The Half-Life 2 RTX demo is out now and well worth a go… if your graphics card can take it

Hey, you can finally try out Half-Life 2 RTX. It's been a long ol' wait for this one, the team of modders/developers at Orbifold Studios have spent a good few years on this already, but at least two levels are ready to play right now.

Head over to the Half-Life 2 RTX steam page and it's available to download. Once in, you can play through Ravenholm, and if it's the set-up the same as when I played through it last week, Nova Prospekt will unlock once you're done there.

If you want to hop ahead then the old HL2 commands still work. Hit ~ to bring up the console, type sv_cheats 1 to enable cheats, then type sv_unlockedchapters 15. That won't unlock all 15 chapters and bypass the confines of the demo, sadly (I had hoped it might at first), but you can play both levels.

One thing to note with this version is that it's much, much, much, much more demanding than the original Half-Life 2. Take a look at the minimum system requirements here and make your own mind up:

That's not great news if you're on older hardware or an RTX 3060, which reportedly might struggle. You can lower the settings and turn off individual settings on the fly through the RTX Remix menu (Alt + X), however, which might help some.

If you want a better idea of what you're getting yourself into with the new demo, I wrote all about my first playthrough last week. To sum that up, it looks fantastic and there's been careful attention paid to the little details, though, at it's core, it's the same ol' Half-Life 2 we know and love.

Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.