Looks like a recent update broke voices/cut scenes half way through the game - which they fixed in the beta channel.

Was working great until an update to that broke saved games (no load, returns to menu), switching back to stable channel isn't a fix, looks like they could be corrupt.

Have no idea why they feel the need to patch a 6 year old game without any testing.

Next time I can get this working I'm finishing the damn thing before something else breaks.

I thought the Source betas were game-specific. Am I wrong in thinking that the Half-Life games shouldn't be affected?

Anyway, give this a go if you haven't already:

• Verify the game's cache files.

Did that work? Flowchart your ass to either playing the game or the next step.

• Close Steam and delete the following files from your Steam install directory and restart Steam: clientregistry.blob and appupdatestats.blob

Even if I'm wrong about the beta thing, one of these might help. Good luck, duder!

It wouldn't be the first time that a Valve update broke old HL games. When they released the 64-bit update for HL2, some years back, the entire game just flat out would not start unless you forced it into 32-bit mode. It was like that for months, as far as I remember.

No one actually still plays HL2 singleplayer anymore right? Eh. Regardless, Valve always breaks shit and they will take twice as long to fix it.