View City 17 with new eyes.
A fan-built hack has made the iconic first-person shooter Half-Life 2 playable in virtual reality, and it looks fairly impressive.
Half-Life 2: VR Mod has officially entered open beta on Steam following nearly ten years of effort and a flood of fan support. It is not only completely free but also appears to be a worthy replacement for Half-Life: Alyx by adding full virtual reality support to Valve’s iconic FPS.
The mod features full room-scale movement with tracked motion controls, so you can freely walk about City 17 and pick up objects with your hands. All weapons have been overhauled to support manual reloading, as well as two-handed handling, and optional laser sights. Plus, a new radial weapon-select menu has been added alongside over-the-shoulder ammo storage to tie in with the VR controls.
It may be used with any SteamVR-compatible VR headset, including the Valve Index, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, and HTC Vive. Due to the fact that it is a mod, you must already possess Half-Life 2 on Steam in order to use it, but why wouldn’t you?
Rise and shine, Mr Freeman
Half-Life 2: VR Mod is certainly ambitious. Created by a team of volunteer developers, it looks to translate the original game to VR wholesale, with much of its changes based on the VR design of Half-Life: Alyx. If the final game plays as smoothly as its trailer suggests, it should feel close to an official VR version of the classic shooter.
It’s only launching in beta, though, and the developers say it’ll be some time yet before the mod’s completely finished. While it is fully playable from start to finish and features all gameplay elements, expect to run into a few bugs.
According to the dev’s roadmap, weapons need extra polishing, new animations and improved handling. Controls also need a bit of fine-tuning, and the team is investigating teleport movement as an alternative to direct controls – but is wary that the game’s levels weren’t originally designed for such a system. In the future, textures will also be upscaled so the game’s 18-year-old graphics appear less jarring in a VR headset.
The team intends to make Episodes 1 and 2’s VR adaptations available separately at a later time. Perhaps Half-Life 2 will be included in our list of the top VR experiences to date.
Visit the mod’s Half-Life 2: VR Mod Steam page to learn more (opens in new tab). Try playing Half-Life 2 in VR using Garry’s Mod if you want to make things a bit more challenging for yourself.