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“What if we recreated this game in that engine?” is a classic modding conceit, up there with “What if Stalker was even more miserable?” and “What if this character had no clothes on?”. In fact, I’m surprised it’s taken 25 years for someone to stick Halo‘s multiplayer into Half-Life. It’s the sort of harebrained scheme I would have eagerly read about on Planet Half-Life back in 2006.

Regardless, all credit to The Phoenix Project for picking up this anachronistic baton with Halo Goldsource, which takes an admirable stab at recreating Halo’s multiplayer in the Half-Life engine. The mod brings Halo’s slayer and firefight modes into Valve’s shooter, including much of Halo’s distinctive arsenal, “many” remade maps, and a few original arenas too.

While the mod has been available in an “early access” phase for a while, The Phoenix Project considers the latest release to represent its formal exit from beta. New features in the 1.0 version include native Linux support, “basic” controller support intended mainly to benefit Steam Deck players, improved shield generation to better reflect how player shields recharge in Bungie’s FPS, and HD sound design.

There’s a trailer showing off the mod in action below, and I respect the effort on display. The weapons are impressively authentic to OG Halo, from the rumble of the MA5 Assault rifle to the “pap-pap-pap” of the C.E. Magnum. My favourite is the Needler, which cleverly reuses the tracking projectiles of Half-Life’s Hivehand to replicate how its magenta crystals seek out their targets.

That said, I’m not convinced that combining Halo’s multiplayer with Half-Life’s tech offers much of value beyond a fun academic exercise, at least not in its current form. Crucially, the mod seems to lack two of the most important things that makes Halo’s multiplayer what it is. The first is its movement. Halo’s moon-gravity leaping and striding is very different from Half-Life’s “running on linoleum in your socks” style-glide, and Halo Goldsource mostly looks like playing Half-Life in a Mjolnir suit.

The other notable absence, of course, is Halo’s vehicles. Admittedly, these would be next to impossible to recreate in Half-Life’s engine, which is almost certainly why the mod sticks to non-vehicular modes. Nonetheless, vehicles are a huge part of what makes Halo’s multiplayer fun, and without them, I think I would rather play vanilla Half-Life deathmatch.

To me, Halo and Half-Life are like tea and coffee, two substances that have already been perfected, and are enjoyable as individual things. While you can technically mix them together, I don’t think the result shows either at their best. Still if you want to whack a slightly blockier Spartan with an energy sword in a Half-Life canyon, Halo Goldsource will let you do that.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad’s home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he’s always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he’ll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.