A brand new replace for Valve’s first sport, 1998’s beloved first-person shooter Half-Life, has fastened an outdated, small, and annoying animation glitch present in one of many sport’s most memorable ranges. And followers, myself included, are very enthusiastic about it.

The unique Half-Life has loads of memorable moments all through its marketing campaign. However one of the crucial well-known must be chapter six, “Blast Pit.” On this degree, gamers are launched to an enormous alien tentacle in a still-impressive set piece wherein it crashes by means of a window in a missile silo and drags away a helpless researcher. Nonetheless, for a really very long time now, an animation glitch has made this second look wonky and damaged.

Final week, Valve launched a big Twenty fifth-anniversary patch for Half-Life that added in outdated reduce content material and new maps, fastened quite a few glitches, and even made the sport verified on Steam Deck. It was an amazing patch! Nonetheless, even after that huge replace, the Blast Pit animation bug remained. Even after two smaller patches had been put out by Valve to repair some minor points created by the Twenty fifth-anniversary replace, the Blast Pit bug was nonetheless within the sport. It taunted gamers, myself included, who went again to replay the sport for the a centesimal time. A developer who labored on Half-Life even not too long ago commented on the damaged animation and joked that it wanted to be fastened. And now it lastly has after many, a few years.

On November 22, Valve launched one other small patch for Half-Life designed largely to repair a couple of extra issues the large replace launched. And within the patch notes, I noticed a be aware that caught my consideration:

• Fastened timing for the sequence the place a tentacle grabs a scientist in Blast Pit.

May it’s? Had Valve lastly fastened this tiny error that had lingered for many years at this level? I shortly hopped into Half-Life, loaded up Blast Pit, and watched that helpless scientist get grabbed and pulled away. However this time, he was really related to the tentacle and never floating a number of toes in entrance of it. I may need whispered, “Wow.”

Over on the Half-Life subreddit, gamers are additionally celebrating the fastened animation. “These loopy bastards did it,” one person replied. “That little bug irritated me a lot for some purpose, so I unironically contemplate Half-Life a greater sport now that it’s lastly fastened lol,” posted another person.

Whereas I’m pleased Half-Life is getting a lot love from Valve proper now within the type of all these updates and fixes, I’m additionally curious as to why. Positive, it’s the sport’s Twenty fifth anniversary, so it is smart to replace it.

However issues like this make it really feel as if a bunch of devs, or perhaps even only one Half-Life superfan inside Valve, are on a mission proper now, simply digging into the sport and fixing long-standing bugs. And Valve appears to be okay with it. And you realize what, I’m okay with it, too! I salute whoever is liable for bettering Half-Life all these years later.

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