Half-Life 2: MMod is finally complete, after nine years in the making. The mod updates Half-Life 2 with reworked gunplay, brand new weapon animations and enhanced models, and tweaks to enemy AI to make Half-Life 2’s fights more immersive and challenging.

What’s particularly nice about this mod is the fact that you can toggle just about everything it does on and off in the in-game menu, so if you don’t like the new glowy eyes on the Combine soldiers, you can pop open the menu and turn them off. But just about all the changes that it makes are welcome updates to the aging game: better weapon models, redesigned VFX, better audio feedback, and enhanced visuals all help give Half-Life 2 and its follow-on episodes a shot of modern game design oomph.

To install, first head over to ModDB and the HL2MMod download page. You’ll also want to make sure you have Half-Life 2, its free update, and Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2 installed. Make sure you unzip and install the mod to the same hard drive where your Source mods folder lives.

Here’s a trailer showing off the new features, via Dark Side of Gaming:



As you can see, the redesigned weapon models look terrific, and I really like the animations for weapon inspections and idling. Of course, if you prefer the more retro look, there’s always Half-Life 2: Classic , which gives the game a more 1990s look.

The download is a slim 235 megabytes, so you shouldn’t have any trouble there. I’m keen on trying this out – it’s been a dog’s age since I played the Half-Life 2 games, and HL2MMod seems like the perfect excuse to jump back in.