James Lucas is an Executive Editor from Newcastle, England. They have written for sites like IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, with a special focus on FPS games, Soulslikes, and survival horror.
Half-Life 3 has never felt closer, but as the excrutiating wait continues into 2026, we once again look to the community to fill the Gordon Freeman-shaped void in our lives.
As always — well, except for Hunt Down the Freeman — they haven’t disappointed. Capping off the year is sairikiy with the incredibly impressive Quake-Life, a complete overhaul that sends the MIT graduate in his bright orange HEV suit through the slipgate to fight back against the legions of Shub-Niggurath.
I like to imagine Quake-Life is what happens if Gordon refuses G-Man’s offer.
He retains his entire arsenal, from the iconic red crowbar to the tau cannon and even satchel charges and snarks, demade in the original Quake engine with near 1:1 accuracy. Considering that Half-Life was developed on a modified version of that same engine, dubbed GoldSrc, it’s fascinating to see its gameplay transposed back in time.
How To Install Quake-Life
You can either install the mod for the original Quake or the updated Bethesda version, and it’s a fairly simple process;
Download the 1.0 release here.
Extract the files into your Quake folder (or the rerelease subfolder for the Bethesda version).
Under the ‘Shortcut’ tab in properties, enter “+exec halflife.cfg -game HalfLife” into the comment box (without the quotes).
Once that’s done, when you boot up the game via the shortcut, you will be playing Quake-Life; the menu is a little different, with Half-Life sound effects and a new background, and you’ll immediately notice upon starting a new game that you have Gordon Freeman’s weapons, rather than the Ranger’s.
The mod also overhauls the UI to make it more like Half-Life, and there are even crates to smash open with the crowbar, HEV charging stations, and a few of the deatmatch levels, so you can really experience what Valve’s defining classic would look like had it been made in the original Quake engine.
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If that’s not enough Half-Life to tide you over until 2026, though, then you might want to check out the latest Raising the Bar: Redux update, which features some incredible vortigaunt redesigns more in keeping with the original game, and beta-style antlion thumpers dotted throughout the wasteland.
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