Half Life 2 RTX demo hands-on preview: A massive visual upgrade from the original, but there's a problem

If you are a fan of the Half Life franchise, this time might be great for you as Valve's iconic Half Life 2 now has an RTX mod, and you can play the demo on Steam right now. As a lifelong fan of the franchise, I had to try the RTX version, and after playing for some time, I think it's not exactly what I expected, but it works. If you are expecting anything new, that wouldn't be here as it is a purely graphical overhaul. Moreover, you can only play the Nova Prospekt and the Ravenholm missions.

Truth be told, this latest graphical overhaul is as good as a mod gets, and that's where it stops. The story, gameplay, and gun mechanisms are of course exactly the same, and it's definitely Half Life 2, so all the physics-based puzzles are there as well. Hence, there is no point dissecting the game as it's probably one of the best ones out there.

Let's take a look at how the mod changes the experience, and where it could have done better.

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Half Life 2 RTX demo looks beautiful at first glance

In terms of how the game looks compared to the original version, breathtaking would be the perfect word to describe it. However, performance is where I believe this new mod falters. The game is almost more than 20 years old now, and even with an RTX 4060 (which is a budget GPU in the RTX segment), I expected better performance.

First, I'll talk about how it looks, then we can go deeper into what could have made the real difference, and cons are always better kept for last.

Half Life 2 RTX looks breathtaking (Image via Orbifold Studios)

Half Life 2 RTX demo starts in Ravenholm, and with the added lighting and textures, I forgot for a moment that I'm playing the same game that I played more than a decade ago. Even the foliage has been worked on, and it looks pretty neat. I do have a small complaint regarding the color tone, though. As I said earlier, the RTX version looks breathtaking, and if this was a completely new game, I would have fallen in love with the tone that the creators wanted to set.

However, it is Half Life 2, and I already have a preconceived notion of how the mood would be. I don't know if it is better or worse, but the punchy and vibrant colors in the game made it something different, and I still don't know how to feel about it. I do love the flames right now; they light the atmosphere up in an instant, and due to the path tracing technology, you can see all the shadows and reflections in real time. That's something I absolutely loved in Half Life 2.

Enemies in Half Life 2 RTX (Image via Orbifold Studios)

I also think that they have reworked the enemies as well. The zombies and the Headcrabs in Ravenholm and their usual clunkiness due to the lack of texture are gone. Hence, it felt more realistic in some sort of way.

There were several instances of attention to detail that I noticed. For instance, there are more tools and boxes everywhere; even the blade that you use to kill zombies with the gravity gun looks gorgeous, and everything has that 3D feel to it, which makes the game more immersive than ever.

As a verdict, in terms of visual fidelity, I didn't even expect Half Life 2 to ever look this good. However, when it comes to performance, it's a completely different scenario. Right now, I have an RTX 4060 with an i5 12th Gen processor, and this runs almost every game smoothly, and trust me, I wasn't expecting to get 100+ FPS in a modded version of Half Life 2 RTX. However, it failed to meet my expectations.

You need to turn Frame Generation on in Half Life 2 RTX (Image via Orbifold Studios)

First of all, the game is heavily dependent on Frame Generation, which means, to have a playable version of Half Life 2 RTX, you need to turn your DLSS on, and you don't get to choose. Personally, I don't prefer turning Frame Generation on, but if it makes the game work better, I don't mind. I remember playing the PC enhanced version of Witcher 3, and with Frame Gen, there was some massive FPS boost, and I felt the difference.

Now, in Half Life 2 RTX, if you turn the Frame Generation on, you definitely get the FPS boost, and it's smoother than before. I was getting more than 70 FPS, and sometimes it even crossed 100, which should have been pretty great. However, in reality, the gameplay didn't feel like I was playing at the shown FPS, and there were several lags here and there. To check if it was using my GPU's full potential, I turned the GPU usage on, and it was almost 98% all the time.

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In Conclusion

In terms of graphical overhaul, Half Life 2 RTX is everything you'd want from a mod to be. The game looks crisp, textured, and more cinematic. The vibrant atmosphere brought everything to life more than ever before. However, in terms of performance, it fell short. If you want to have the best experience and relive the Half Life 2 experience in modern texture and lighting, an RTX 4060 won't be enough for you. That limits the player base to a certain section, and in terms of accessibility, it's not good.

I do believe it's fixable via a new update. Right now, we only have the demo to play, and we can expect a complete Half Life 2 RTX experience when it launches if some things are done right.

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Reviewed on: PC

Platform (s): PC (Via Steam)

Code provided by: Nvidia

Publisher (s): Orbifold Studios

Release date: March 18, 2025