I love Valve, I love that they changed their mind about the anniversaries of their games but... I feel like these last few years they haven't made us smug at all, it's like that kind of father who just gives you a letter. in your birthday . -Hal life alyx is beautiful, excellent optimization, reboot of the story and confirms the third installment, but I have to spend 1000 dollars on a device that only has 3 good games to test it... -CS2 had a painful launch, it is practically in its infancy competitively speaking due to its issue of bugs and subticks, in addition to not bringing anything good but cutting the content of the original. -the "DEFINITIVE" version of Half-life is the same, they only brought the boomer menu, uplink and 3 new maps that no one uses, in addition to breaking other games with goldsource and mods and speaking of the mods, why would Valve settle for so little?, they could have added more content to connect with HL2 or improvements in the quality of life as in the remastered of the classic Quake games, there are several modders who have done wonders with goldsource and Valve, a multi-million dollar company, only does the minimum possible work. Do you think Valve will change its modus operandi for the better?
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1. Half-Life Alyx was only greenlit and published by Valve because guess what came out right before it - Index. HLA is just a Valve Index seller pure and simple. 2. I can't say much about CS2 except I completely agree that they've made the game worse than CSGO. But hey, at least we can still play CSGO on community servers. 3. The definitive version of Half-Life is the same because if it wasn't the same, it wouldn't be the definitive version. Valve have kept the game true to its original form. That's the point of the HL25 update. As for mods, they now all work as of the 22nd November update. Valve have also fixed the iconic Blast Pit scene. I disagree that Valve have done the "minimum possible" because they have done quite well content-wise. I mean, you literally mentioned the new maps in your original post. If they had added more content to "connect" with HL2 or whatever (which is unnecessary) it would stray Half-Life further away from its original form and become something else. The game has of course had plenty of QoL changes in the recent updates [and there will certainly be more to come]. You've also mentioned that they could have added more content like Nightdive have done to Quake, which again Valve have done with the deathmatch maps. Remember there's also a 1hr long documentary which deep-dives into the making of the game and shows Alpha & Beta footage. What more could you want?
Graphic improvement like in quake remastered, there are mods with GOLDsource that look great, a weapon wheel for those who play with controllers, winking at the other protagonists in the game cameras to know if they are canon or not, this anniversary edition was just a bug fix after 25 years, a little addition of deleted content and 3 maps that are not of much use, since at least all the servers I see are full crossfire, the same rat's nest as Dust 2 XD, hopefully Valve is encouraged to add content little by little and no more generic bug fixes. Maybe bring back the dreamcast textures? or the ps2 life and HEV dispensers?, Let's not forget an official RTX version either, it would have been the icing on the cake, Quake 2 RTX run good in Deck, it would have been nice to have something similar.