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In preparation for the Steam deck, HL2 has gained a greater vision, Vulkan support and more changes.

Over the years, "Half-Life 2" has undergone some minor updates. But before Valve's new handheld computer, the company had perfected their groundbreaking shooter with major beta updates to ensure that it looked as smooth as possible not only on the Steam platform, but also on all other modern PCs.

Although it was not publicly announced on the game's store page, Valve-centric YouTuber Tyler McVicker discovered an update to the Half-Life 2 beta branch. Presumably, the update includes many bug fixes that have not been resolved over the years, increasing the FOV ceiling to 110, and adjusting the UI to support ultra-wide resolution.

However, perhaps the most significant (if not so gorgeous) new addition is the support for the Vulkan rendering API, which performs significantly better on Linux-based operating systems such as SteamOS. Valve brought Vulkan support to Portal 2 in February. With the launch of the "Half-Life 2" game, McVicker now estimates that we can expect most of Valve's backup catalog to be updated to run well on the Steam platform.

Compatibility has always been the main concern of customers and Steam itself, and Valve has recently begun to work hard to catalog the entire platform for compatibility. Although most games cannot run on Linux, Valve has been working hard to ensure that its Proton compatibility layer supports as many Windows games as possible. An early issue was that games using Easy Anti-Cheat were difficult to run with Proton. This issue was resolved in the update last month.

The half-life 2 beta update is not ready to go live. McVicker pointed out that the current version has a slight lag problem, but you can download it yourself by selecting the Beta tab under the properties of "Half-Life 2" in the Steam library. Hopefully, the landmark FPS will be a great showcase when Steam Decks starts shipping in December.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time-she has been thinking about games ever since. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 and has been engaged in freelance reporting for companies such as Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, and VG247 for three years. Nat has integrated into the European indie game industry and has developed acclaimed mini-games such as Can Androids Pray. Nat is always looking for new curiosity to scream-whether it is the next best indie game darling, or just Scotmid People who converted into Black Mesa. She also played for a competitive Splatoon team and appeared informally in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.

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