In 2020, Valve offered Steam users the possibility of playing the entire saga Half-Life free of charge and for two months. That was three years ago, but this November 2023 the 25th anniversary of the first game was celebrated, and the celebration included a 100% discount for any Steam user. If you're not good at math, then nothing, saying that a discount with that percentage is the same as saying "free."
A piece of advice: if you've come this far, don't wait another second and head to this link, where you can link Half-Life to your account for free. You have to hurry, because the offer expires today. In theory it lasts 24 hours, and it began yesterday, November 19. Once downloaded, you can continue reading this article, which explains, for example, how to play it on Linux.
Install and play Half-Life on Linux
The game is available for Windows, macOS and SteamOS+Linux, which is the same as saying on Linux through Steam. One of the novelties has been improve Steam Deck compatibility, so that the minimum necessary is Ubuntu 12.04 must be taken a little with a grain of salt. The theoretical Linux system requirements would be Ubuntu 12.04 and:
- Dual-core processor from Intel or AMD at 2.8GHz.
- 1GB of RAM.
- OpenGL 2.1.
- 4GB of storage.
- OpenAL compatible sound card.
- NVIDIA GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radaeon HD2600/3600 graphics card with its drivers.
Steps to follow
If your equipment meets the above requirements, and if not I would also try because I think they are very generic, you must do the following:
- Since we have already linked the game to our account, the next thing is to install Steam. It is usually in official repositories of many Linux distributions, but a DEB package is also offered for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, it is in Flatub (flatpak) and in Snapcraft (snap).
- We open the Steam app. It is likely to be updated.
- We log in. As an optional step, we can go to the settings and put the application in Spanish.
- Let's go to Library.
- On the left side, we look for Half-Life, which is not waiting for you.
- We click play. We look forward to playing.
Tested on also on Manjaro. It's a game that's 25 years old, so even though it's been updated a little, works well on almost any computer may he remain alive and well. At first it seems like it has some delay, when it is on top of the rail, but in reality we are seeing bumps because it does not have perfect curves. And it works with a controller, even with the analog sticks; no need to use the keyboard.
About Half-Life
Half-Life is a game saga FPS. The first of them arrived in 1998, several years after the popular Doom, and at that time there was time to improve the graphics considerably. It was developed by Valve and named game of the year by more than 50 publications, as they already remember on their Steam page.
In the story, the protagonist, Freeman, heads to his job on a day that is supposed to be normal, but accidentally A door opens to a parallel universe called Xen. What remains is the game itself, a lot of bugs to kill with all kinds of weapons that you will obtain as you progress.
As we have already explained, you can play with a normal controller, even using the analog sticks. If the controller is good, it will go faster or slower depending on how much they move. You shoot with the triggers (the ones below), you change weapons with L1/R1, you jump with the one below the right crosshair (X or A), you open doors with the one on the left (Square or X), He crouches with the one on the right (Circle or B), and he dies a lot if you are not used to FPS with a few years behind him.
Link it to your account now; Enjoy it whenever you want and wherever you want.