Half-Life Port Turns PS2 Co-Op Game Decay Into A Solo PC Experience

thegamer.com:

Before Borderlands, Gearbox helped Valve with a few Half-Life spin-offs - Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay. The latter was a PS2 exclusive co-op game that has been ported to PC by fan sbefore, but you still need a second person otherwise it's a nightmare to get through. But now, one fan has put together a solo overhaul, letting you enjoy it alone.

"Half-Life Decay: Solo Mission is a new, upcoming port of the PS2 exclusive Half-Life expansion Decay, with the goal of rebuilding the game to work as a single-player experience, thus allowing anyone to play through the entirety of Decay without the need for setting up a private server, and all the headaches that come with it," the summary page states. "Along with allowing anyone to play Decay without needing a server, this port will also rework the visuals to make them more consistent with the original Half-Life, giving every map in Decay an extra bit of polish in the process."

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With it being a PS2 exclusive, certain corners were cut to make it run more smoothly. The other expansions were on PC, and so they took advantage of the lesser limitations, even adding a new HD model pack that was also applied to the original Half-Life, updating NPCs with more polygons.

In the newest, fourth update post, Half-Life Decay: Solo Mission announced that it's getting a Steam release, making it much easier to dive into the classic PS2 co-op experience. You won't have to fiddle with third-party apps. Just download it and you can play.

There's also a new demo available right now that has twice the number of maps that the original demo did, letting you play the first third of Decay's campaign all by yourself.