's cool how you made a video about this
How did you buy it? Where is it?
@@EmeraldMage7188 Bought it unmodded from a local retro game shop, then sent it in to Pence PC to mod it. I recommend them if you're in the US, but it never hurts to shop around
@@TheShoe1990
Modding the xbox is literally just installing a new OS on it
I remember playing this game for the first time. It was like looking into the future of gaming. Very interesting and great video!
no way its that minecraft gba guy
I remember buying this game at a Half Price books along with Max Payne. I paid like $15 for both games. Great times back then.
Half the price for Half a Life
Max Payne and Max Payne 2 are amazing. Max Payne is, for me, the best action game of its time, at least in terms of games that were available for PC.
Max Payne was a real trend setter at the time, and extremely well made (the PC version in particular is really impressive, and ran well on a wide range of hardware), and the developer of Max Payne (Remedy) is still a highly regarded and influential game developer to this day.
The version was my first play through of HL2, and the sound - in 5.1 - was the most impressive experience I had heard, and the thing that always stuck out to me. Even though I eventually got a PC that could run it and played on the same surround speakers, I was always aware the sound just didn’t stack up and left me disappointed, but I never knew why until now. Flying through the canals in the air boat while distant shots were fired, and explosions happened around you; and being in warehouse rooms when explosions went off releasing swinging beams knocking barrels and stuff all over, was just the pinnacle of cinematic surround sound intensity.
I'd love to hear your take on Rise Of The Tomb Raider on the 360, such an impressive port.
What??? There is a port???? I had no idea but definitely sounds interesting.
@@Moravia90sdigital foundry covered it st launch
Considering minimal requirements on PC, it was a masterpiece how well the game ran, and it even looked better than what you could achieve on low settings on PC, all of that with just 512MB shared memory of the xbox.
Seconding this request. It's a 2016 game that couldn't be maxed out on even new midrange cards at the time, so for it to run well on a 2005 Xbox 360 is nothing short of impressive. Even Steam declares its minimum requirements to need 6GB of RAM, and the Xbox 360 had 512mb.
Well... Technically it's not a port. It's a version that was build from ground up in line with main development. But impressive version it is.
I knew about it! My friends rented it, and found the performance to be disappointing, but they did play through it. I remember thinking that it was impressive that they did it with 64 MB of RAM. I do agree that if it had been launched in 2004 along with the PC version, it would have probably been received much better. I picked up a copy for my Xbox a couple of years ago, and I am very glad that I have it.
The icing on the cake is that most CRT's at the time would've added greatly to this port's visual experience in so many ways relative to most gaming setups today.
Yep, it looked good back then didn't even notice the Fps drop
@@lfesky It looked just fine, but FPS drops definitely where there. It's the main reason I didn't play it virtually at all.
@@lfesky Then you must be blind, there was constant drops, and the later sections with the squad were near slideshow quality.
The year is 2005 or 2006, was 9 or 10 at this point. This was the first time had ever seen HALF-LIFE 2 in this capacity on a Crt or equivalent screen it was totally acceptable for this period watching someone else play it was very fun to witness
@@lfesky It was my first way of playing it as well, and i noticed the drops immediately, has nothing to do with not playing it on PC, nor the passage of time, framerate drops always sucked, and there's always been people like you damage controlling it which results in devs never fixing it. So thanks for that.
I had a friend who let me borrow their Xbox about a decade ago and this was the first time I played and finished Half Life 2. I was very impressed despite the low, chunky framerates. I've heard of half life before but I've never known much about it until then. It helped that I had a massive CRT that supported S-video and it looked very clean and clear.
Later on another friend sold me his Xbox 360 and I ended up getting the Orange Box digitally (so, no orange box... it was a metaphorical box I guess lol) I don't have that specific 360 now but I did get another eventually, the Shiny super slim model and I was able to redownload everything from my account and I still have that console to this day.
valve was on an all timer run back then. Orange Box, Portal 2 , Left 4 Dead. Why are they slacking now!?
I’m really glad you covered this. I’ve always thought this was an awesome port, it doesn’t really run the best but the fact it exists at all considering the original Xbox’s hardware is incredibly cool. And I never noticed the difference in audio but I think that despite the performance and visual sacrifices the audio alone enhances the atmosphere so much that it’s worth a play for that alone
Why even mention that it doesn’t run great? That’s already implied lol. The whole point of this video is to praise the fact that they were able to get this running on that hardware and not have it look like a slideshow 😂.
@@chiarosuburekeni9325 uh, because it does run like crap on original hardware, my point was that i think the enhanced audio makes it worth playing in my opinion despite the performance issues. i didn't know i was going to have people doing in depth analysis on my comment that was mainly regarding the impressiveness of the port overall and the fact that the enhanced audio is really cool 😂i was merely sharing my own opinion on the game with the knowledge of what mvg said in the video
Along with Doom 3, this is one of the games that REALLY made me want to buy an Xbox. Granted, around that time, my uncle gave us his used laptop and it was fairly good for it's time, it had a 800p widescreen panel and it had a decent Pentium 4 CPU, it definitely could handle HL2 in dx7 mode at much better framerates than the Xbox version could handle and I even played plenty of Counter-Strike: Source on that thing for many years until I saved up for a better PC.
This port is how 13 year old me had his first Half Life series experience. My jaw was on the floor the entire game! I liked it so much that when I got my first PC capable of playing games the first game I got was Half Life 2, along with the first Half Life.
Is there a half life 3?
Nah@@rustymixer2886
@@rustymixer2886 Yes! Of course!
@@EricFraire I heard half life 3 never released
@@rustymixer2886 in reality, episode 3 was cancelled due to limitations of the episodic format, developers were adding a lot into "episodes" which just became new games
then hl3 was delayed until source 2 was finished
Wow I had no idea about the audio differences, that's super cool.
I wanted a DreamX so bad back in the day. I saw that the Xbox CPU interposer has now been released under GPL that may open up the possibility of upgrading Xbox's again. It seemed to be like magic, a drop in boost to games and we can see it so well here with Half Life 2. Halo got a big boost on those consoles too.
I actually ended up playing this version of Half Life 2 first before playing it on the PC. I can't remember exactly how that happened, but I think it was a result of not being super familiar with the Half Life series at the time of its release and seeing it for rent in my local Blockbuster. I didn't realize how vivid HL2's visuals were at the time, so I didn't think much of the herculean task of porting HL2 to the original Xbox. I think I got all the way through the game up to Ravenholm level before giving it a try on the PC. I don't remember the frame rate being unplayable for the most part but it eventually became apparent to me that the developers had to make some sacrifices to get it working on the original Xbox.
Funny enough, I also played Half Life 1 on the PS2 before playing it on the PC. Funny how it worked out that way. Awesome video!
Dude I was literally thinking to myself last night if you had made a video on the Half Life 2 Xbox Port, only to come to RUclips and discover you've just made one.
Incredible.
There should be a speed run category for this version on authentic hardware and duke controller.
I remember that the PC version of the original Half Life utilized EAX, and it sounded AWESOME. Team it up with a Creative 4.1 surround speakers... BLISS! I'm pretty sure EAX was part of HL2, but just checked and it's now not on the options screen?
"Might be worth a google" 🙂
I remember the same, I've only played the "echoey" EAX version on PC. As EAX is mostly gone, we began loosing these features.
It will happen the same with Raytracing "RTX" HW and drivers as more and more devs begin using the frameworks and stop "wasting time" doing the regular "hacky, screen-space" implementations, as soon as the HW changes to a new trend, we will only have the "no light/no fallbacks" implementations.
I believe you are thinking of Half Life 1, which featured EAX audio, HL2 never had it.
I played this version when it was new and loved it both for the game's design and for how it pushed the hardware. It's one of those games that comes late in a console generation that makes it easier to wait for the next generation.
At 1:56 you mentioned that the Xbox's CPU is a Celeron. Every source I can find indicates that it is a Pentium III.
The UI of the xbox has to be a favorite since its pretty ironic if you played the demo on repeat.
(Its the demo set in ravenholm)
Always a good Monday when MVG explains another technical marvel in gaming.
Wow I never realized how good the sound is on the Xbox version! The echoes are awesome!
It was my first HF game, it was so addictive.
It was actually gifted to my by a school teacher that was big in to PC gaming.
It led me to buy opposing force then buy the orange box
For whatever reason, this is the only platform I have ever finished HL2 on. I remember absolutely loving it, and I still consider HL2 one of my favourite games of all time.
I wonder if you're planning on doing a video on the Playstation 2 port of the Original Half-Life/ The cancelled Dreamcast port. I think that port is also very impressive for the time, especially the Dreamcast version, such a shame it was cancelled. It would be a great video for your Impossible Port series.
Надеюсь эту версию когда-нибудь доведут до ума😊
Dreamcast version video 🔥 yes
@@Raul-cha-cha-chaThe Dreamcast port was leaked years ago, you can download an ISO and play it right on your Dreamcast!
@@ColonelNegativeда , братишка, знаю . Я пробовал его . Долгие загрузки я ещё могу терпеть ,но частота кадров уж больно скачет. Интересные эти порты! Прям видно ,что разработчики задницы себе рвали чтобы игру впихнуть на ту или иную консоль
I agree, they upgraded the visuals like models, map geometry, water wave and light casting on the water. they even fixed some geometry mistakes like lamp floating on the ceeling and etc. Its a very well made port.
The first time I ever played Half-Life 2 was on Xbox in the form of a demo disk from the Official Xbox Magazine. The demo was a segment of the level "We Don't Go to Ravenholm". I will never forget that first moment walking into that environment with the music swelling, the severed legs dangling from the tree, and peeking inside the first room to see the sawblade stuck into the wall, suspending the torso of a dead zombie above it's lower half on the floor.
If you had that as the first level, you would definitely think its a horror game
The quote from Jay Stelly at 4:08 is so funny because he was lying out his ass. The leaked game and engine code from 2003 had zero references to the Xbox whatsoever. The generally believed claim is that the only reason Half-Life 2 released for the Xbox is because there was allegedly a deal that Valve struck with Microsoft back during Half-Life 1's development where they had to develop a game for the Xbox and waited until the last possible second to do it.
Why would he lie tho?
not everything has to be synced on perforce at all times. they could have worked on it without checking in changes. don't call out people on lies with so little proof
6:28 I actually didn't know about the audio tech on Xbox. By comparison on the PC version it sounds like I'm playing Dr. Breen's speech on my Sony Walkman™
Half Life 3 would break the internet
0:35 yeah I remember that as well, I remember my friend coming across a offline installer that allowed you to bypass steam to install you game off the discs,
The odd thing about Doom3 is the performance can be greatly improved if you just increase the cache settings in the Doom3.cfg file on older original hardware from the time, you can go from low quality to high by increasing the settings from the default 40 to 256 or higher
the right game on the wrong system can make all the difference in the world.
I saw a copy in a used disc store several years ago (Deja Vu Discs), and being surprised that it existed. I will say looking back on it, it is impressive given that they managed to squeeze it onto both the original and the 360. Ironically I bought the PS2 port of Half-Life 1 from the same store, and that was my first experience with the game.
This was the way I first played Half-Life 2 back in 2009. I had a Mickey Mouse CRT (the one with speakers for ears) with an original Xbox hooked up via composite and a Duke controller. I remember playing it through 3 times absolutely loving it for its storytelling. The depth of the story and how well it executes it really is why it's my favorite game of all time to this day. I actually hadn't played Half-Life so I had to gather parts of the story from context clues and Combine OverWiki articles. It was amazing and coming from playing primarily on GameCube, PS2 and late 90s PC games it was the best looking game I'd ever played. Oh how times change. I recently booted up the Xbox version on my 360 and it was so jarring how different it felt having played on PC with maxed settings for nearly a decade. A truly impossible port, we're lucky we got it running as well as we do. I bet the community given enough time, effort, and tweaking could get it running at 60 fps but they'd need to decompile it first and optimize it further. Now I'm just eagerly awaiting Half-Life 2 RTX.
The best version of HL2 is the VR Mod. Definitely worth buying a Quest 2 to play it.
The HL2 intro looks SO GOOD on the Xbox, people back in the day must've been completely blown away by what their 2001 console could do
back then I didn't know they were releasing the 360 and I bought the OG in 2005. I only had the ps1 and a windows 95 pc so the jump was amazing. I played HL2, DOOM 3, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. It felt like the future.
Those were certainly some visually impressive console ports.
@@redslate Yeah I just remembered FarCry and Riddick too. Awesome games.
@@fawkesnake Those last two in particular got pretty stunning re-releases on the Xbox 360 as well.
The water effects in _Far_ _Cry_ rivaled those of the PC. _Riddick_ had some amazing lighting details.
@@redslate never got the chance to play the 360 version of Farcry, but I did play the PC version of riddick with its sequel.
I just got an OG Xbox with first time recently and I didn’t grow up with one. When I was looking for games, I did see half-life two and I was very surprised knowing of the hardware specs of the Xbox. Thank you for doing this retrospective and bringing light to this port.
Great Video!
I got myself HL² for my OG XBox a while ago and i do enjoy it quite a bit.
Question though: At 7:45 you say "no real reductions aside from Textures", but didn't they also cut back on geometry quite a bit here and there, walling off some areas that have background geometry to save on polygons etc?
Great video, the Xbox version of HL2 was the first one I ever played and it was mind blowing at the time. I went back a few years ago when I was digging my old systems out and I never noticed how laggy it was back in the day I had to turn it off after a few minutes of playing. I was so grateful for this I must not have minded back then.
*_Very nice vid. As always._* 😊
Wow, i had no idea this game was on the OG Xbox; my first introduction was actually through The Orange Box with all the episodes on the Xbox 360 (with TF2 and Portal of course) I love coming across these kinds of videos and learning interesting things about these older ports
I never knew the game existed on XBox, it's quite a feat. I'm always amazed by the performance you can squeeze out of limited hardware with some dedication and a lot of ingenuity (an technical know-how). I was quite impressed by the sound spatialization.
This is the most amazing port for HL2 I've ever seen. I wonder if my RGH -ed Zephyr 360 will be able to emulate it well.
its strange how environmental audio has regressed on PC's over time. I seem to recall a lot of patent/licensing issues possibly being a factor which would be a shame if that is the reason.
Part of it was a new driver model introduced in Windows Vista that made it harder to use hardware acceleration for audio (and a long-standing lack of support for it in Windows in general certainly didn't help). Creative Labs, being one of the last hold-outs for actually including hardware acceleration for audio, did make a program called ALchemy (the capitalisation being a reference to OpenAL, which they own) which could make EAX work on Vista and 7, though. Alas, motherboard manufacturers moved to integrated audio and only included barebones AC97 and Intel HD Audio chipsets, which were only designed for simple playback and nothing else.
This version was actually my first ever exposure to Half-Life 2. A childhood friend of mine had it and I watched him play through the part where you assault the beach with the ant-lions
In 2005 everybody who had xbox was happy to see HL2 on their platform, even if it was so choppy. In 2023 every body is upset that they can play Batman on Switch because of choppyness.
Standards have changed if any game nowadays released with goldeneye or hl2 xbox levels of gameplay it would become news just because of performance
@@xtr.7662 yeah... i'm old :(
As someone who lived that era, framerate was something it was taked into account and could be criticized (i mean, if even Doom on SNES in the 90s was criticized, why HL2 on Xbox not).
I played this version first way back in 05, and the sound coming out of my Logitech 5.1 surround stereo was mind blowing, when all I'd heard previously was the PC version on cheap headphones.
Loving the impossible port series so far. Keep up the awesome work.
With the still thriving og xbox modding community, Imagine what could be done with further optimizations and some bug / script fixes.
such a beautiful time in gaming history
I got into the orange box collection for xbox 360 a few year late when I borrowed it from a friend when I brought up portal and he asked if I ever played half-life. I had no idea about it, but immediately fell in love with the whole series after that. Had no idea this was available for the og xbox, and it's definitely impressive what they were able to pull off with the old tech, even if the frame rates neared unplayable at times.
I didn't have a PC that could even come close to playing Half Life 2 until about 6 or 7 years ago, so I was absolutely thrilled by the OG Xbox port. I played it through at least a half dozen times. Really thrilled to learn more about how they managed to squeeze it all into the big X.
Half life 2 on the og Xbox is how I discovered Gordon freeman as a kid long before I had my own pc.
I wish I could go back and play it for the first time one more time.
My first experience with Half-Life 2 was actually the orange box on the 360. I remember that version playing quite decently.
Me too! I never actually got to beat the entire HL2 campaign back on the 360, but when I got the Valve collection on steam for like $5, I completed all of HL2 and the episodes in a day and felt really satisfied.
same here, i never really understood the game because i was like eight years old, so i got lost constantly and couldn't progress very far but i do remember playing specifically the episodes and having fun with the gravity gun and just exploring the maps
The fact that HL2 and Doom 3 are nearly 20 years old really blows my mind. TWENTY. It’s actually insane… it just doesn’t compute.
We're just a few months away from Shovel Knight being a decade old. A game funded by a Kickstarter campaign is now reaching double digits of age.
The Half Life port on PS2 is also very impressive
I love this port. My family didn't have a PC powerful enough to run Half-Life 2, so the Xbox port was the first way I ever played the game, and it still holds a special place in my heart.
The xbox version was my first time playing Half Life 2, on a tiny little CRT in France, wired directly into the socket... it got fried after being bumped.
I also had Half Life, Blue Shift, Opposing Forces, and TeamFortress Classic via the anthology.
Weirdly, I don't remember the framedrops being so bad, also would be rather surprised if the game is aware of anything other than the CPU speed increase, games tend to need patching to work properly with xbox unified memory expansions.
I wonder if maybe the size of the TV helped you with the perception of the frame rate.
@@darkcoeficient The analogue nature may have. Granted, tiny little maybe 7inch travel telly, maybe it did?
@@blunderingfool sure, analog helps but only to an extent.
7 inches? TINY!
@@darkcoeficientIt was used in a lorry to catch over-the-air broadcasts. Certainly before the likes of Sky or NTL (Now Virgin Media).
@@darkcoeficientpeople just weren't as picky back then. There was no standard.
The XBox was how I first got to play Half Life 2 as a kid. I tried playing the PC version but couldn't since I didn't have internet and it was impossible to use Steam. Was pretty pissed off when that happened but I'm glad I was at least able to enjoy it on the PC and then again on The Orange Box for the 360.
My first half life game on XBOX 🤣
Beautiful deep dive into how awesome this release was! I was a PS2 guy during the Xbox's heyday and never really had any experience with it. Now if I had unlimited room for my retro hobbies I'd definitely own one :)
These RUclips adds get so annoying that i watch less and less RUclips.
That's wild you still get ads
no adblcok moment
Got an add for angry birds 2 and sonic crossover
Imagine never using an adblocker and making a comment completely irrelevant to the video you're commenting on just to complain about it.
uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock
Technically speaking it's possible to further upgrade the double-RAM double-speed XBOX CPU. It turns out that there are Tualatin Celeron chips clocked at 1.5GHz, while Tualatin Pentium 3 chips only went to 1.4GHz. But Celerons do have less L2 cache and some other stuff that I don't know how an XBOX would handle. However, Tualatin Celerons have a very good use case outside the XBOX. If you have a late-run version of the PC-9821Ra433 (made from 2000 to 2003, you want the 2003 one here due to voltage stuff), (a machine that shipped with a 433MHz Celeron), you can put a 1.5GHz Celeron in it, and since some PC games require 1.5GHz and don't work on 1.4GHz, a Tualatin Celeron at 1.5GHz improves game compatibility of very late PC98s. Mind you, the PC98 bus has significant bottlenecks even in late-model Ra43s, but since many games ask the CPU what speed it is, a 1.5GHz Tualatin Celeron will make some games boot that don't boot on a Tualatin Pentium 3 in all its 1.4GHz glory at maximum. So if you're a PC98 enthusiast and have the tail end of the final PC98 model, you can boot more games and apps on it than you would be able to on a Pentium 3 at maximum. Oh also, while PC98 only went to Windows 2000, the ReactOS developers are making a PC98 port for Pentium 1 and higher, as well as an XBOX port. ReactOS is basically XP but clean-room reverse-engineered.
Og XBOX was extremely powerful compared to the PS2 at that time.
And still lose.
Actually incredible... the sound difference really blew me away. I really need to learn more about how the Xbox handles sound. Were there other games that have stand-out sound quality like this on the Xbox or was this just a standard unknown to me?
Amazing video, I learn so much from your videos, thank you!
This game is unplayable on xbox
it feels weird that sound quality in general has gone down in PC games since sound cards died, you'd think they could just have a CPU core dedicated to replicating those awesome effects.
Im one of those people that got its first introduction with the half life series with this particular port, and even though it may not show today, for someone with no pc experience at the time, this port was absolutely amazing, it truly felt like the future of video games and words cannot describe how i look back at the first time i booted up this game on my good ol xbox...
Wow thanks for this MVG!!! I played HL2 on the 360 when The Organge Box came out, but I had no idea that there was an OG XBox version. Amazing!
Thanks for covering this. These console versions are how I first played the Half Life games. I still have my discs for HL1 on PS2, HL2 on Xbox and the Orange Box on 360.
Thanks for making a video on this. Besides playing a bit on the orange box on 360, I was unfamiliar with the Half Life series until the recent 25th half life anniversary has got me playing both 1 and 2. This is very informative.
Awesome video. I first played HL2 at a friend’s house on his XBOX I think. I got the original Xbox for my 10th birthday after being blown away by Halo, GTA, and many others. I loved it. I didn’t own a copy of HL2 until orange box on 360. Went back to finish it in lockdown . All those years later I still thought it was incredible. Definitely ahead of its time. I’d love to play the first one. Just watched a documentary on that game. Clearly a special time in gaming. 👏👍
This was the first time I ever played it and I'm annoyed so many people now try and say it was an awful port, it played well enough that I could enjoy the game without an internet connection in 2005.