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2 months ago
Feature: The future Jamiroquai foretold
Ever since I squeezed my face into David Braben's Rift hole (humblebrag), I've been a VR convert. I've moved house three times since then, and each time I've managed to tether up some sort of VR system, from the pokiest of rooms to my reasonably spacious home office. That last one is not a humblebrag, as I'm far too humble to do two in one…
Speedrunner uses VR to crawl under Half-Life: Alyx levels in real life
Speedrunning often involves a lot of running and jumping but that usually takes place in game, which is impressive enough. During this year's Summer Games Done Quick marathon, Half-Life: Alyx speedrunner "Buffet Time" goes full on gaming athlete by actually crawling on the ground to glitch through floors and walls. It's a feat you really need to see for yourself.
4 months ago
Here’s Summer Games Done Quick 2020’s online speedrun schedule
Despite being delayed, then later moving entirely online due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Summer Games Done Quick is still preparing for some awfully fast gaming next month. The schedule for this year's event has just gone up, kicking off the annual week of charity speedrunning on Sunday, August 16th. Expect your usual bouts of boundary-breaking and donation shouting, of course, but can you really…
Feature: Want to slamdunk a headcrab?
It’s taken time to build up a decent collection of Half-Life: Alyx mods, but not as long as I thought it would. People were building them before Valve released the proper SDK, and now it's out there are hundreds of levels, weapons and experiments. I had a great time sneaking through forgotten areas of City 17, or taking time out from Combine harvesting to toss…
Feature: From wheely desks to invisible headcrabs
Five cool things we learned from Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours documentary
I've only ever played bits and pieces of the Half-Life games, but it's been a delight learning the ins and outs of their creation from Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours. It's a multimedia documentary on all things Valve - their (many) cancelled games, a close look at life during Alyx's development, and the ups and downs the developers went through in making sure Half-Life returned…
Valve’s list of cancelled games includes a Dark Souls-like RPG, a new Left 4 Dead, and Half-Life 3
Can you imagine a Dark Souls-meets-Monster Hunter RPG made by Valve? I think I would've loved that. Unfortunately, it's on a list of Valve's games that were never meant to be. Of course, Half-Life 3 is sat up on that shelf, too, along with Left 4 Dead 3, and another Half-Life-themed shooter that would've looked very different to what we got with Alyx. It's all…
The Final Hours Of Half-Life Alyx lets you concoct bespoke alien screams
Thought it may as well have felt as much at the time Half-Life: Alyx didn't pop out of a vacuum. Released today, Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours is an interactive multimedia docu-book full early prototypes and concepts, deets on what Valve's been up to for the last decade, and a bespoke make-your-own-headcrab-scream audio tool. You know, the usual behind-the-scenes stuff.
5 months ago
Of course somebody recreated PT as a VR mod for Half-Life: Alyx
Half-Life's always had horror in its veins. From body-horror aliens lurching down steel corridors to Ravenholme's infested nest of parasites, sawblades and the living dead, the series has been pushing spooking with its shooting since day one. Sporting more intimate, high-fidelity spooks, Half-Life: Alyx is no exception - and with a modding kit out in the open, it was only a matter of time 'til…
Play Half-Life: Alyx as a more traditional shooter in this VR-free mod
Since the moment Half-Life: Alyx launched in VR, folks have been trying to detach it from its headset requirements. To be fair, I get it - that the first Half-Life game in a decade would be restricted to expensive tech felt a little demoralising. But this weekend, one modder brought that dream closer to reality by quietly releasing Pancake Base, a mod that aims to…
Half-Life: Alyx’s bottles now have sloshing liquid, and it’s a bit magic
Infants have long known the joys of shaking a bottle to watch its contents slosh and bubble, and now Half-Life: Alyx players can experience that joy too. Valve last night updated the VR explore-o-shooter with fancy new mock bottle fluids, and even as someone whose body wholly rejects VR I am captivated watching players play with bottles of booze. It's like a real beer, but…
6 months ago
Half-Life: Alyx gets proper mod tools and Steam Workshop support
Half-Life and modding are basically synonymous. Whether it's painstakingly remaking the original in Black Mesa or spawning entirely new multiplayer genres in Counter-Strike, Gordon Freeman's misadventures are as much a platform for new works as they are solid shooters in their own rights. This weekend, Valve brought Half-Life: Alyx back into that lineage with Steam Workshop support and the beta release of HL:A's editing tools.
Feature: One Off The List
If you plumb the depths of human ingenuity you will resurface with a wet box of penicillin and 100 million bits of different-coloured plastic. We people are very good at making useful things, and then killing ourselves with them. But videogames, my friends. Videogames hold the solution to our self-destructive ways. That tech utopia your pal Start-up Stan is always talking about is in reach,…
Feature: Should have been called the Google Clipboard if I'm honest
I've been flitting between lots of different VR headsets over the last month or so, in my quest to find the best VR headset of all. But who needs to spend upwards of 400 quid when the £12 / $15 Google Cardboard can also be used to play big SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx? Yes, you read that correctly. Thanks to the magic of VRidge,…
Hard to imagine worse things to eat while in VR. Do you really want sticky fingers clutching your index controllers, melon juice splashing over your expensive electronics? It's probably for the best, then, that the one watermelon in Half-Life: Alyx is impossible to find in normal play - a sweet, tantalising snack tucked away only for those brave enough to break out the cheats.
7 months ago
If you didn’t backflip while juggling in Half-Life: Alyx, did you really play it at all?
I was gearing up for a second playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx this weekend. I really wanted to use the physics engine to have a little fun this time around, so I took a peek at some inspirational Let's Plays to see what I could try. Then I uninstalled Alyx and put my headset away. I can't even juggle in the real world, never mind doing…
Feature: One Off The List
Everyone’s a cook now, is that it? A few weeks in lockdown and you’re all suddenly artisan bakers and Bon Appétit Kitchen presenters? Sorry, I don’t buy it. Put the chickpeas down, Jeff. We all know what happens when you let things “simmer”. However, there is a world in which your cooking really does impress. Where it comes out of the pot scrumptious and hot…
If you like a lot of headcrabs, Half-Life: Alyx now has a horde mode mod
The lack of an SDK hasn’t stopped people from working on mods for Half-Life: Alyx. We’ve already had one this week that sort of lets you play the game without VR. Today, I discovered XenThug, a horde mode map that throws an ever-growing number of Half-Life enemies at your face. I’d be playing it right now if I weren’t writing this.
Now you can beat Half-Life: Alyx without VR thanks to this mod
It was only a matter of time. Shortly after Half-Life: Alyx's release, modders were already tinkering with ways to play Alyx without VR. Now there's a mod that will actually let you complete the game entirely with a regular display, though it sounds like a slightly finicky experience. This likely won't be the end of the road for VR-less Alyx, but it's certainly a milestone.
Tall Half-Life: Alyx testers struggled with low-hanging pipes, and devs thought it was a bug
Movement is make or break for VR games. A convincing, non-nauseating solution is vital, and Half-Life: Alyx does an admirable job of navigating through that. Valve have explained how they got there, in a new video that brings up sound design, pathing fiddliness, and why they had to ditch a certain system because tall testers kept hitting their virtual heads on low-hanging pipes.
Half-Life: Alyx is so densely packed with trinkets and goodies to fool around with that it seems it was inevitable folks would cook up some gags with the VR props. RPS have decided that it has some of the most satisfying physics in PC games and that's quite clear when you see all the shenanigans folks have been pulling off inside this sandbox masquerading as a…
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