We've been waiting over 20 years for Half-Life 3
and almost two years for Half-Life 2 RTX with no release date in sight.
Which has been a pain point for several gamers considering how much money some of them
have spent on ray tracing cards with very little to show for it.
One, two, now! Oh my God, David.
Is that Half-Life 2 RTX? It's here! Yeah!
What's the big deal? I don't get it. Let's go!
It's only one of the best games ever made and now it looks incredible!
So sit down and get educated about our sponsor.
When Half-Life 2 came out, it did a few things to stand out as one of the best games of all time.
It continued the immersive storytelling of Half-Life 1, no scene transition loading screens and no cutscenes.
The AI was super impressive and when coupled with the voice lines from the combine
as they do actions like throw frags or try to flank you, it felt like they were really hunting you down.
And last but not least, it had a ton of physics-based combat and puzzles.
I get how it was revolutionary for the games industry as a whole, but why would I go back and play this old game
when I could play something new like Half-Life Alyx? That's where Remix comes in.
We'll dive in a bit deeper later, but NVIDIA created tools that let modders
take an old game and breathe new life into it. Ray tracing, upscale textures, remastered 3D assets,
all the tools you need to make it look modern. Try it for yourself.
Okay, I mean, immediately, yes, it does look better. Right?
It looks pretty great. I was gonna say something very inappropriate. The white stains on the graffiti.
Graffiti? Like, I couldn't tell it's graffiti. That doesn't look like anything.
What? It looks like graffiti. Whoa, look at that detail. Whoa.
Okay, that is actually quite a big difference. Yeah. I'm kind of blown away.
It's almost like there's like 23 years of difference. All of the textures have been upscaled to 4K.
And is that done through Valve, NVIDIA or modders? There's a modding team that actually has been working on this
and that's why it's taken so long is because they're fully overhauling,
essentially, the entire game. I don't know if it's because we're in pre-release.
There is a bit of stuttering and frame tearing I've noticed.
We've also got Framegen turned on right now to hit the like 250 plus FPS that we're getting.
Got it, okay. And within Remix itself, you can change a ton of settings.
Like, I don't know if you played Portal RTX, but you can turn on like full path tracing.
You can turn on just base RTX. Maybe turn Framegen off and just keep normal DLSS off.
Yeah, let's start with that. Yeah, we could start with DLSS off and just go full native 4K.
I don't know about that. My 1% lows hit six there for a second.
I wonder if it was just a lot of currents?
Yeah, because now it's back down to, my 1% lows are like my average of 86, 87.
Look at the texture on this freaking wall, man. That's wild.
Okay, this is pretty cool. That's all I gotta say. Oh, my game's better.
No, they've updated the story. This guy almost got away. Almost got away and then got burned alive.
Grass is like sprites. Mine's definitely a model of some sort.
Let's go into light and dark because you can kind of see,
there's like a stark transition where the game knows I'm going into darkness and it just immediately adjusts it.
Yeah. Yeah, it does it slowly. Yeah, look at that. The original did have baked in shadows
and there have also been some lighting updates over the years. Like that's why the lighting already looks pretty solid
for such an old game. And to be clear, we're playing on a 5090 right now at 4K.
So your mileage may vary. We'll talk a bit more about minimum specs and stuff later.
We're playing this game I didn't know. Yeah, let's both look at our own model.
Oh yeah, look at the models. Way better. Oh, look at that swinging into the light.
Oh, it's so good. And then back out. Wait, even, look at the glow. Yeah, that's wild.
That's so good. And even just the effect on the gravity gun itself,
the orange laser, whatever, looks way better. Ooh, that looks pretty good.
It looks okay, yeah. Okay. Oh, my God.
That's not even. That's so much better. Yeah. I actually did notice there's a hard,
I have a hard line here with my lighting.
Stay there. Turn off DLSS. Because I don't even know if the regular.
Oh, my God. Okay. 33 FPS, seven, six percent, six and one percent lows.
Still a ton of ray tracing noise though. Even, it might have been worse. Yeah.
Yeah, it's actually, wow. It's a transformer. It is set to transformer?
Yeah, it does support the new transformer model, which is great, typically better than CNN.
I think it was the middle left. Yeah, it's got none applied right now. So let's try like 8X.
Oh wow, that's way worse. Oh yeah, around the Windows there. Let's return it to default settings then.
Change it back. Turn DLSS back on. According to NVIDIA, they published some numbers recently
that said 90% of gamers use DLSS.
So maybe this is a game that's just like, everyone's gonna turn it on,
so we might as well make it better with it. I don't know. I feel like those numbers are probably a little misleading.
I don't imagine that it's gamers, 90% of the time are using DLSS.
It's 90% of gamers have used DLSS. Maybe.
Since our framerate is so high with DLSS, turning on Framegen probably doesn't feel
that awful actually. Yeah, oh yeah, the next room's the best part.
That's when you really get to try out the gravity gun. You start murdering things with the sawblades.
How do I get, oh. You figure it, puzzles. Half-Life was the best game when it comes to like,
giving you a mechanic and then teaching you how to use it. So you'd get a gravity gun and it was like,
oh, I can't go through here. What do I do? Oh, you move it with the physics-based gravity gun.
It's a good game, it's a good game. You can just end it at a good game. I get it, it's okay. It's the best game.
I'm learning now. Let's look at how much better your scene looks than I'm with it.
Right click, right click the canister. I get it. Right click the canister, right click it.
No, speak nicely to me. Please right click the canister.
Okay. All right, now I'll throw the canister at the wall.
Wait, wait, wait. Don't do it yet. I want to take a look at this room
and enjoy the lighting of this room first. Get into the same position as him with the canister.
Look at how much it's glowing off of the canister with the soft shadow on the wall too.
Even like the blood splatter looks so much better. It really does.
Actually, I wonder. Yeah, it looks like it's like... Look at this, go up to the wall and just right click.
I wouldn't be surprised if it does emit some light in the old one.
Nope. It doesn't. Wow. This is a RTX on baby.
Only possible. The gun itself has glow. Like there is a bit of glow around the gun,
but it doesn't look like it's on the wall. Look at those saws. Like your saws look more dangerous than my saws.
They look like saws. They do. These still look like saws. They just don't look as sharp.
Where's the microtransactions? There aren't any. Where's the...
Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah, yours is just like catch fire.
That's not emitting any light. Oh no, no. Oh my God.
You're doing it wrong. You've got a gravity gun. You've got free ammunition.
Oh. Boom.
That's pretty cool. Oh dude, it's like coming right there.
So you can pick up those blades. Yeah, you can pick up the saw. Yeah, you can rip the saw blades out of the wall
and then chuck them at people. Fortnite has this mechanics. Wow, Fortnite.
They finally caught up to Half-Life 2. Yeah, let's press F.
That's just like source engine flashlight. Yeah, but like yours looks so much better than...
Does mine have like a fade on? It looks like here is actually properly disperses
the shadow in the lighting whereas David's is just kind of a solid circle.
Chuck the barrels at him. Check the barrel, check the barrel. I have my nine mil.
Oh my God. Dude, I'm gonna crank 90s. Oh my God. You're wasting your ammo.
This is how you... Oh, what was that? What was that? Oh my God.
This is showing a lot of the limitations of the modern extra frame-ness.
Like the way that the... Oh yeah, the shadow from the Satellite. The shadow is getting really bad.
And if you look up, you can see all the tearing in the play.
We're locked at 60 FPS for capture so that might be exacerbating the issue but it certainly does not look good.
And look at the shadows on those cobblestones. This was actually shown off in 2021
but it's the first neural shader to come out. I don't know a ton about it or how it works exactly
but it looks like it adds some more detail in contrast when lighting is involved
with supposedly better performance.
That looks so sick. It looks so much better.
It did look really good. I can't wait to play for the first life too for like the 10th time.
Don't do that. Oh, that worked. Don't... Okay.
Don't tell me how to game. The point of gaming is to... Oh, the gunfire cast light too. It does.
Dude. Why are you so close when you explode things? We can go to the next spot.
Do you need me to play it for you, Ledger? No, I can do this.
Man, is this what's going to get me to buy a 5090?
Yeah, you canceled your order, right? I didn't cancel it. Linus gets to buy it when he gets here.
Right, Linus? Keep it up. As much as I like this,
I feel like it's a little overdone and I actually kind of prefer the orangey flames
on that one. I was going to say, the hot spots on this are so hot.
Yeah, yeah. I like the way it casts the light but I don't like the fire itself. Especially because it's still like that
half frame rate animation. Oh, you're right. Yeah, it is.
Especially on the top corner here, you can see it. The character does not look good
and the ghosting around him looks really bad. That is horrible.
Oh, jeez. They heard you talking.
Yeah. As much as we were enjoying the visuals and everything in this game,
we are on a maxed out computer. This is a 5090.
What's the recommended for this? The minimum spec is all that's up
on the Steam page so far. And it's an i5-8600 for the CPU.
It was pretty old. And an RTX 3060 Ti.
That's probably targeting like 1080p 30,
maybe 60, I don't know, frame gen, whatever. But let's try it.
Let's see just how well a 3060 Ti
can actually run this game. Turns out, not good.
Just the menu default settings looks horrible.
Yeah, there's some weirdness. Like this stuff in front actually looks okay.
But as soon as you start looking at this shimmery with the trees and everything,
it looks like old DLSS. Over here, it's the low preset.
So zero minimum light bounces and two maximum light bounces.
I'm ultra with one and four. Yeah.
Of course it's gonna look better. I don't even have any post effects on.
Oh yeah, I have all of them. I don't want to turn them on,
but I must. Do it. 1% lows of zero.
Yo, I've never seen that before in my life.
I've never seen that. 11 FPS. Look at your blur.
I wonder if there's motion blur on.
Remember kids, if you have a 3060 Ti, you too can enjoy zero FPS.
Just don't try to play it at 4K.
I'm sure if you were, let's try changing resolution down to like 1080p
and just see how it performs. Oh, and it's on auto for DLSS mode.
Let's try ultra performance first before maybe that's enough.
That's upscaling from 1286 by 736.
Is it like a PS3 game? Hell yeah. Oh, that does not look good.
At least our frame rate's a lot better. 1% lows are like 19 to 20.
It's still in the unplayable zones. Like 22 frames for a first person shooter is not at the time.
I will say though, looks better than the original. And so it's like a debatable,
which one is better than the other? Like there's obviously things about this that are better,
but. And I think if you're at like a static image, just looking still, yes, it looks a lot better, right?
In motion. The moment you move, it is immediately like, I would just play the original.
I'm gonna go back to the default settings. Okay. It's so interesting that they're willing
to call this the minimum. This is unplayable in my just opinion,
just seeing it, right? Try native 1080p on like low.
I wanna see what it's like without DLSS. I actually don't know if I have that option.
Well, we might have to do it in Windows. Oh yeah, let's try that. And then change the actual resolution of the monitor
and then launch it. Yours? Blomp, blomp.
I'm just having fun shooting these pants. That's why the original game was so good.
You'd just find random physics stuff to interact with. Like it's actually a huge part of modern gaming
that I really don't like, is the lack of like physics interactions. It's a big part of why Morrowind,
Oblivion and Skyrim are actually so fun is because they have real interactable stuff with physics.
Let me, it's a v-sync as well. Okay. Let's do custom so we can, oh, CNN transformer, yo.
Let's do quality, which will give us the book we were at before.
Of your screen. Oh! It's like just gone.
Yeah. Every time I hand up. Even with the birds, like the trails behind the birds there.
It's trying real hard. Would you rather play at 4K with high frame rates
in the original visuals or these frame rates in ray traced?
If it was these frame rates, like 1080p, this frame rate,
but like quality settings turned up a little bit, I would choose that, I think.
That's not your option. This performance, 36 frames, it drops to like 10.
Or just think. I couldn't know. I'd rather play the original as much as it's beautiful.
It's definitely a big bummer. I love the RTX remix stuff,
but the fact that it has such big performance overhead
makes it so inaccessible to so many people. I know.
Such a bummer. Well, the 4060, right? Just became the most common GPU,
I think on Steam hardware surveys. Oh, it just crashed. It just crashed.
Okay. Again, we're actually pre-release. Yeah, any bugs we encounter could whatever.
They gave us access like a whole weekend early. But if we're looking at like kind of near the bottom end
of the RTX capable cards as the recommended or minimum specs.
It is minimum. It is minimum. Right, like the most common card being that 4060,
I don't know, like it's gonna be inaccessible
to a lot of people. This is definitely something that if you wanna make
your old games look way better, you're gonna have to pay for better hardware to run it.
And that's just kind of the unfortunate reality of it.
Well, hopefully as more and more generations of this technology comes out,
we start to see it work on mid-tier hardware. 100%.
But as it is now, it's definitely an elite thing,
which is a huge bummer. It looks sick, but how does any of this work?
According to NVIDIA, Remix is a modding platform for remastering a catalog of fixed function
DirectX 8 and 9 games. It works by analyzing everything in real time
with the bridge. The bridge sends this info to the NV Remix bridge,
which converts 32-bit to 64-bit, giving them access to more memory.
The bridge then sends info and instructions to the Remix renderer,
which is what's really driving all of what you're seeing right now,
path tracing and asset swapping. NVIDIA's got a thorough explainer
and a guide to DIYing this stuff if you wanna try it out for yourself,
and we'll have it linked below. But what I wanna point out is that,
as super cool as this is, it's not a simple one-button solution
to magically make your older games look awesome.
To get something to this level, it still takes a bunch of work to capture the original game
and then add remastered or upscaled assets. Riley and Luke tried out a few remixed titles
on an episode of GameLink a while back, and the results are impressive,
but not as mind-blowing as what Orbifold Studios has managed to do here,
thanks to dedication and hard work. All right, Elijah, what do you think?
This has been the most I've been compelled to go back and play Half-Life.
Cause everyone's told me you should go back and play, it's revolutionary.
It is. And I've always looked at it like,
this looks incredible. I don't have a 5090,
but I would be compelled to go back and playing it if it looked like this.
If all this does is allow, you know, a few thousand younger gamers to go back
and enjoy Half-Life 2 as much as we did back in the day, maybe it was all worth it.
Shout out to the community for making all of this happen. Yeah, NVIDIA has created a super cool tool,
but if it wasn't for the modding teams actually using it,
we wouldn't get cool experiences like we're playing today. I can't wait to see what the future has in store
for older games, and I can't wait to tell you about our sponsor.
If you liked this video, check out the RTX remix video we looked at on game late.
Riley and Luke checked out a lot of really cool games.
Not this one though. Not this one. It wasn't ready yet.
Now it is. No? Soon. Today.
Maybe. Demo. Demo today. Tomorrow.