Half-Life 2: VR Mod Released

The long-awaited VR mod for Half-Life 2 is free on Steam, bringing the iconic Valve title to a near-native level of immersion. This is a fan-made project, and development started nearly 10 years ago, although due to life and work getting in the way, the lead developer had to sideline work on the mod after moving to Rockstar Games.

Last year though, modder Cabilastic joined Wormslayer and the rest of the Source VR team to bring Half-Life 2 in its entirety to VR finally. It is now available to PC players at no extra cost via early access. Granted, you will need a copy of the game to play, but you can get that at a reasonable price in various bundles.

Here is the complete list of features, taken from the Steam page:

• Full room-scale VR with tracked motion controls. Physically walk around, pick up objects and climb ladders the way that only Virtual Reality allows
• Intuitive and realistic weapon interactions, with quick and easy weapon switching via a radial menu, ammo storage over your shoulder, functional iron-sights, two-handed weapons, and manual reloading
• Control options including; full left-handed support, a laser sight, and arcade style “quick reload”
• Comfort features like motion vignette and 3rd person vehicle camera. (Note: there is currently no teleport movement option)
• Playable on any VR headset which is supported by SteamVR

The team also provides a roadmap so players can keep tabs on new features and bug fixes. You can find what they had to say below:

“While we certainly cannot “remaster” HL2 to look like a game developed in 2022, we are working on overhauling assets and textures by a combination of AI upscaling and manual touches to give them that extra bit of detail and sharpness under the VR headset that is missing from the original. All updates are intended to stay faithful to the original. Additionally, all maps in the game will get a facelift and are being improved with updated lighting, more details and bug fixes in addition to VR-centric adjustments like smooth stairs.”

Those eager to get in on this action will need Windows 10, an Intel Core i5-4950 processor, and 8 GBs of RAM. That’s only for minimum specs; more details can be found on the mod’s store page. With this mod being a public beta, bugs and glitches could happen. Thankfully, the developers warned players about it on Steam. Anyway, enjoy your trip back to City 17 from an all-new perspective!