Half-Life 2 and LEGO meet at last

And it won’t cost you an arm or a leg

What happens when you combine the world’s most popular toy brand with one of the most influential first-person shooters of all time? That’s right, you get LEGO Half-Life 2. If you ever wondered what it’d be like to take on the Combine or seek the Vortigaunt’s help as one of the Danish company’s little plastic figures, wonder no more.

The mod is available on the Steam workshop (thanks, PCGamesN) and comes from user Not Dave or Daniel. It’s described as a “full conversion” project that basically swaps out major Half-Life 2 characters for LEGO figurines. It seems the modder is aiming to eventually replace all the characters in the game, but the images so far show that a few have already been done.

Fans of HL2 will recognize the LEGO facsimiles of Dr. Kleiner, Alyx Vance, Father Grigori, and even the mute protagonist himself, Gordon Freeman. The mod is available to download for free now, and it sounds like there are going to be some updates in the future.

So are we gonna talk about..?

Look, it’s nearly impossible to talk about Half-Life without mentioning the whereabouts of the long-awaited third entry. It’s been 16 years since Episode Two, and it’s safe to assume that a new game in the series is not happening. In fact, back in 2017, ex-Valve writer Marc Laidlaw basically gave away what was likely to be the plot of Half-Life 3, perhaps in an attempt to appease fans who were still waiting.

It’s just not coming. We have to accept that. But at least the games that are out are still getting a lot of love. Between the ray tracing version of Half-Life and this LEGO mod, Black Mesa and its inhabitants remain in the gaming consciousness.