Half Life 2 out on Mac tomorrow
That's pretty much all we have to say -- the first-person shooter is one of the best-reviewed and best-selling games of all time, and it'll be running natively on the Mac thanks to the Steam for Mac release from a few weeks ago. If you've never played Half-Life 2, you're in for a treat, even if you never played the classic first title in the series. We haven't yet heard about a price (the PC version is currently at $20, though Valve has a history of dropping prices unexpectedly -- Portal was free for its Mac release), and while a few outlets are saying the two episodic followups to the game will be out tomorrow as well, we don't yet know that for sure. Stay tuned, as one of the biggest classics in PC gaming finally arrives on the Mac.
Share
Categories
The always impressive folks at Valve have released the trailer above, which will be familiar if you've ever seen a very popular Apple...
Add a Comment
Just bought HL2. I was going to hold off, but it's $6.99 right now. I'm not much of a FPS fan, so I'll hold off on the rest.
May 27 2010 at 9:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHL2 is out, along with episodes 1 and 2; TF2 is on the way soon and they're selling the entire Orange Box for pretty damn cheap ($20.99US).
They also updated the Steam Cloud to work with HL2/ep1/ep2 so you don't have to worry about manually moving game saves back and forth. I would try it out with my MBP and WinXP desktop, but for some reason XP decided to not want to connect to my network after applying WPA2 security to the WiFi....*sigh* more tinkering after work, I guess.
In any case, I'm glad these finally came to the Mac. It's about damn time!
How does one enable cheats for this game when running on a mac and when they are downloaded and launched through Steam? I can't find any 'halflife2' app in my app folder for example. Any ideas? Thanks.
May 27 2010 at 5:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI would so play this if I had the storage space to give up.
May 26 2010 at 3:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWait, think about it. The commerical spoof of HL2 is like what they released when they first teased it. So, that means that hopefully the ipod heavy commercial will be released!
May 26 2010 at 10:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWill it really "be running natively on the Mac" (as in rewritten for the Mac architecture), or just Cider/wine-ported, like most of the other games initially written for windows?
On one hand, Portal doesn't look like a cider port (looking at the file structure), on the other, it certainly feels so, and the application title "hl2_mac" does kinda hint at a container (one for both portal and - guess - hl2)
Games from The Orange Box use Half Life 2 as the executable. I guess it's easier that way since the games share the same engine.
The speed of Portal is more likely to be the lack of optimisation for OpenGL from Valve, or even the lack of optimisation for OpenGL in OS X.
It will be running native in the OS X environment. Valve has been hard at work re-writing the source engine to utilize OpenGL and cross-platform compilation. This means with the new versions of the Source SDK, companies can compile native binaries for Windows or OS X. This also means that Linux support is probably not too far off. It's a brilliant move. The PC Gaming market is struggling right now, and if Valve can show that the sales numbers are there on the Mac platform, it will become a lot more appealing for other developers to cross-compile their projects for release on multiple OSes.
As for hl2_mac; I believe that hl2_mac is simply the source engine. And how does it feel like a Cider port? It runs a zillion times better, looks better, and is far more stable and responsive than any cider port I've ever used.
I luv u iValve !
May 26 2010 at 3:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI hope they release Episode 3 soon. It's been 3 years since the last Episode! (lost coast doesn't count :P)
May 26 2010 at 2:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replyseriously hope they discount the whole Orange Box. I don't mind going into bootcamp for TF2.
May 26 2010 at 12:41 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI was thinking they'd release the Half-Life series like 2-3 months down the road, but dang, that was fast!
My Mac is now complete -.-
Hot Apps on TUAW
Deals of the Day
more deals- JVC Motion Sensing Clock Radio with Dual iPod Docks for $55 + free shipping
- Apple iPhone Headset with Mic for $4 + $2 s&h
- miFrame Picture Frame Dock for iPad for $64 + $8 s&h
- Refurb Apple iPod nano 8GB MP3 Player for $99 + free shipping, 16GB for $119
- Hannspree Apple-Shaped 28" 1080p LCD HDTV for $270 + free shipping
- Philips wOOx Alarm Clock Radio for Apple iPod / iPhone for $60 + free shipping
Software Updates
more updates- EFI Firmware Update brings Lion Internet Recovery to 2010-model Macs
- OS X Lion 10.7.3 released with Safari 5.1.3, Wi-Fi bug fix
- Aperture updated to 3.2.2, addresses Photo Stream issue
- Apple updates Keynote to address Lion issues
- Google Search app gets new look on iPad
- Apple releases Apple TV Software Update 4.4.3
Featured Stories
more stories
Popular Stories
TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
30 Comments