Gaming communities have been engaged in discussions about Half-Life: Alyx being partly playable without a VR headset for the past month or two. The team behind the NoVR modification project has, as of late week, announced that the game's story experience - from start to finish - is totally VR free. This news should satisfy many excited fans who have been anticipating Half-Life: Alyx's campaign being displayed on the small/medium screen. Previous entries in the long running Half Life series have always been two-dimensional traditional monitor affairs.

The GB_2 Development Team cheerfully introduces its latest iteration of NoVR: "This is our biggest update yet and we have no plans on slowing down! With thousands playing Half-Life: Alyx NoVR we are happy to announce our largest update yet! As the titles state the entire game can now be played from start to finish, with the Gravity Gloves fully implemented along with combine fabricators providing weapon upgrades. Also since we are now updating the final parts of the game there may be spoilers! We will do our best to not spoil anything while ensuring we communicate these late game areas have been updated along with their gameplay mechanics."

Gabe Newell who is currently residing in New Zealand has recently confirmed in a new interview that his company Valve "definitely has games in development that they're going to be announcing". With the positive release of Half-Life: Alyx the company plans to create further single-player games and Gabe noted that there is a lot of momentum within Valve to do so.

Gabe Newell has been living with his family in New Zealand since early 2020 when they decided to stay in the country after a holiday due to the countries successful management of COVID-19. He has now been granted New Zealand residency in principle and is actively considering transferring Valve operations and major events to the country. This includes hosting the companies DOTA 2 and CS:GO annual esports tournaments which had to be canceled in 2020 and "strong interest" from employees for relocation.

Steam has recently published their Best of 2020 awards which highlight the best selling, and most played games of 2020. The awards include six categories including Top Sellers, Top New Releases, Top Selling VR Games, Top Early Access Graduates, Most Played Games, and Top Controller Games. The 100 games in each list are ranked as Platinum (1st - 12th), Gold (13th - 24th), Silver (25th - 40th), and Bronze (41st - 100th) with each rank of games being randomly sorted.

Starting with the Top Sellers we have Grand Theft Auto V, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, DOOM Eternal, Monster Hunter: World, Dota 2, Among Us, Destiny 2, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive all taking the top platinum rating.

Valve's Half Life: Alyx has been finally released, after the company first teased, and then unwrapped the game back in November 2019. Half Life: Alyx has been completely developed for the VR gaming crown, with a focus on execution that meant for it to finally be VR's killer app - much like Halo was for the original Xbox. Valve describes the game as a full-length release in the Half Life universe, slotting in the 20-year time gap between the events of the original Half Life and Half Life 2.

Of course, to play this game, you need a PC-based VR headset to play the game through Steam. The game has received rave reviews already, featuring a 93 Metacritic score based on 24 critic reviews, and an 8.2 user score. Give it some time before actually looking for guidance in that user review score, though. Valve founder Gabe Newell had this to say: "Half-Life: Alyx represents the culmination of Valve's technological advancement over the past few years. We have built SteamVR, our game engine, our tools, and VR hardware specifically to enable us to ship the best content we know how to create. Today, as we ship Alyx remotely from our homes, we are hoping that everyone stays safe and has a great time playing the game. Please let us know what you think."

Valve's Index VR headset is expected to go back on sale on Monday, March 9th, when Valve will again re-fill its stock of Index VR headsets, according to Engadget. Just in time for the Half-Life: Alyx launch, Valve has decided to supply all of the gamers with a stock of the headsets so everyone can experience the new Half-Life game with Valve's Index VR. Considering that Half-Life: Alyx is dropping on March 23rd, Valve thought of everyone in need of a new VR headset and decided to offer it on Monday. Valve is expecting the headset to sell out completely, so its best to be early if you want to get one too, for $999. The sale will begin at 1PM eastern time.

Valve has taken the proverbial wraps off the already-teased, and now revealed, Half Life: Alyx. The latest installment in the Half-Life universe, again, isn't a sequel to the narrative that has been left midway with the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Instead, it's a prequel of sorts, situated in the 20-year time gap between the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2. It's at this point in the timeline that players will accompany Alyx and her father, Elias, in their fight against the Combine.

Engine-wise, the game will make use of the Source 2 engine, and will be released with accompanying Source 2 tools for worldbuilding, allowing players to design and distribute their own worlds set in this universe. The game will be a single-player, story-driven FPS affair, and will make heavy use of Half-Life's physics interactions. The game is being announced as a full-length game release built from the ground-up for VR - it's not just a VR adventure the development team embarked on, though it did start that way. But let that be for a while: go after the break to watch the game's trailer. I dare you to say this doesn't quite look like your Half-Life dream game.

Well, that headline must've been met with both a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia, and a sudden, stab-like wound on the back of many readers. The usage of Valve and Half-Life together in the same sentence has been the victim of multiple memes and disappointments over the years, with the studio being seemingly unable to keep up with the mantle of great games it has released before in the Half-Life universe. Half-Life 3 is already so much of a failed expectation that the game could (likely) never live up to the expectations set on it at this point in time. It seems valve is shrugging the game away with a Half-Life set VR game, though, in the form of Half-Life: Alyx.

Valve itself have posted a teaser image on Twitter, announcing it as a flagship VR game available for SteamVR. To be unveiled on November 21st, nothing much is known about the game by now; but it's expected it will be a VR-exclusive experience. The game started out as a single-player exploration experience for VR, and it seems to have found its way developed into a full-fledged game. Apparently, this Half-Life: Alyx game is the first in Valve's plans of releasing more VR games in the future, which may or may not be set in the Half-Life universe. This could actually be an interesting experience for VR, if you can get beyond the usual betrayal of not seeing an announcement for Half-Life 3. Who knows - this could even be the killer app for VR, or an Half-Life renaissance in the minds of gamers and Valve themselves. At the very least, we know it will induce nostalgia.