We may be living in a bit of a retro shooter renaissance, but I'm sorry to say, the original shooters of old don't really hold up. Go back and play the original Half-Life and you'll be wondering why the firearms seem to have very little recoil, why the pistol is basically a laser with infinite range, and why Gordon Freeman has no feet if you look straight down.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways to experience Half-Life without going back to the original, and now we can add one more to the list. Best of all, this new mod remasters the game with a very light touch, which fans are calling the "best way" to experience Half-Life outside of Black Mesa.
It's called MMod, and it's available for free on Steam. The fan-made mod, courtesy of the MMod Team, brings new sound effects, visual effects, and modern shooter mechanics alongside retouched textures and tweaked AI.
The biggest changes come to Half-Life's weapons, which now have dynamic bullet spread and optional non-hitscan bullets. This will make Half-Life feel a lot more like modern shooters although not quite as hardcore as something like Escape from Tarkov. There are new weapon animations, new attachments such as silencers, and new functionality like alternate firing modes. There are also new weapon sound effects and visual effects for explosions, muzzle flashes, and bullet impacts.
The rest of MMod offers lightly retouched textures, restores some cut HEV voice lines, and adds a chapter select screen so you won't have to replay Half-Life from start to finish. The maps are largely the same as you remember, but there have been a few "tweaks" for pacing. If some of these changes sound great and some not-so-great, you can toggle them in the options menu.
MMod is going down well with Half-Life fans, with 98 percent positive reviews as of the time of this writing. A lot of them are calling MMod the "best way to experience the original Half-Life" outside Black Mesa, which is a far more extensive remake of the original game.
And if you're looking to experience a Half-Life game that was never released, someone has recreated part of the canceled Arkane game Return to Ravenholm and released it as a free mod.