Difficulty of Half-Life 2

[eldavod]

Is it possible to play the game in an even harder mode than possible?

[istvan_v]

It depends on how you want to make it more difficult. By default, the main difference between the levels is the amount of damage dealt and taken, but there are some other minor tweaks as well. On Easy, enemies take 1.5x more damage from the player, and the player only takes half damage. On Hard, damage dealt to enemies is multiplied by 0.75, and damage to the player is multiplied by 1.5 (2.0 in the episodes). "Environmental" types of damage like falling are not affected.

You can change these values with the following variables on the console or in hl2/cfg/skill.cfg:

sk_dmg_inflict_scale1 (default: 1.5)
sk_dmg_inflict_scale2 (default: 1.0)
sk_dmg_inflict_scale3 (default: 0.75)

sk_dmg_take_scale1 (default: 0.5)
sk_dmg_take_scale2 (default: 1.0)
sk_dmg_take_scale3 (default: 1.5 for HL2, 2.0 for episodes)

There are many more variables, for example you can change the damage dealt by each weapon, both for player and enemy attacks.

[BlackLizardPlanet]

I would have liked it if they made the AI more dastardly in hard mode, similar to HL1.

[Johari]

Originally posted by Tye The Czar:

I would have liked it if they made the AI more dastardly in hard mode, similar to HL1.

Yeah.
I'm really tired of the artificial difficulty thing that seems to be so common in SP games. Nothing that really sets difficulties apart other than a multiplier here and there.

[istvan_v]

Well, you could try searching for some difficulty increasing mods. Obviously, "smarter AI" is not something that can be achieved with a simple console command or adding a line or two to a configuration file.