Half-Life 2 mod turns the PC classic into the greatest Lego video game never made
Gordon Freeminifig
In the almost 20 years since Half-Life 2 refined what first-person shooters could be, it’s been modded into just about every form you can imagine. From complete virtual reality conversions and real-time strategy games to fan-made remasters impressive enough to earn a thumb-up from Valve, there seems to be no limit to what Half-Life has been, is and could be.
Enter the latest mod to take Gordon Freeman’s seminal adventure and twist it into yet another surprising shape. And that shape is, uh, plasticky and rounded?
Lego Half-Life 2 overhauls the whole of Half-Life 2 by replacing every single character model in the game - Freeman himself, obviously, and main characters like Alyx Vance and the G-Man, but also Combine soldiers, random citizens of City 17 and the alien Vortiguants - with a Lego minifig. (Well spotted, PCGamesN.)
Not Dave or Daniel’s Steam Workshop mod only replaces character models, leaving environments unchanged and therefore casting those innocent bricky toys into the hellish nightmare of fighting for their lives against headcrabs.
Because the environments are untouched, that also means that all of the Lego-sized (well, supersized for Lego, small for humans) characters suddenly look a bit Borrowers-esque as they’re shoved around by the Combine and hide from even more enormous Striders.
An “official trailer” put together by YouTube channel Ice Smash shows the mod in action, combined with a separate third-person camera mod that makes it look like a Half-Life version of those Lego video games that were all the rage about 15 years ago. But y’know, with added trauma. The trailer even adds the old Lego Media opening splash screen for good measure, which sent me even further down the nostalgia wormhole.