Two weeks ago, the virtual reality (VR) industry had its killer app moment with the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx—the first Half-Life game from Valve Corporation since 2007, and, significantly, a VR-only title.
The Half-Life first-person shooters are Valve’s most iconic games, with well over 70 Game of the Year awards to their name. The series spawned spin-offs like Counter Strike and the Portal franchise.
Half-Life (1998) was a landmark title in terms of Artificial Intelligence, graphics and immersive first-person storytelling. Half-Life 2 (2004) revolutionised how games could use real-life physics, adding unprecedented character animation and level design. It gave rise to Steam, Valve’s software to download games digitally and now the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games.
DVDs died out, in part, because of Steam.
With Half-Life: Alyx, Valve promises to do for VR what Apple did for touchscreen phones—drive technological adoption forward by creating a deluxe experience worth investing in.
Half-Life: Alyx puts you back into the dystopian setting of City 17, in the aftermath of an alien invasion. You play as Alyx, a supporting character from Half-Life 2, who helps build a human resistance against the invaders.
With a VR headset and a motion-tracking controller, the game will let you move your fingers in a virtual world, reloading guns, solving puzzles, and immersing you like never before in the iconic Half-Life universe. Fighting alien zombies and “headcrabs” on a monitor is scary enough; fending them off in VR will take horror to the next level.
While the cost of entry is prohibitive—a good VR headset and a PC to run it will cost around a lakh—Valve’s pedigree may make this price worth paying. The proof? The Valve Index—the costliest VR headset, today—has already sold out in Canada and the US.