Attention, we are not talking about Half-Life: Alyx, but 1998 original game’s mod!

Half-Life and VR haven’t been tied to each other that much until now, but there is a way to experience Gordon Freeman’s adventures in virtual reality. (Shortly, we can do so with Alyx’s story, but Half-Life: Alyx’ launch is a couple of months away.) Two decades ago, we wouldn’t have thought of playing Valve’s classic (because let’s admit it: Gabe Newell’s game is memorable and enjoyable even today, which is why its third-party remake, Black Mesa is getting a lot of attention!) in VR.

Still, the first game is going to get a VR treatment, and it’s also not being made by Valve but Max Vollmer, who has been developing this mod for several years now. Making this VR mod takes time for a good reason: you cannot just copy the game’s code over to virtual reality – you need to change several things to make Gordon properly controllable in VR, as you have to say goodbye to the mouse and keyboard altogether.

Vollmer kept working on the mod, and after having Half-Life VR in closed beta for months, it is now available in open beta, but he added that he still wants to improve the two-handed weapons, as well as the movement on the stairs. (And if he was a maximalist, there would be likely even more.)

You can find the open beta here. You’ll need a Steam account and Half-Life on it, as well as a PC, SteamVR, and a VR-headset that supports SteamVR. All you need to is extract the zip file into the installation folder of Half-Life and then run HLVRlauncher.exe.

And no, we don’t even want to ask if Half-Life 3 will ever exist. The answer is likely no.

Source: Jeuxvideo

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