Half-Life: Legacy - Review
Aside from being TWOW's 10-year anniversary, yesterday was a very exciting day for me, due to many other things that were announced to happen during it! One of those was the release of a fanmade restoration mod for the original Half-Life, called Half-Life: Legacy.
HL: Legacy was made by The Phoenix Project, and I've been looking forward to it for a while now as mentioned previously. It's a "restoration" as the devs described, and it's basically a mod that makes relatively minor adjustments to the game that makes it feel slightly more more polished!
I am actually a very big fan of this type of mod! Although I mostly like my games to be pretty vanilla, it is nice to have some small improvements to make things cleaner. There's some games that I play with similar mods, such as System Shock 2, and I am very glad that one now exists for Half-Life 1!
HL: Legacy reminds me a lot of another mod, being the Half-Life 2: Update mod, which was released in March 2015 and was pretty much all visual. Both of these mods feature slight visual improvements, which — as Yahtzee said — you probably wouldn't notice without comparing them to the originals side-by-side, but ultimately that means they are doing their job properly!
In HL: Legacy's case those improvements mostly come from the lighting, with the most notable change being the fact that firearms now actually light up when you use them. This is a very noticeable detail that despite being relatively simple, ends up adding a lot of oomph to the weapons. Black Mesa did this as well, and it works super well in both!
Aside from that, though, the game mostly features quality-of-life improvements such as controller support; some restorations of old features such as an older look for the menu, some removed voice lines, and unlimited b-hopping; and more community-focused stuff, such as support for the Steam Workshop.
My personal favourite addition — and frankly what I was most looking forward to — are the Steam achievements! The game features 60 achievements that you get as you progress through the game or find special stuff. Although they are relatively basic, and I would've liked to see some more unique achievements, the achievement hunter in me is just happy that these exist! And I've had a lot of fun grinding them out so far.
On that note, I have mostly just used this mod as an excuse to play Half-Life 1 again, and it is really fun! I have played for over 6 hours, and I am currently in Interloper, so pretty close to the end of the game. I have 48 achievements so far, which is exactly 80%, and I plan to beat the game tomorrow and probably write about it as well.
In general, this mod is exactly what I was looking for! It's nothing insane, but it just adds some more polish to a game that I already love so much! And it has served as the perfect excuse for me to give the entire thing a look once again.
By the way, unrelated to most of this. While looking for the System Shock 2 modding page, I found this old tutorial by the Jacksepticeye on how to install mods for the game! Actually a very good guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y4psRCWoyQ
Shame you can't get the original game via traditional means anymore, though. Ugh.
