Half-Life 2 is Now an RTS Thanks to This Wonderful Mod

It's now been ten years since Valve transported players into Half-Life 2, that seminal first-person shooter featuring the awe-inspiring dystopia of City 17, the unforgettable tripedal giants known as Striders, and the haunting and bleak urban landscapes that Gordon Freeman crowbarred his way through.

While it's perfectly understandable to cling onto the hope that, on some electrifying day, Half-Life 3 will release and finish a story that started in 1998, here's a mod that will at least dull the pang of anguish while we wait.

A modder collective, called Vortal Storm, has released the beta build of a Half-Life 2 mod that completely reimagines it as an RTS game. The assets are all in place, from Combine soliders to resistance fighters to those gargantuan Striders, but now are all displayed and controlled from a typical RTS bird's-eye-view.

The free multiplayer game, called Lambda Wars, allows players to control either the Combine Overwatch or the Resistance forces, with the signature RTS goal in place of destroying your opponent's base.

Vortal Storm says the look was achieved by applying a Source Engine modification to the 2010 RTS Alien Swarm (this mod has now been in development for six years). It notes on its Steam Page that both the Combine and Resistance factions feature "a full host of units, abilities, buildings, research, and defenses."

It adds: "Lambda Wars features full-fledged RTS gameplay and a robust RTS interface and is focused on multiplayer but strategic AI opponents and dedicated single-player missions are also included."

Lambda Wars recently passed the Steam Greenlight community voting system. The beta is available though here. Images can be found below, while a trailer is situated above.