Finished Half-Life 2 yet? The chances are you have – games like HL2 are never as long as everyone hopes. Fear not, though, because the game's generous creator, Valve, is planning to release a free level for everyone who bought the game this week.

Called Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, the level takes the form of a 'show-offy' tech demo, and is based on a section of the Highway 17 chapter in the original game that didn’t make it to the final cut. What they call an ‘ATI level’, Lost Coast is what happens when artists are allowed to run wild, and push the boundaries of what can be achieved in games, when they don’t have a broad demographic of differently-kitted out PC owners to satisfy. It uses High-Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting, an advanced technique for achieving sophisticated effects - reflections, exposure, glare and what have you.

What you should be gathering from this is that, if HL2 ran a bit clunkily on your PC, then this will be a nightmare. But if you’re one of the early-adopter hardcore, you can really try and push the limits of what your machine can handle. If you want to know more about Lost Coast, take a look at this thread in the Steam forum.