Nvidia has heralded through a post on its official blog that Half-Life 2: Episode One has been launched exclusively for the Nvidia SHIELD tablet.
The company said that Valve, the creator of the Half-Life series, supported Nvidia's engineers in bringing Half-Life 2 and Portal to the SHIELD tablet, rejuvenating the games into receiving the same interest as they did when they were first released for the PC.
Nvidia has already previously announced that Half-Life 2: Episode One will be coming one day to the SHIELD tablet, and now the day has come.
Half-Life 2: Episode One is an extension of the single player mode of Half-Life 2 and is the first among a planned series of new games.
The series allows gamers to reprise the role of hazard suit-wearing Dr. Gordon Freeman, as he faces the immediate repercussions of his action in City 17 and the Citadel. Players once again team up with Alyx Vance and Dog the robot as they help the human resistance in their desperate fight against the Combine's totalitarian alien invaders.
Nvidia said that the gameplay that accompanies the intense story of the game requires a mobile processor that will be able to handle it properly. The company believes that its Tegra K1 that features 192 GPU cores is the perfect mobile processor for the job, and game developers such as Valve are agreeing to the Tegra K1's capabilities.
According to Doug Lombardi, Valve VP of marketing, playing Half-Life 2: Episode One on the SHIELD tablet is a "terrific experience." Lombardi added that Nvidia, through the power of its Tegra K1, has been able to deliver a highly detailed and very responsive port of the game for playing on a mobile device.
The release of Half-Life 2: Episode One for the SHIELD tablet, according to Nvidia, solidifies the device as the "ultimate" gaming tablet. In addition to the SHIELD tablet's support for Valve's most popular games, users also have access to a collection of AAA Android titles, the games available in the growing library of the Nvidia Grid on-demand game service, which are free until June 30 next year, and hundreds of titles for the PC that support GameStream. This represents access to a catalog of games that are more than any other mobile device.
SHIELD tablet users should be in no rush to play through Half-Life: Episode One though, as Half-Life 2: Episode Two has gamers already waiting seven years for its release.
