Half-Life Modders Give The Original '90s Shooter A Facelift
The Half-Life modding community is one of the largest, most sustained communities in gaming. It spawned Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Garry's Mod, and the fan-made remake, Black Mesa. But if you can't run Black Mesa or just prefer the older gunplay of the original, then Half-Life Hidef might be the solution.
It does what it says on the tin - it makes Half-Life high definition. It's not quite the graphical update that Black Mesa is, but that's a whole new engine. This instead looks at the Gearbox expansions, Blue Shift and Opposing Force, and takes their improved models and visuals a step further. As you can see in the featured image, the mod (on the left) is far crisper and more defined than the original (on the right).
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It adds 4k texture resolutions from modder y2keeth's Half-Life model pack, even updating Gordon Freeman from a greyish silhouette to a fully-fledged character. Handy for the zero times you get to see him, eh? But it goes beyond the Barney guards, zombies, black ops assassins, scientists, and vortigaunts - the weapons also get a new lick of paint. On the mod page (linked below in the embedded tweet), you can watch the whole introductory train ride with Hidef enabled to get a taste of its improvements.
It isn't a texture overhaul in that you drop it into the Half-Life folder and get going, though. It works as a separate .exe, launching as its own 'version' of Half-Life. Fiddling with the settings, you can enable an in-game mod selector, allowing for you to jump between not only any mod packs, but the expansions as well.
This is handy if you want to trial out Brutal Half-Life, Echoes, or any other number of mods, while also leaping between
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