UPDATED: Half-Life 2 Coming to Nvidia SHIELD

[Omnomnick]

Update - 12/05/14
An official announcement has now been made by Nvidia, who have confirmed Half-Life 2 is now available on the Android-based SHIELD. Surprising, I know. A video released to the Nvidia YouTube channel provides a brief look at the both Portal and Half-Life 2 being played on the device. Both Portal and Half-Life 2 can be purchased from the Google Play Store for £5.99 each.

We're huge Half-Life fans. So bringing it to SHIELD was a labor for love for more than a few members of the team.

Original Post
With less than a week before Portal is released onto the Nvidia SHIELD on May 12th, it would appear Valve are already planning a follow-up with Half-Life 2.

Earlier today, technology website PC Perspective released a pair of photographs onto Twitter which appear to show a bright green crowbar with the text "What Would Gordon Do?" engraved on the side. The crowbar, reportedly sent by Nvidia or Valve, also features logos for both Half-Life 2 and the Nvidia SHIELD, seemingly referencing that one of Valve's biggest blockbusters will soon be heading to the Android-based platform.

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This isn't the first time PC Perspective have been sent gifts as a means of celebrating Nvidia-related events. Just last week, the team were sent a cake by Nvidia to celebrate the upcoming release of Portal on the SHIELD. In 2012, a pry bar was delivered to tease the GeForce GTX 690 graphics card. Given these previous hints, we think it's pretty likely that we'll see an official announcement from Valve or Nvidia soon regarding an upcoming port of Half-Life 2 to the Nvidia SHIELD.​

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It seems only logical to continue to port Valve's singleplayer library to the Android device, as initial reviews for Portal appear very positive. A review published by Android Police claims Portal runs reasonably well on SHIELD and looks great on the 5-inch display at 720p. We imagine it may be a challenge to get the larger, more detailed environments of Half-Life 2 working well on SHIELD, but it's definitely possible.​

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Portal will be available for the Nvidia SHIELD starting Monday 12th May 2014 from the Google Play Store for around $9.99. As always, we'll be sure to bring you more information about the Android port of Half-Life 2 if and when we learn more.​

 

[Sidedraft]

While as impressive as it sounds, If this 300 dollar, super portable piece of machinery can play half-life 2 well, What does this say for the fate of our 2000 dollar, quarter ton, gaming computers? Half life is a reasonably sized game.... The distance between half life 2 and really really computer heavy games isn't that big.

 

[Flufflesthepancake]

While as impressive as it sounds, If this 300 dollar, super portable piece of machinery can play half-life 2 well, What does this say for the fate of our 2000 dollar, quarter ton, gaming computers? Half life is a reasonably sized game.... The distance between half life 2 and really really computer heavy games isn't that big.

Not much. It's low-res (720p), presumably low-fps (at least much lower than any computer running HL2), running games from 2004 and 2007. Both games have never been pushing any graphical boundaries, hell, Portal is pretty much all flat surfaces and tiling textures. I can't imagine that they're running any antialiasing, or any processing like that.

The difference between something a $2000 computer can run, and this, is ridiculous. But it's still pretty amazing what the hardware can do, it just doesn't really put a dint into what a PC can do.

 

[Sidedraft]

Yes,

The difference between something a $2000 computer can run, and this, is ridiculous. But it's still pretty amazing what the hardware can do, it just doesn't really put a dint into what a PC can do.

Yes the shield might not threaten the pc right now, but that's not might point. My point is it's looks like it's starting to happen. A mobile device is now playing ten year old triple A budget games. What I'm trying to explain is if, mobile devices keep this exact same rate of growth, in ten years, you could be playing Arma 3 or Bioshock Infinite on your handy dandy gameboy. -And thats assuming it keeps the same rate of growth and not an increase in growth. I'm not saying right now that the PC and Handheld are racing right next to each other, neck and neck, what I'm saying is, PC can start seeing Handheld in it's rear view mirror now, and this race were watching might get super super interesting soon.

just to be completely clear, I used the word fate, meaning future, not present.

What does this say for the fate of our 2000 dollar...

 

[Mr. Sir Shpee]

Called it when they announced Portal for Shield. Just knew they had to do this as well. However, I'm not sure how playable it would be, considering it's a five-inch screen. Well, it is a controller, too, so there's that.

 

[Flufflesthepancake]

Yes,

Yes the shield might not threaten the pc right now, but that's not might point. My point is it's looks like it's starting to happen. A mobile device is now playing ten year old triple A budget games. What I'm trying to explain is if, mobile devices keep this exact same rate of growth, in ten years, you could be playing Arma 3 or Bioshock Infinite on your handy dandy gameboy. -And thats assuming it keeps the same rate of growth and not an increase in growth. I'm not saying right now that the PC and Handheld are racing right next to each other, neck and neck, what I'm saying is, PC can start seeing Handheld in it's rear view mirror now, and this race were watching might get super super interesting soon.

just to be completely clear, I used the word fate, meaning future, not present.

I was trying to imply, sorry if it was unclear, that the difference will remain.
Whilst addressing your last point.

The divide between a portable device and a larger piece of hardware will always be significant. Power consumption is a huge, huge issue and something like the Shield will always face it as a problem. Whilst you're going to continue to see better and better games on these devices, the divide will still be massive and games will continue to push the limits -purely because they are there- and so the divide will always persist.

In ten years Bioshock Infinite will look like HL1 in comparison to what we will have. So if a gameboy-sized device is playing that, well good on it.

 

[TheWiktor]

Now this is news.

 

[pepper26]

Available now! along with portal. that hit me out of nowhere!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2

 

[TheWiktor]

Available now! along with portal. that hit me out of nowhere!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nvidia.valvesoftware.halflife2

Wow :O

 

[Sidedraft]

I want to see some footage, and see how it plays, and how it manages to do big areas and stuff.