Half-Life: Alyx

What's up gamers? It's 2021 and that means it's time to round up the team's favourite games of 2020. You'll already know our selections if you read our annual Advent Calendar, but this post gathers all those words and games together in one convenient package.

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Warzone, Crusader Kings III, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Factorio, Gears Tactics, Hades, Half-Life: Alyx, Immortals Fenyx Rising, In Other Waters, Monster Train, Paradise Killer, Phasmophobia, Röki, Spelunky 2, Spiritfarer, Streets Of Rage 4, Tales From Off-Peak City, Teardown, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, Umurangi Generation, Valorant, Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

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…

Tagged with feature, Oculus Quest, Valve Index, VR, Beat Saber, BLARP!, Elite Dangerous, Grand Theft Auto V, Half-Life: Alyx, LOW-FI, Rocket League, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, SUPERHOT VR, theBlu.

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…

Tagged with feature, Modder Superior, Valve, VR, VR games, Half-Life: Alyx.

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…

Tagged with feature, Geoff Keighley, Valve, Half-Life, Half-Life 3, Half-Life: Alyx, Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours.

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,…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Control, Detroit: Become Human, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Else Heart Break, Half-Life: Alyx, Hitman 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Minecraft, Opus Magnum, Portal, Return of the Obra Dinn.

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…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV, Half-Life: Alyx, Minecraft, Monster Hunter: World, Overcooked, Stardew Valley, Temtem, Yakuza 0.

Ever since Half-Life: Alyx came out earlier this year, virtual reality has been going from strength to strength, so we've put together a list of the best VR games you can play on PC right now. It's by no means a complete list, as there are now more great VR games than you'll ever have time to play, but if you've just bought yourself a…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, VR games, ADR1FT, American Truck Simulator, Beat Saber, Fantastic Contraption, Half-Life: Alyx, Holopoint, House of the Dying Sun, I Expect You To Die, Job Simulator, Lone Echo, Minecraft, No Man's Sky, Onward, Racket: Nx, Rez Infinite, Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, SUPERHOT VR, Tetris Effect, The Climb.

An obscenely rich teenager throws his VR controller across the room in a fit of blind panic while playing Half-Life: Alyx. It leaves the window of his bedroom at 5m/s. It falls 10m vertically and hits his neighbour’s greenhouse, smashing the glass. How many metres did the controller travel horizontally before coming to a stop in the tomatoes? Use a kinematic formula to determine your…

Tagged with feature, One Off The List, Besiege, crayon-physics-deluxe, Grand Theft Auto V, Half-Life: Alyx, Human Fall Flat, Just Cause 4, Kerbal Space Program, Line Rider, Portal, Session, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.

It's taken 13 years, but we finally have a new Half-Life game. It may not be the long-awaited Half-Life 3, but as you've probably seen from our Half-Life: Alyx review, Valve's first foray into virtual reality shows they're a developer that are still very much at the top of their game. But Half-Life: Alyx isn't just the work of a talented team of developers. It's…

Tagged with feature, interview, Valve, VR games, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-life 2: Episode Three, Half-Life 3, Half-Life: Alyx.

A new Half-Life game is only a few weeks away, but it occurred to me that there was no reason to wait for Half-Life: Alyx if I wanted to experience Vortigaunts in VR. I thus spent some time this weekend fussing around Black Mesa in the Valve Index, using a Half-Life 1 VR mod. It's impressively feature packed and easy to set up, but it…

Tagged with feature, Valve, Half-Life, Half-Life: Alyx.

Over the break we had a chance to do some serious scientific study of this business we call games, and it turns out that games are actually good. 2020 in particular has a healthy mix of big budget bonanzas and smaller indie plates to suit everyone's discerning tastes. And, as you know, the RPS treehouse is the most discerning, so to make it easier for…

Tagged with Bestest Bests, feature, Across The Grooves, Ancient Cities, Backbone, Before We Leave, Chivalry 2, Crusader Kings III, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Death Trash, Desperados III, Doom Eternal, Eastward, Empire of Sin, Half-Life: Alyx, Halo Infinite, Humankind, Maneater, Marvel's Avengers, Murder By Numbers, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Resident Evil 3, Sable, SkateBird, Spiritfarer, The Eternal Cylinder, Unto The End, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, Watch Dogs Legion, Wildermyth, Yes, Your Grace.

Though everyone has their HMD cameras trained on Half-Life: Alyx as VR’s killer app, I’ve been staring creepily at Boneworks' gif-rammed Steam page and saying “soon” over and over. Having spent a few hours working my way through its meta game-within-a-game world, I’m not quite in the position to review it as a whole. It’s exhausting and sweaty, and if I didn’t take some breaks…

Tagged with feature, Stress Level Zero, VR, BONEWORKS, Half-Life: Alyx, Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

It's finally happening. After 12 years, Valve are making another Half-Life game. It's called Half-Life: Alyx, it's a prequel set between Half-Life 1 and 2, and it's only ever coming to VR.There was a bunch of information released about the game yesterday, via its official site, interviews with press and so on. If you weren't desperately sucking up every morsel like a sewer barnacle, then…

Tagged with feature, Valve, VR games, Half-Life: Alyx.