Half-Life: Source is the 2004 port of Valve's award winning game to the Source Engine. With just that knowledge, it would sound like Half-Life: Source was a gift from above, but it's anything BUT that. Half-Life: Source was critically panned, which makes you wonder HOW it has a "Very Positive" on Steam Reviews. Half-Life: Source is one of those games Valve chooses to forget, with the likes of the first Left 4 Dead and Ricochet. But, before we get into a review, lets go over the history of Half-Life: Source.

In 1999, Valve started development of Half-Life 2, the award winning squeal to Half-Life, originally running on the GoldSource engine. Around 2001/2002, the Source Engine was created, and it surpassed what the GoldSource engine could do, so, Valve planned to port Half-Life to the Source Engine to have it replace the GoldSource counter parts. In 2003, Axel Gambe got a hold of the full Half-Life 2 Source Code, raw map data, and a build of Half-Life 2, who later gave it to some friends, who leaked it. In those leak files, there was the Half-Life Source port, along with files to a Source port of TFC, DMC, and CS 1.6 (which was remotely playable, but at this time, this port was starting to become the game we know today as CS:S.) The port of Half-Life: Source was quite buggy and unfinished, which is to be expected for it being a leak of a beta. So, 2004 comes around, and then Half-Life 2 is coming around the corner, as a bundle with Half-Life 2, you could get Counter-Strike: Source (by this time is the game we all know and probably love) and Half-Life: Source. Half-Life: Source saw little change from the 2003 leak of Half-Life 2, minus some minor bug fixes and having the Half-Life 1 HUD. At this point, be expected Half-Life: Source to be just like Counter-Strike: Source, a re-imagining of the game, in HD (for 2004 standards), but what they got was a direct Half-Life port that didn't seam quite finished. This is why if you ask anyone why they don't like Half-Life: Source for the most part (especially pre-2013) you get told it's graphics were just the Half-Life graphics. But as stated before, Half-Life: Source was meant to replace Half-Life as a whole, but due to how poorly received it was, Half-Life Original saw another day. In 2006, Valve ported the Deathmatch counter part of Half-Life into the Source Engine, and if you thought Half-Life: Source was a bad port, you should of saw this game. All player ragdolls had broken physics, some weapons were broken (the Shotgun's double barrel sound is just the single barrel sound), and the gameplay was more like Half-Life 2 Deathmatch with minor HLDM gameplay stuff slapped in (the game even lacks the backpack pickups that were in Half-Life Deathmatch), the only reason I can see for this port, was just to give EP1 a pack-in game. Around 2007, Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source were ported to Source Base 2007, but due to the amount of bugs now included with the game, Valve didn't release this patch to the public, it wasn't until 2012 that the public knew of this update's existence, since in 2012, the whole 2008/2007 source code to Source Base 2007 was leaked into the public, it also confirmed that the Team Fortress Classic port was in further development than what everyone thought. But due to the amount of hate towards Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source would mean we would probably never seen of these ports.

So, that runs down a good chunk of the history of Half-Life: Source besides one of the more major things, the 2013 update. Valve in an effort to ditch the GCF system and upgrade everything to VPK and have a better downloading system and a better game asset pack to engine communication, they created Steampipe, but since Valve decided it would be best to port all games to Source Base 2013, they decided to do that, and try to provide updates to all Valve games. In the same year, Valve canned the project, leaving a ton of games in a broken state, Half-Life: Source being one of them.

So, this leads us into the review.

Half-Life: Source was a mediocre port to the Source Engine, where it would be mixed who liked the game and disliked the game, since Half-Life: Source had that audience. Half-Life: Source is now a BAD port to the Source Engine, since those 2013 updates broke more than what it fixed. Not only did Valve cancel the updates to these games, they released the beta depots into the release depot to remove traces of GCFs. So, those games that had a good release depot, now have a beta released into them, and a lot of these betas were far from done. We now have broken Save/Restore errors in various NPCs, 2 out of the 3 tentacles in Blast Pit can harm the player or AI, one of the maps in Residue Processing will blind the player if your flashlight is turned on, skill configurations are broken (so now the AI is harder), Gonarch spit is now black squares, one of the maps in Surface Tension has a broken skybox, you can jump over a lot of things making it so you can skip half of "We got Hostiles" and skip various other parts in other chapters, all of the Chrome shaders are complete ass (they were never good, but this is just worse), and even more. It's sad when a 2003 leak is better and more playable than a 2013 update. Plus, if you load the HD Pack you get a GameBanana skin pack, since Valve was too lazy to port the assets their selves of even double check to be everything matched in the first place. But the icing on the cake is that, well, at first install, you can't even PLAY Half-Life: Source since Valve provided corrupted or outdated DLLs to Steam VR, so every time you reinstall Half-Life: Source you have to verify the cache of Half-Life 2 or Steam VR. Not only that, the person who was working on these updates, Alfred, shrugged off a few errors as design points.

Half-Life: Source had potential to be a great port, to even be on par with the Original Half-Life (definitely should NEVER replace the Original), but its potential was lost with a company who couldn't care enough about the game, which is why it was left for about 6 years without an update.

I recommend to play Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source so you can see what happens when a company just flat out doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥.

Even though I didn't review the pre-2013 build, I'm still going to give it a rating

The Half-Life: Source that existed before 2013, I give that a 6 out of 10

I give the current Half-Life: Source a 4 out of 10, avoid at all costs.

Actually, I recommend you report both Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source, as it very unplayable and is using stolen assets. You shouldn't let Valve sell this to people, especially when people think this is the better version of Half-Life

Half-Life: Source is the 2004 port of Valve's award winning game to the Source Engine. With just that knowledge, it would sound like Half-Life: Source was a gift from above, but it's anything BUT that. Half-Life: Source was critically panned, which makes you wonder HOW it has a "Very Positive" on Steam Reviews. Half-Life: Source is one of those games Valve chooses to forget, with the likes of the first Left 4 Dead and Ricochet. But, before we get into a review, lets go over the history of Half-Life: Source. [h1]The History:[/h1] In 1999, Valve started development of Half-Life 2, the award winning squeal to Half-Life, originally running on the GoldSource engine. Around 2001/2002, the Source Engine was created, and it surpassed what the GoldSource engine could do, so, Valve planned to port Half-Life to the Source Engine to have it replace the GoldSource counter parts. In 2003, Axel Gambe got a hold of the full Half-Life 2 Source Code, raw map data, and a build of Half-Life 2, who later gave it to some friends, who leaked it. In those leak files, there was the Half-Life Source port, along with files to a Source port of TFC, DMC, and CS 1.6 (which was remotely playable, but at this time, this port was starting to become the game we know today as CS:S.) The port of Half-Life: Source was quite buggy and unfinished, which is to be expected for it being a leak of a beta. So, 2004 comes around, and then Half-Life 2 is coming around the corner, as a bundle with Half-Life 2, you could get Counter-Strike: Source (by this time is the game we all know and probably love) and Half-Life: Source. Half-Life: Source saw little change from the 2003 leak of Half-Life 2, minus some minor bug fixes and having the Half-Life 1 HUD. At this point, be expected Half-Life: Source to be just like Counter-Strike: Source, a re-imagining of the game, in HD (for 2004 standards), but what they got was a direct Half-Life port that didn't seam quite finished. This is why if you ask anyone why they don't like Half-Life: Source for the most part (especially pre-2013) you get told it's graphics were just the Half-Life graphics. But as stated before, Half-Life: Source was meant to replace Half-Life as a whole, but due to how poorly received it was, Half-Life Original saw another day. In 2006, Valve ported the Deathmatch counter part of Half-Life into the Source Engine, and if you thought Half-Life: Source was a bad port, you should of saw this game. All player ragdolls had broken physics, some weapons were broken (the Shotgun's double barrel sound is just the single barrel sound), and the gameplay was more like Half-Life 2 Deathmatch with minor HLDM gameplay stuff slapped in (the game even lacks the backpack pickups that were in Half-Life Deathmatch), the only reason I can see for this port, was just to give EP1 a pack-in game. Around 2007, Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source were ported to Source Base 2007, but due to the amount of bugs now included with the game, Valve didn't release this patch to the public, it wasn't until 2012 that the public knew of this update's existence, since in 2012, the whole 2008/2007 source code to Source Base 2007 was leaked into the public, it also confirmed that the Team Fortress Classic port was in further development than what everyone thought. But due to the amount of hate towards Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source would mean we would probably never seen of these ports. So, that runs down a good chunk of the history of Half-Life: Source besides one of the more major things, the 2013 update. Valve in an effort to ditch the GCF system and upgrade everything to VPK and have a better downloading system and a better game asset pack to engine communication, they created Steampipe, but since Valve decided it would be best to port all games to Source Base 2013, they decided to do that, and try to provide updates to all Valve games. In the same year, Valve canned the project, leaving a ton of games in a broken state, Half-Life: Source being one of them. So, this leads us into the review. [H1]The Review[/h1] Half-Life: Source was a mediocre port to the Source Engine, where it would be mixed who liked the game and disliked the game, since Half-Life: Source had that audience. Half-Life: Source is now a BAD port to the Source Engine, since those 2013 updates broke more than what it fixed. Not only did Valve cancel the updates to these games, they released the beta depots into the release depot to remove traces of GCFs. So, those games that had a good release depot, now have a beta released into them, and a lot of these betas were far from done. We now have broken Save/Restore errors in various NPCs, 2 out of the 3 tentacles in Blast Pit can harm the player or AI, one of the maps in Residue Processing will blind the player if your flashlight is turned on, skill configurations are broken (so now the AI is harder), Gonarch spit is now black squares, one of the maps in Surface Tension has a broken skybox, you can jump over a lot of things making it so you can skip half of "We got Hostiles" and skip various other parts in other chapters, all of the Chrome shaders are complete ass (they were never good, but this is just worse), and even more. It's sad when a 2003 leak is better and more playable than a 2013 update. Plus, if you load the HD Pack you get a GameBanana skin pack, since Valve was too lazy to port the assets their selves of even double check to be everything matched in the first place. But the icing on the cake is that, well, at first install, you can't even PLAY Half-Life: Source since Valve provided corrupted or outdated DLLs to Steam VR, so every time you reinstall Half-Life: Source you have to verify the cache of Half-Life 2 or Steam VR. Not only that, the person who was working on these updates, Alfred, shrugged off a few errors as design points. Half-Life: Source had potential to be a great port, to even be on par with the Original Half-Life (definitely should NEVER replace the Original), but its potential was lost with a company who couldn't care enough about the game, which is why it was left for about 6 years without an update. I recommend to play Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source so you can see what happens when a company just flat out doesn't give a fucking shit. Even though I didn't review the pre-2013 build, I'm still going to give it a rating The Half-Life: Source that existed before 2013, I give that a 6 out of 10 I give the current Half-Life: Source a 4 out of 10, avoid at all costs. Actually, I recommend you report both Half-Life: Source and Deathmatch: Source, as it very unplayable and is using stolen assets. You shouldn't let Valve sell this to people, especially when people think this is the better version of Half-Life