I have a confession to make. I have never played Half-Life or Half-Life 2. The problem is that I didn’t have a computer good enough to run Half-Life when it came out, and when Half-Life 2 came out and everyone was raving about both, I never picked it up because I had never played the first one.
I’ve decided that it’s time to change that. I’m going to play through Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 & 2. The problem is that it’s not exactly simple to figure out which Half-Life I want to start with. So far I’ve seen Half-Life, Half-Life Source, and several graphical update mods, some of which are released and some of which aren’t.
I figured I’d put my problem here to get some feedback from the community. Which Half-Life should I buy, and then which graphics mod/mods if any should I install in order to better enjoy the experience?
Thanks in advance for the feedback. I’m looking forward to playing this classic finally.
Manifest Pixel 
I’d say… just the plain ol’ original Half-Life.
Are you going to give ‘Opposing Force’ and ‘Blue Shift’ a shot, too? They’re not essential to Gordon Freeman’s story, but they are fun.
I hadn’t even heard about those two “expansions”. Now I need to find out which copy of Half-Life comes with both of them.
I’d like to play through all of them, but I have almost no clue where to start. I guess it’s off to Steam to start browsing Half-Life titles.
Half-Life is the place to start. Any version of it, so long as its the original game.
Keeping with the science terms, Valve then released ‘Opposing Force’ and ‘Blue Shift’ as separate, follow-up games that followed the story of Half-Life from different points of view.
Then, there was Half-Life 2, and the two episodes.
I agree, the first Half-Life is awesome and it is a must to play first. They are super classics. I think I’ve played the beginning of HL about 10 times. It has a great opening