HomeNewsHalf-Life: Alyx
You can walk around some Half-Life: Alyx environments in VR now, so I haveWe’ve got GIFs
We’ve got GIFs
Half-Life: Alyxis so close I’ve started rearranging furniture in my house so I’ll have more space to play it. I don’t need to wait any longer if I want to visit a couple of the game’s environments with my headset, however. Last night, Valve released two areas from HL: Alyx for use in SteamVR Home - that’s the staging area you appear inside when you first load SteamVR, before you choose what game you’re going to play. I’ve had a wander around a City 17 backalley, gazed up at the unfinished Citadel, and am more ready for the game than ever.
The first of the environments is set in City 17, as seen above. You start off in an alleyway, and then can move through a corridor to a children’s swing park. Those fleshy Combine gunships fly overhead, you can hear the distant stomps of a Strider, and there are cables, posters and other alien detritus scattered around. It’s visually rich in a way most VR games are not, and I particularly love the soft lighting and the low clouds.
SteamVR Home environments are mostly decorative, designed to either load quickly so you can select a game from a menu, or as hang-out spaces for gathering pals inside before you go play. As a result, they’re a lot less interactive than the environments likely will be inHalf-Life: Alyxproper. For one, you don’t have fancy gloves for grabbing things from afar, though there are a few physics objects to pick up and throw around. And as per every SteamVR Home environment, you can spawn your own items and furniture and save them in place for the next time you return.
Then there’s the second environment…
He’s not in his lab - SteamVR Home doesn’t have characters - but there’s lots to poke around at. There’s a button to open a secret doorway to where he works. There’s a fridge stuffed with powdered food and what appears to be a vac-packed headcrab labelled “DO NOT EAT”. There are old TVs and CRT monitors everywhere, some showing faintBlack Mesalogos. And in the back, there’s the contraption from which you’ll presumably take the magic gloves in the game itself:
I don’t think I’d want to make either of these environments my permanent SteamVR Home - neither has a particularly chill vibe, given the signs of military occupation and dereliction. They are a tiny taste of what Half-Life: Alyx promises to deliver, however: the chance to fully inhabitHalf-Life’s stunning environment design. Scale has always been one of the things VR is best at, and I’m desperate to crane my neck upwards at the Citadel some more.
If you want more interactivity, you could alwaystry playing Half-Life 1 in VRwhile you wait on Alyx, or hit up our list of thebest VR games.
