To enable the cheat console in Half-Life, you will need to open the game via the command prompt or a special shortcut which you will create. To do this, do the following:
Store your mods in one place forever Get notified about new mods Already a member? Login 1-Click Installers. Install and manage your mods easily with community-made 1-Click mod downloaders. Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2 lets you take complete advantage of the physics system by giving you tools to sculpt the world objects as you see fit. Put characters in awkward poses, create your own.
Enable the Console Via Shortcut
- Locate the Half-Life shortcut on your desktop that you use most often to open Half-Life.
- Right click it and select Properties. In the target field, you will see the location of the file listed, it may be something similar to this:
- After hl.exe add in -console, so the target now looks like this:
To Enable the Console Via Command Prompt:
- Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt
- Type in C:Program FilesSierraHalf-Lifehl.exe -console (see the following note regarding directory paths)
Special note on paths and game versions: There are plenty of versions of Half-Life on the market (Stream, retail, a game of the year edition, etc.), therefore your path or method of enabling the console may be slightly different than listed above. Here are some of the differences you can try if you run into a problem:
Steam versions of Half-Life - The console is enabled by default in Steam versions of the game. Open it as normal and press the tilde key '~' to the left of the number one to open the console.
Retail versions of Half-Life (and other download sites) - These copies of the game enable the console in the most common manner, described at the beginning of the article
Game of the Year versions of Half-Life - For the Game of the Year edition of Half-Life the console is enabled similar to regular retail versions, with one extra command parameter. Use the first method in this article, but add the -dev command as well, so your shortcut or path looks similar to this: 'C:Program FilesSierraHalf-Lifehl.exe' -dev -console.
Enabling Cheats in Half-Life
- Start Half-Life with the console enabled
- Open the console by pressing the tilde key '~'
- Enter sv_cheats 1 into the console to enable cheats
If this is the first time you are enabling cheats they will not activate until you load a game, start a new game, or move to another level.
Congrats, cheats in Half-Life are activated, you can snag all of the Half-Life cheat codes below.
Half-Life Cheats Codes
- Load Half-Life with the console enabled.
- Press the tilde key '~' to the left of the 1 on the keyboard to bring up the console, type in sv_cheats 1 to enable cheats, and enter one of the following codes to activate it.
Adjust Gravity: /sv_gravity <-999 - 999999>
AI Node Information: /impulse 195; /impulse 196; /impulse 197; /impulse 199
All Weapons and Ammo: /impulse 101
Auto-reload Disabled: /-reload
Auto-reload Enabled: /+reload
Control on-Screen Monsters: /impulse 109
Delete Monster/NPC from World: /impulse 203
Developer Mode Off: /developer 0
Developer Mode On: /developer 1
God Mode: /god
HEV Suit, Weapons, and Ammo: /impulse 101
List Global Entities: /impulse 104
Map Select: /map <map name>
Model/Sprite Stats, While Looking at Target: /impulse 106
Monster Stats, While Looking at Monster: /impulse 103
No Clipping Mode: /noclip
Obtain Item: /give <item name>
Opponents Ignore Character: /notarget
Return to First Person View: /firstperson
See Things Brightly Without Flashlight: /lambert -1.0001
Set Reload Speed; 0 is fastest, 3500 is default: /rate <0-3500>
Silent Player: /impulse 105
Spawn Blood: /impulse 202
Spawn Human Grunt: /impulse 76
Spawn Gibs and Blood: /impulse 102
Speak Sentence: /speak <word.word2.word3>
Speak Word: /speak <word>
Strange Colors and Wireframes: /r_fullbright 9
Suicide: /kill
Texture Name, While Looking at Object: /impulse 107
Third Person View: /thirdperson
Toggle Game Speed: /host_framerate <0,1>
Toggle Light Amplifier: /r_fullbright <0,1>
Verbose Developer Mode: /developer 2
Half-Life Item List
The following items are used with the /give code:
- item_airtank
- item_antidote
- item_battery
- item_healthkit
- item_longjump
- item_security
- item_sodacan
- item_suit
- ammo_357
- ammo_9mmAR
- ammo_9mmbox
- ammo_9mmclip
- ammo_ARgrenades
- ammo_buckshot
- ammo_crossbow
- ammo_egonclip
- ammo_gaussclip
- ammo_glockclip
- ammo_mp5clip
- ammo_mp5grenades
- ammo_rpgclip
- weapon_357
- weapon_9mmAR
- weapon_9mmhandgun
- weapon_crossbow
- weapon_crowbar
- weapon_egon
- weapon_gauss
- weapon_glock
- weapon_handgrenade
- weapon_hornetgun
- weapon_mp5
- weapon_python
- weapon_rpg
- weapon_satchel
- weapon_shotgun
- weapon_snark
- weapon_tripmine
- weapon_quantumdestabilizer
Half-Life Walkthoughs and FAQs
Need more in depth help in Half-Life on the PC? Check these guides, written by gamers like you and me:
- FAQ - Half Life FAQ/Walkthrough
- FAQ - Half-Life Guide
Have More Cheats?
If you have another cheat for this video game please send it in and we will add it to our video game cheats index shortly.
Half-Life 2 turns 12 this year, and thanks to its powerful, if a bit creaky Source engine it remains as popular with the modding community as ever. Over the years we've seen all manner of excellent mods emerge, adding co-op or competitive multiplayer, shiny graphical updates, new story content, and even full conversions that bear little or no resemblance to the original game.
It's the latter two we're going to focus on today, as we round up the best single-player Half-Life 2 mods. We've chosen mods that stand up as separate adventures, sometimes set in worlds far removed from Combine Earth.
The Stanley Parable
This is the story of a man named Stanley. Or rather, it's the story of the story: a deviously clever, reactive adventure that second-guesses your every move. As Stanley—or, perhaps more accurately, as the player controlling Stanley—you're free to follow or ignore the various instructions the wonderful narrator bellows over you, resulting in a tangled, branching story that rewards your curiosity, imagination, and defiance. The original Source mod was later expanded into a full game, one our Phil thought extremely highly of in our review.
Download:ModDB, Steam.
Minerva: Metastasis
Adam Foster's Minerva comes close to the quality of Valve's own Half-Life 2 Episodes—in fact, Valve was so impressed Foster joined the company. It's a sizeable story, about the length of an official chapter, with considered level design and a high level of polish. You begin the game strapped to the underside of a helicopter, before being dropped on a mysterious island with a sinister secret.
Download: Steam.
The Citizen
Gordon Freeman ends the Half-Life series as a crowbar-wielding superhero, a figure of legend in the Half-Life universe. Two-part mod The Citizen provides a new angle on the world, casting you as an ordinary oppressed citizen of City 17. Obviously, said ordinary man soon acquires a gun and starts killing people, but you might snap too if you called that dystopia home.
Download: ModDB.
Get a Life
This lengthy, ambitious mod swings from horror to all-out action. Occasional cutscenes tell the story of a subway technician suffering from leukaemia, but Get a Life's unlucky hero Alex also has to contend with the mod's new limb damage system, which causes effects like dizziness and limping, depending on where he's hit by enemies.
Download:ModDB.
Mission Improbable
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to step into the sneakers of Gordon Freeman and set off to repair a Resistance listening post. This impressive Episode Two mod begins with Gordon rowing to a distant coastline: a coastline that reminds you just how pretty the venerable Source engine can look in the right hands. The right hands in this instance are a couple of established game devs, and their experience shines through pretty much every crevice of this slick, well-paced adventure.
Download:ModDB.
Research and Development
Thanks to its then-revolutionary ragdoll physics, a lot of time in Half-Life 2 was spent throwing chairs at NPCs, or flinging teacups with the gravity gun. In that spirit, Research and Development does away with offensive weapons altogether, leaving just a couple of secondary tools to let you manipulate gravity or order Antlions about. Puzzles are the order of the day here, and it's surprising just how easily Half-Life 2's toolset translates to this new focus.
Download:ModDB.
Nightmare House 2
Where there are modding tools, horror mods are sure to follow. You don't need to have played the original—in fact, it's included as a prologue, giving you the chance to explore both a haunted house and a spooky hospital. The horror on offer here is mainly of the jump scare variety, so if you were hoping for the psychological horror of Silent Hill, move on to the next item in the list. Nightmare House 2 is basically FEAR—it even features its own creepy ghost girl—but more FEAR is hardly a bad thing.
Download:ModDB.
Silent Hill: Alchemilla
The impressive Alchemilla drops you in the world of Silent Hill, endless fog, Dark World and all. Not only have the developers nailed the grimy aesthetic of Team Silent's classic series, they've matched its colour palette, borrowed its sound effects, and recreated its lonely atmosphere. It's such an uncanny representation that it may take you a while to notice there are no enemies traipsing around, but then those games were hardly known for their satisfying combat.
Download: Alchemilla mod.
Water
Until now everything we've featured has been strictly first-person, but Water bucks that trend. In fact, it bucks a lot of trends, given that it's a third-person puzzley adventure starring a mermaid. Yes, a mermaid. While you're (initially at least) limited to a fantasy city's waterways, this smart mod soon finds ways to get you exploring land too, using a number of innovative systems. The developers of Water went on to make From Earth, another, similarly inventive Source mod.
Download:ModDB.
Black Mesa
Well, we couldn't ignore Black Mesa, could we? For the unaware, this recreates the original Half-Life in its sequel's shinier engine, and it's been in development since dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Much more than a simple port, Black Mesa updates Valve's game with fancier assets, new voice acting, a reworked campaign and more. The team have also excised Half-Life's much-maligned Xen section, albeit only temporarily until it's been remade to be, somehow, good. While the older mod is free, you'll find the newer version on Early Access, accompanied by a price tag.
Download:Official site.