All of us have played Half-life 2 series through many times. Now it’s time to play it through one more time and experience the beautiful world which was reanimated by FakeFactory with his brand new FakeFactory’s Cinematic Mod 10.90 (released on 23th Oct). Latest patch is 10.94.
This mod is total graphical/musical conversion of Half-life 2 + Episode 1 + Episode 2. Everything has been turned into HD, it contains new skins for characters (select them with Character Pimper), new soundtrack, ironsight and fixes for some VALVE bugs!
To run this, you need modern hardware. Lots of memory, 64 bit OS and hard disk space. So now it is the time to upgrade your computer, I know, you postponed it for a long time already 
Let’s watch the trailer first.
Let me introduce to you some of characters.
NB! You CAN play with original VALVE models.
Meet Barney (HD & resized version) and Alyx (HD & resized version).
Meet soldiers (HD & resized version) and scientist (HD & resized version).
And now let’s compare with original game.
All this can be found on Cinematic Mod homepage. Corresponding forum post is right here.
Btw, if you don’t like the new models for characters or soundtrack or 8gb is too much to download and 20gb is too much for mod or taking it as sacrilege then do not download it, go to your mom and cry her a river. FakeFactory made this mod to those, who are in love with CM, not for you, whiners.
But if you love Half-life 2 and agree that it lacks some beautiful graphics, then this is for you. Eye candies, ironsight, beautiful world, sexy Alyx, pretty faces with all facial movement, dark music, everything is great and it’s all inside this package. Only disadvantage is that there will be no Achivements.
Downloading it
Download it from download page. Or use torrent. Latest patch is 10.94 (mirror, torrent).
And now beware MY screenshots Anyways, I show you only the beginning of the game, so you will get the taste.
For configuring everything, screenshots of configurator
Character pimper, choose in-game models
For configuring in-game music, shadows Multithreading etc.
not totally, let’s check the todo list :)
# Todo: Jamil Mullen based HD-Alyx (still not satisfied with my current work.)
# Todo: Valve-style HD-Alyx. I’ll wait for the enhanced EP3 model to work with.
samples:
http://www.hlportal.de/images/images/original/27557.jpg
http://www.hlportal.de/images/images/original/27556.jpg
Alyx model = Adriana Lima
Yeah, it feels kinda odd with these models, BUT if you just forget about it and judge the mod by the quality and detail…well, very, very impressive. It indeed is very cinematic, along with the new soundtrack. I wish I could try it, but it looks like with my current rig I’ll have to stick to watching YouTube gameplays.
Anyways, great job!
(and thanks for posting this here)
So, wait, FakeFactory is stealing music from Inception now?
I always thought the character models looked horrible but seriously? Alyx seems like a teenage whore and Dr. Kleiner like her slightly older gay boyfriend. Disgusting. Besides, characters seem to be getting even worse with each release. Yeah, I suppose I could find a way to replace them with something less horrible but I don’t really have that kind of time on my hands right now.
Other than that, looks gorgeous (mostly). I don’t agree with all changes but they’re still incredible.
It’s a one-man project who only does it primarily for himself, for fun, and to try to maximize / improve technical aspects.
If you don’t like the new models, he included a model-selector so you can actually choose which ones you want to use.
I think this is awesome.
Although I really would have liked to play through HL2 again and get the achievements WITH these good graphics.
jesus, you can use original models if you wish
I can understand the texture resolution update, but why the fuck did they exchange the character MODELS??? The new cast all look like douchebags to me :/
This is such a waste. It would be nice if it just had texture improvements for the enviroments and maybe some props. But changing the character models and textures like this, its essentially not HL2 anymore. Plus most of the changes look pretty terrible. Bigger does not automatically equate to better.
no, it is not made for teenage boys, no hookers
Is this teh version where every female looks like a hooker?
“Alyx” looks terrible. Not a fan of the other new character models too, Dr. Kleiner looks way off.
:/ forget the “First!!! xD” thing.
First!!! xD
Anyway. Thanks for the post. A friend of mine showed me this mod some time ago and I really enjoyed this project. From now, a lot more of users will benefict from it.
It looks really good but it’s a 9 GIG download, I will get it another day.