The long-awaited Half-Life 2: VR mod will eventually enter the public beta this September after five years of development and its own phase of “preproduction.”
It’s a VR adaptation of Half-Life 2 in the style of Half-Life: Alyx made by a team known as the Source VR Mod Team that enables you to fight disguised criminals from an alien police state as if you were actually there.
Motion sickness sufferers, best of luck with those excessively long car segments. It looks pretty decent for a project that was once “all but shelved” in the team’s terms. Of course, a trailer will only show the best cuts.
If I didn’t know any better, I might have assumed I was viewing a legitimate VR adaptation of a beloved Valve game. Possibly just smoke and mirrors, but according to the modders, the “extremely positive” response they received during private testing persuaded them that the game was now “worth playing from beginning to end in its VR-ified version, which is why they decided to enter public beta.
Everyone with a copy of Half-Life 2 and a SteamVR-compatible headset can enjoy the mod for no charge. It has reportedly been developed and tested on the Pimax, HTC Vive, Oculus Quest, and Valve Index VR headsets, but it should work on any device that can run SteamVR.
You might have to utilize a standalone installer if you’re eager to try it right away because they’re still waiting for Valve’s approval to distribute it on Steam.
The major restriction is that you won’t be able to play this on a standalone headset; instead, you’ll have to be connected to a PC. In addition, though technically capable of running the mod, the Oculus Quest 2 lacks an Android port of the Source engine, making it illegal to use it.
