The popular Half-Life 2 RTX demo is now available for free on Steam for all owners of the original game. This remake of the 2004 classic uses modern ray tracing technology to enhance the gaming experience. Players can experience two of the game’s most iconic sections in remastered graphics.
- Free demo for owners of the original game
- Reworked levels: Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt
- Use of ray tracing and high-resolution textures
- Minimum system requirements: Intel Core i5-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 50 GB storage space
Revised levels: Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt
In the demo, players can explore the gloomy city of Ravenholm and the Nova Prospekt prison. These sections are considered particularly atmospheric and benefit from the nocturnal environments and interior areas that highlight the ray tracing effects. The selection of these levels allows the graphical improvements to be presented in a particularly impressive way.
Technical improvements and requirements
Half-Life 2 RTX features completely reworked, high-resolution assets and materials. A particularly demanding pathtracing mode challenges current hardware. The minimum system requirements are:
- Processor: Intel Core i5-8600 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics card: At least GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
- Disk space: 50 GB free memory
These requirements are moderate for a game with a ray tracing focus, but still demanding. The high-resolution assets also take up a considerable amount of memory.
Availability and outlook
The demo is available free of charge on Steam for all owners of the original game. A release date for the full remake has not yet been announced by Orbifold Studios, who are leading the project with support from Nvidia. As this is a fan project, it could be some time before the full game is released in a remastered form.
For fans of the original, the demo offers an exciting insight into the possibilities of modern graphics technologies and arouses anticipation for a complete remake. It is now available on Steam.
