You can now play Half-Life: Alyx completely without a VR headset

The mod offers mouse and keyboard support, allowing you to play from start to finish

• by
  
  Cameron Faulkner
  

• on April 10, 2023, 12:55 p.m

A team of modders has come up with a way to bypass the need for a VR headset to play Half-life: AlexValve’s PC VR exclusive (via computer games). the Early access adjustmentwhich was created by GB_2 Development Team, allows you to play the full charming game Half life 2 Using a mouse and keyboard, the input method preferred by many fans of the franchise.

Still need a file version of the game on Steam, plus a relatively powerful desktop or laptop computer to run it. But it’s great news for anyone who can’t stand VR, can’t play in VR for accessibility reasons, or simply can’t justify buying an expensive VR headset to play the game.

I think it’s important to get a sense of how awesome this is before criticizing it. Both are polished enough to try and easy to install (it’s an easy drag-and-drop of files). However, due to the controls designed for the game’s virtual reality and tactile, hand-based interaction, this isn’t the one-on-one translation you might hope for – and it probably never will be. Yes, that means the game’s brilliant fluid shaders are still very convincing in VR.

Motion picture: Polygon via Valve

Valve’s Robin Walker predicted in 2020 that mods are shifting Half-life: Alex In a “standard” non-VR version of the game it will eventually appear, but it will mostly work on “[…] Show people why we’re doing this in VR.”

He’s still right, in a sense. Some of the essential components of a VR game are lost, such as using Alyx’s gravity gauntlets to grab or interact with objects with a satisfying flick of the wrist, as well as the game’s sense of scale and atmosphere. In the current state of the game, you won’t be able to get 9 of the game’s 42 Steam achievements, which are mostly based on interacting with things in the world with your hands.

But still, it’s not as bad as it might sound. After getting past the blinking main menu (and starting a new game; it won’t work with saves in progress), the motion and aiming controls work fine, and it’s nice to see this game’s lush graphics on screens not an inch from my eye. If you only care to see beats story Half-life: Alexthis could be a good way to play (side note: kudos if you can stay out of the spoilers about the game’s deadly and controversial ending).

The modding team is working on more tweaks to the interface and animations of the game and more to make it feel more like a standard PC FPS game, and less like a game firmly tied to its VR roots. Before installing the modification on your computer, the developers suggest reading the Instructionswhich details the basic controls and commands for use in Steam, and provides some troubleshooting.

Let us know in the comments if you plan to give this a shot.

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