Aside from titles like DOOM or Quake, I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that there are first-person shooters more influential than Valve's 1998 hit Half-Life and Bungie's critically acclaimed 2001 Xbox flagship Halo: Combat Evolved.
The former revolutionized FPS (first-person shooter) storytelling and introduced the GoldSrc engine — a modified version of Quake's that was the foundation for the Source engine used in popular games like Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and Titanfall.
Halo, meanwhile, strongly promoted more strategic gameplay with the innovative two-weapon limit and brought the genre into the mainstream console market.
Indeed, both titles are legendary. But if both were fused together into some kind of Frankengame, what would the resulting project look like?
To be honest, it's something I've never wondered about, even though both games are amongst my favorites of all time. Thanks to the hard work of talented modders, however, I don't need to.
That's because the team over at The Phoenix Project Software, a group of developers making games in the GoldSrc and Source engines, just recently released Halo: GoldSource.
It's an ambitious multiplayer mod for the original Half-Life that "recreates the legendary gameplay of the iconic & beloved [Halo] franchise in the Half-Life engine."
You can download it from ModDB here; installation instructions are in the readme file the mod comes with.
Halo: GoldSource features a wide variety of remade classic Halo maps like Blood Gulch, Battle Creek, Boarding Action, and more, along with entirely original ones.
Several of the series' iconic weapons have also been implemented with their beloved old-school sound effects, and the shield regeneration mechanic that's core to Halo's balance is here as well. You can even choose a cool Spartan skin to use for your player model, though you can also be Gordon Freeman or other Half-Life characters if you want to be.
It's essentially the Halo: Combat Evolved you know and love, but with GoldSrc's Quake-style movement and aiming, and it looks like a ton of fun to play.
Notably, the mod features good old free-for-all Slayer as well as cooperative PvE Firefight against Half-Life enemies, with a hook into the Steam network that makes it easy to connect to and play with your friends.
It's also worth noting that Halo: GoldSource has actually been available in beta for nearly an entire year, with its developers gradually testing and introducing new features over time.
However, this full 1.0 release is the first update to the project since September 2024, and it introduced the aforementioned recharging shield, tons of important gameplay bugfixes, as well as support for controllers and the Linux operating system.
Just because Halo: GoldSource is now in a complete state doesn't mean that its creators are done with the mod, though.
In fact, lead developer Sabian says their team has "huge plans for this project beyond maps and weapons," and aims to release major content updates on a consistent basis. The first of these will be Version 1.1 — the "Winter 2025 Update" scheduled for later in 2025.
"Of course, we aren't going to ditch or stop working on this title. ... Our aim is to keep working on this on the side, and although there will be blocks of time where we will take a break from HaloGS, ultimately, it will keep going for as long as possible," they wrote in a news post. "The goal is to release, whether big or small, a new major update for HaloGS every 3-4 months; this schedule may not be perfectly kept, but it is the best plan to keep this title moving forward."
It's always great to see Halo's passionate community releasing new creations, whether they're wacky pirate ship mods inspired by One Piece and Sea of Thieves, Helldivers 2-themed Forge maps with custom-scripted stratagems, or projects like this one that bring two entirely new game engines.
Note that to play this one, all you'll need is the original Half-Life that's available on Steam for $9.99.
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