 Good evening. Recently with the help of my friend Wolf Clock, I got my hands on a digital copy of the collector's edition of Half-Life 2. This includes the day 1 release builds of Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, and Half-Life Source. In fact, the build of Half-Life 2 was actually compiled on September 29th, 2004, over a month before the game's launch date, so it's technically a negative 48th day build. Anyway, being the giant nerd that I am, I was super excited to play through the original build of Half-Life 2 to see what's so different about it. Over the past 15 years, loads of changes have been made to the Source engine and to Half-Life 2 itself through the orange box update, and the steam pipe update, and Lord knows what else. Textures and models that got revamped or updated in Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and Episode 2 were backported, particle effects have been changed, player movement has been patched, and so on. So, now that I've played through it all, what's different? What's better? What's worse? Half-Life 2 better on day one. Well, kind of. You'd have to be a real Half-Life freak to notice most of the changes, and there definitely isn't a clear cut objective answer to a question like this, but overall, the game did feel just a little bit more immersive to me. So let's start with the good. First, the ragdoll physics when you kill enemies feel more responsive. They hit the ground faster and harder, while in the later builds they're kind of floaty and slow to drop. 357 kills really send enemies flying, too. Overall, I'd say that killing NPCs feels generally more satisfying in the original version. Second, the atmosphere of the canals seemed foggier and more dense. I'm not really sure if anything is actually different about them. It might have just been me gaslighting myself, but the water hazard and root canal chapters felt a lot more immersive in the moment. I'll have to look more into it later. Third, the files for the day one build are not encrypted at all, which means modding this version of the game is a lot easier since you don't have to use GCF to access the game's assets, which is a giant pain in the ass. And finally, you know how a lot of people have a bone to pick with Half-Life 2's weapon sound design? Well, I think it might have possibly been gimped in a patch at some point. On this day one build, the SMG and pistols sometimes sounded way beefier to my ears. Wolfcloch said this might have had something to do with the files being more heavily compressed and bringing out the base more, but I don't really know. Either way, something was definitely different about them, and I would definitely say they sounded better in the day one build. Before I get to the bad things, let's talk about the mixed bag. Stuff that some people might like and some people might hate. First things first, the day one build uses specular mapping instead of thong. This means that the reflection on your guns will sometimes look much different. In my opinion, it was a real hit or miss. Sometimes everything looked great and I wondered why Valve ever changed the system. And sometimes it looked like everything was coated in grease and oil. Second, the day one build of the game has different fire particles. Personally, I prefer them. I think they're a little bit moodier. But since they are a lower frame rate than what runs in current Half-Life 2, I can see how some people might feel differently. Ultimately, up to personal preference. Third, this version of the game is totally unpatched in regards to player movement, which means that bunny hopping is easier, but accelerated back hopping isn't possible. There's a reason that old Engine Half-Life 2 and new Engine Half-Life 2 were split into different speedrun categories. Player movement between the two is just flat out different. And finally, the old Vortigaunt textures. These puppies were redone in Episode 1 and their original textures look much grittier and nastier. These original textures fit the ragtag and dirty nature of the resistance better than the new ones, I suppose, but they also look really fucking weird. Once again, it's up to personal preference. Anywho, with that out of the way, let's get to the bad. This is the stuff I thought was worse on day one than in the modern build, and there's more than you might expect. For starters, the scout car controls like shit. Maybe it was something I was doing wrong, I mean the mudskipper segment felt fine, but I found it harder to steer the car, and it made the Highway 17 chapter a lot more annoying. I even, for the first time in my life, missed one of the dramatic stunt jumps. No? Oh, I'm gonna kill myself. Second, for some reason my mouse input felt weird and kind of jittery. Like, if I dragged my mouse directly to the left or right, it would slowly notch up or down as well. I don't know how to properly describe it, and while it wasn't a huge game-breaking problem, it was noticeable, and hurt the experience just a tad. So yeah, mouse input was a little bit strange, and I didn't like it. Third, no graph out of date rebuilding. On every single level. Fourth, there's no visual indicator for which Combine soldiers are shotgunner troops. They all have the same textures. The shotgunner variant textures were added in episode one, and I think they were a great inclusion because it helped with reading combat encounters a lot. It's harder in this version to tell at a quick glance who's gonna pepper you with Nerf darts and who's just gonna walk up to you and BOW! BOW! BOW! So in that regard, I think the latest build takes the cake. And finally, there were some visual glitches I occasionally encountered throughout the day one build. Water glitched out a couple times, sometimes these weird long black or dark grey sheets would just appear from thin air, and sometimes the game just generally looked a little bit fucked up. And while these were few and far between, it is a sign of a rougher and jankier product. But with all that out of the way, was Half-Life 2 better on launch than it is nowadays? Well, I hate to be a fence-sitter, but I feel like while the atmosphere of Half-Life 2 was definitely more cohesive in the original version, the new builds are undeniably better polished experiences, and the gameplay feels more refined. They both have strengths and weaknesses, but at the end of the day, I think I'd still recommend people play the Steam version over the original. If someone can find a way to port the old fire into the modern build though, I'd love to see that. But if you're a Half-Life 2 fan like I am, I highly recommend you give the day one build a try yourself. It's an interesting and slightly surreal experience. It gives you a better idea of the experience Half-Life 2 offered to people back in the day. Anyway, thanks for- Oh, what's that? Alright, I almost forgot. Half-Life 2 Collectors Edition also comes with Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life Source. So, what was different about these other games on launch? Let's have a quick look. Counter-Strike Source, as it came packaged with the Half-Life 2 Collectors Edition, had a couple of interesting key differences to the version we know today. However, before I start on them, I want to put a disclaimer that early CSS builds are on an older version of the Source engine that is unsupported and considered less secure for online play. What exactly being less secure for online play means is not something I fully understand, but it's also not something I want to test given the scary nature of remote code execution bugs. So, if you want to try out day one CSS, I recommend limiting yourself to fooling around with bots and single player like I did. What the fuck? Where's the fucking bots? What the fuck? Or with friends on LAN. I strongly recommend against joining an online server. That being said, yes, to my surprise, there are people still hosting online servers for this build. At a quick glance, they seem to be either on other continents, hence the high latency, or have Spanish operators, meaning they're likely hosted in Mexico. And there's even a couple of people still playing on them. How fascinating is that? Anywho, the actual gameplay of day one CSS is pretty much identical to the experience you get with the modern build of the game, but there's a few interesting changes. To start with the menu differences, you're given the option of buying ammo before each round, which I don't think is present in the current build of the game. However, you have no choice of selecting your preferred player model after choosing your team, which is kind of sad. The player models themselves are also interesting. They're the beta models, which are a lot simpler looking. They're more cartoony, and I kind of like them. These models are also the models used in the strange test underscore speakers map that I talked about back in my CSS creepy video. Meaning if you boot it up in this day one build, you won't see any error signs. Still a weird ass map. Other than that, the crosshair looks slightly more narrow and the game lets you launch Half-Life 2 maps but not play on them. That's about all the differences I noticed. While this version of the game is novel, and I find the original player model cool, it is still objectively jankier, less secure, and generally worse than the Steam version. While I recommend playing the day one build of Half-Life 2, the world probably wouldn't be much worse off if we lost this. But with CSS down, it's time to talk about the Half-Life community's second favorite punching bag, Half-Life Source. Half-Life Source in the present day as a reputation as a broken downgrade to the original. And it's earned. However, after booting up Half-Life Source as it launched on day one, it was increasingly apparent to me. This game got fucked by updates. Yeah, there are occasionally some kind of shiny floors, but they're nowhere near as egregious as the freshly mopped, sopping wet ones that appear in the modern build. The lighting and shadows look nice, or at least much nicer than in the retail build, and the animations seem to be working fine too. No one's floating above their chairs five feet in the air. It's not perfect. There's still some visual clash between the Half-Life 2 assets and the Half-Life 1 ones. But in every regard I can think of, this version of Half-Life Source is objectively better than the Steam version. That being said, you should still really just play the original. So altogether, was Half-Life 2 better on day one? Maybe? I mean, I enjoyed it, but I'm a freak. Was Counter-Strike Source better on day one? No, I wouldn't say so at all. It is novel though, but Half-Life Source? Yeah, 100%. That game has been beaten and bruised by updates repeatedly. I almost feel bad for it. That's all I've got for today though. If you enjoyed this video, you should consider joining my Discord, following me on Twitter, and or supporting me on Patreon so I can make more videos like this one. Take your pick. I also stream all the damn time, so look out for that. Thanks for watching. Have a good day. It's been a real honor. I'm looking forward to working together.