The next installment in the Half-Life franchise has arrived with Half-Life: Alyx and in a surprise to many fans, it’s only available for VR.
Unsurprisingly, Valve has been using this opportunity to push their own headset, the Index, but Alyx does indeed run on a variety of different devices, so if you don’t feel like shelling out $1000, you won’t have to.
Perhaps the greatest question leading up to launch was whether or not Alyx would be available on Oculus Quest, which is a completely wireless and standalone VR experience.
The answer to that is indeed a no, but there is a catch. If you have a PC that is capable of playing VR games, you can hook up your Quest using the Oculus Quest Link cable, which will tether the headset to your PC.
ValveHalf-Life: Alyx is the first game in the series in quite a while.
Here, you’ll be able to play all of the VR games you own on PC, including SteamVR ones, which means the game is completely playable on the Quest.
However, this does defeat the major selling point of the Quest in that you don’t need a PC to experience the games.
Many games, such as Beat Saber or Superhot VR, are playable on the Quest store, but since Alyx is a flagship VR title, it’ll only be available if you have a PC to hook it up to.
It’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world though because it’s hard to imagine how stripped down the game would have to be to run on a mobile VR setup.
Half-Life: Alyx is easily one of the most beautiful VR experiences we’ve ever seen and we’d hate to lose the essence of what makes it so great.
It’s being touted as the next main entry in the long-running, but also long-dormant, Half-Life franchise, so it makes perfect sense for it to be exclusively on PC.
Half-Life: Alyx is out now exclusively on Steam for PC.