Valve's Victor Antonov explains the rationale about the level, which will require a 3.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM and a top spec graphics card: 'Three months before shipping Half Life 2 the art and production team were shutting down,' he recalls. More details of this intriguing prospect have been published in an exclusive Half-Life 2 feature in the May issue of the UK PC Gamer, out today. But while many of us went out and upgraded to a gigabyte of RAM, stuck in a high-end Radeon or GeForce and spent a fortune, it's pretty clear that our PCs had plenty of headroom left - and now Valve wants to take advantage of that with the forthcoming release of a specially designed level called 'The Lost Coast'.
As refreshingly optimised as Half-Life 2 was to run on low and mid range PCs, there's no doubt that a hugely significant chunk of its owners went out and upgraded their rigs with the specific intention of playing Valve's game without compromise, in all its staggeringly gorgeous glory.
