In March of this year, the long-awaited next entry into the Half-Life series, Half-Life: Alyx, will finally be released. It'll be only be available for Virtual Reality headsets. Of course, most players don't have virtual reality ෴headsets, which is a problem that Valve, Oculus, and others have been trying to solve for some time now.
This won't be a problem for Half-Life: Alyx, however. In fact, Half-Life:ꦚ Alyx is the solution to that problem.
Let's face it, VR headsets are a tough sell. They're expensive, can be frustrating to set up, and even once you get everything working, there's no singular great game to point to that everyone will want to play. That doesn't mean there aren't good games -- Beat Saber, Superhot and Resident Evil 7 are all amazing experiences that have drawn in plenty of fans -- but none of them have the wide appeal needed to make them the mythical "killer app" that w👍ill draw in the masses.
Half-Life: Alyx has what it takes to be that killer app.
RELATED: Surprising Nobody, Half-Life: Alyx Will Have Index-Exclu﷽sive Content
The Half-Life brand name is one that gains people's attention. Both the original entry and its sequel were ground-breaking games that changed the entire industry. Since Valve has been so heavily-involved with VR hardware, and has been actively experimenting with what does and doesn't work in VR, it seems likely that Half-Life: Alyx is set to change the industry agai✱n 𒐪and become the gold standard for how VR games are designed.
The draw of such a polis🏅hed, high-profile game will get a large number of people to bite the bullet and buy a VR headset when they otherwise would have passed.
Valve's accomplished a similar feat before by forcing players to install Steam in order to play Half-Life 2. It's easy to forget now, but at the time, Steam was absolutely hated by players, and they only put up with it because Half Life 2 was just that good. As a result, digital distribution of games♒ became common, with Steam in the center of everything.
Sure, the high cost of VR headsets will keep some people away at first, but I'𓄧d wag🍌er that enough people will try VR out to make bigger studios see value in releasing high-quality VR games. The more great games, the more people will convert to VR, and it'll become a chain reaction that results in wider acceptance of the technology.
It's hard to say whether VR will get anywhere near the number of adopters as major consoles any time soon, but Half Life: Alyx is a gamꦰe 🐬that will set things on the path where that may one day happen.
