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[IbizaPocholo]

A game for the ages, the DF team return to Half-Life 2 to appraise the original PC version running on classic PC hardware and the 'impossible port' that is the OG Xbox rendition of the game. Rounding off the line-up, we have the much-maligned PlayStation 3 'Orange Box' version... is it really as bad as legend says?

 

[Xdrive05]

I think the geometry reduction on the OG Xbox is fascinating. Looks like it took a lot of extra work to get that version playable and out the door.

 

[Romulus]

The original Xbox version always blew my mind considering it was running on a 6th gen console

 

[diffusionx]

I first played through this game on an absolute garbage dump of a PC that ran it at like 15fps on low and there was a noticeable pause whenever heavy physics came in to play as the CPU (first gen P4) struggled to catch up. I don’t know how the Xbox port is but it is probably a better experience than what I had. The second time I played through it was on the 360 which was totally fine.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

One of the more interesting ports to the Original Xbox is Half Life 2 released in 2005. It was handled internally by Valve as their first but important step to bring the Source Engine to consoles for the very first time. In today's episode we take a closer look at the port and understand how it was achieved on the OG Xbox with a 733Mhz CPU and just 64Mb of RAM.

TimeStamps:

00:00 - 01:03 - Intro
01:04 - 05:42 - Xbox port tech breakdown
05:43 - 07:35 - Impressive Xbox Audio
07:36 - 10:25 - Does overclocking fix the framerate?
10:26 - 12:05 - Final thoughts and outro