It’s been established that Doom can run on produce, but porting wizardry doesn’t start and end with blasting cacodemons on increasingly ludicrous hardware setups. It’s sometimes the simple things that stick out most, like this web browser port of Half-Life 2. Not as silly as potatoes, but impressive all the same.
It’s got some kinks—my frames are a mite inconsistent and certain animations seem to be broken—but it is, in fact, Half-Life 2 in the browser. You can play the game as normal, use console commands, and send your working hours down the drain with a spot of entertainment slightly more sophisticated than the average Flash game.
The project has garnered lots of attention thanks to a post on X from Gabe Follower, which states it was “created by Slqnt and 98006 in just three months.” A follow-up post shared that the project was based on a similar browser port of the original Portal, just in case you don’t have enough browser-based Valve gaming in your life yet. Maybe try and get through these while waiting to respawn in Deadlock.
Fans seem happy that the game is playable in a new, novel setting. A reply on X from ripplesworld reads, “Shit gonna go triple platinum in middle schools nationwide.” The less-convinced HivoltageCS replied, “I don’t think the children are playing half-life anymore, bro.”
Either way, it’s neat to see a big Source engine FPS running in a tab on my browser. Maybe Half-Life 2 can be the next thing programmers get running on potatoes, earbuds, pregnancy tests, and whatever else is lying around in a given programmer’s house. I assume that’s how they pick this stuff.
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