this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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I genuinely can't believe Half Life Alyx is five years old.

No other video game has felt the way Alyx felt. No one else has taken such a bold swing in what a video game can be. It's burned into my mind as my Half Life game, the one that came out at just the right time for me.

It was also my "pandemic" game. While everyone else was playing Animal Crossing or Doom Eternal, I was playing and replaying Half Life Alyx.

It definitely feels like it's somewhat doomed to be less remembered in the popular consciousness than most big games that come out, and indeed the rest of the games in the Half Life lineage. Cries of "Half Life 3 when?" still abound in spite of the very clear effort Alyx made to move the story forward. But to me it feels like a game that still hasn't been topped in the five years since it came out, not by a long shot.

Half Life Alyx received a Game of the Year win from GameSpot, and nominations from a few other publications. When it came to events like The Game Awards with a dedicated "Best VR Game" category, it won handily.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The idea was people would buy the game and play it.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (7 children)

The idea of sinking $500 into a headset and then another $80 for one game is pretty crazy. Not like Valve doesn't have the ownership numbers from the hardware survey. It was never going to sell like HL2.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Do you know about gaming consoles? 3D accelerator cards? Graphics cards? Or... CD ROM drives?

People have been buying hardware to play a certain game for literal decades. The games are called "system sellers". Games so good they sell hardware. It's usually even the opposite: if your hardware doesn't have such a game, it doesn't sell (atari Jaguar anyone?).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

$1000 and your gaming PC for Alyx is way beyond buying a PS4 for Bloodborne, and even doing that is a bridge too far for me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

VR has the extra element of needing a suitable living space to play in, though. Other games I can do at my desk or in my tiny, cramped living room, but I have nowhere I can easily set up for VR that would allow for significant range of motion.

I own a VR headset, but I only really use it for games that allow you to be stationary and just use the headset as an immersive monitor with a standard controller. As one would expect, it doesn't get much use, because not many VR games are made to play that way!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So people should buy hardware to play a single game and then leave the hardware to accumulate dust after a few hours of gameplay? Quite the waste!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I agree, that would silly. Luckily, Half-Life Alyx is not the only VR game.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

Sure, but if people love Half-Life and don't care about other VR games it sucks that it's locked behind hardware requirements that even Valve doesn't give a crap about considering it's the only VR game they made.

Edit: I'm sure all of you would be pissed if Sony released a new PlayStation with one game from a beloved series and then just said "now it's in other people's hands, let them take care of creating more games for our hardware!"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

God damn people want to just argue about everything

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Block me if you're not happy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It isn't up to Valve alone to push forward the industry and release top-tier VR games every other year. They took a risk and created one of the best games I've played, and I'm not alone in that opinion. Valve are trying expand the gaming experience, they are trying to be innovative, and people blame them for "not giving a crap". Say what you want, but I thank Valve for what they are doing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This entire argument can be made identically for Half-Life 1 and 2 requiring people to upgrade their PCs to be able to play them.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It's ok, get it out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I thought you still needed to plug the VR headset into a computer ? is the computer built into the headset ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yes for the standalone devices, but you can connect them via cable or wirelessly to a pc too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Most of the common ones now do wireless streaming from the PC for PCVR. But yes, for PCVR games you will still need a PC to run it. There are some VR headsets that are capable of running some games on it without a connected PC, like my Quest 2 can run Superhot or BeatSaber etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Pretty cool I didn't know that at all

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean it‘s 5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since? A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware and they know that. It was a failure in the end of the day.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since?

You know Valve has released a whopping 3 things total in that timespan (didn't include deadlock cuz I'm not sure that's officially released yet), right? A free steam deck teaser, the card game they've been working on for a while, and the CSGO 2 update

Valve works slow, my guy

A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware

Good thing there are a shit ton of other games, then

It was a failure in the end of the day

No it wasn't, you high? They sold out of Indexes around the games launch. Would have sold more if not for COVID, too

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Plenty of people do that to play a single game.

Given how different it is to other, normal 3d games, I don't think the comparison is fair. Additionally there are a lot of other, really great games in VR too.

Regardless, I don't think the problem is financial anymore. Rather that VR requires a sort of "commitment to inconvenience" where you feel cut off from the outside world (among other things) that I don't think a lot of people are comfortable with.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are "plenty of people" enough to make a game commercially viable? And not in an indie way.

I zone out, completely cut off from others, while playing games all the time. What I don't want to do is fork over more cash for things that will collect dust (like a headset for a single game).

Given how different it is to other, normal 3D games, I think it's a bit much to stake your franchise on something most people will never have. It's obvious Valve knew that, they're not idiots and have put out good hardware that didn't see mass adoption in the past (Steam Controller, Steam Link, etc.); it's clear they wanted to try out something new even if it wasn't a huge blockbuster. They have lots of revenue from other sources to fall back on.

They probably hoped that some people would take a chance and get the hardware to play the game, and some people did. But to expect that most would do that? Lol. They're not that dumb.

"The idea" was to do something no one had done before with a beloved franchise. Not to sell headsets.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I don't think they particularly cared if you bought their headset, but they had the premium offering if you were interested. I think they wanted Alyx to be the Mario 64 of VR.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's both financial (huge investment for a single game) and not. Playing with a thing strapped to your face does not sound fun. Especially with glasses. Or in the summertime. Plus I'm a Linux gamer, so I'd probably run into a lot of issues before I could run it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I also run on Linux exclusively and I could play Half-Life Alex almost flawlessy on the Steam Index. And other VR games as well, including Beatsaber, Gorn, Walkabout Golf and many others. I'm really grateful to Valve and their Proton.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Thanks, that's nice to know in case I decide to get a VR headset in the future.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Its $500 today but at the time it was $1500 and required cable and beacons.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

True in regards to the index kit but WMR has been around for a long time as well and that was a fraction of the price without base stations.

Also nobody has missed out on playing it yet! There's still time before half life 3! 😅

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

True

it's doomed now, but I love my Reverb G2, I got it for the same price as a Quest 2 (before the q3 released) and, having used both, its a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The game starts at 60 USD and goes down to 30 pretty often. If you have VR already, it's not very expensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I'm showing it as $18 right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It's also way different from the goal of HL2. Downloading a launcher called Steam for free is not the same thing as buying specific hardware to play one game.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

You could buy a quest 2, connect it to your 5 year old PC and play it just fine. I ran it off a gtx 1070ti with that headset just fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's free if you buy an Index

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe not in your country. I literally just checked on the American store and it's still included with the Valve Index.

They even give you a free copy of Half-Life Alyx if you buy a pair of knuckles controllers for $279.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Valve's 'official' VR hardware costs ~$1500. Ain't no way 😆

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Huh? It's $1K, not $1.5K. still expensive though for outdated as shit hardware.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

With the little box doohickeys it's currently $1300 CAD. Add on tax and shipping. I believe it used to be more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What boxes? The 1k pack comes with two base stations. You mean if you want to add 2 more? Then yea, fair.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the valve index is very expensive

The whole kit is $1300 before tax

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Your looking at it in Canadian. I'm looking at usd. So we're saying the same thing, just different currencies lol. Woops.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But it's not required, there are much cheaper options, especially today with used quest 2 devices.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The "other reasons" people aren't buying affordable VR setups is because they don't trust Meta or their privacy policies. If the new Valve headset was $300-500 it would go a long way. But $1200 isn't it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

That is why those other VR sets are so cheap.

With valve, you're paying for the hardware. With Meta, you're the product

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Psvr2, plus the pc adapter, i got both for a total of like $400 a few months ago, and got hl alyx on sale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Have you used any other VR headset? I ask just cuz I wanna know how the PSVR2 compares to other headsets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

The only other one ove used is psvr1, and one of those smart phone ones, psvr2 is obvioisly miles ahead of bith, though i cant say how it compares to Index, or quest. Id imagine its probably near quest quality.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Plenty of people aren't interested in vr for different reasons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Don't tell me that. Tell Valve.