The VR Mod version of Half-Life 2: Episode One will be available to anyone who owns Episode One already. It should play the same as the Half-Life 2: VR Mod, which entered public beta back in September, letting you move around freely, pick stuff up with your hands, and cycle through weapons with a snazzy floating radial menu. The whole project to convert Half-Life 2 and its episodes into VR is a voluntary one, but I gather the Source VR Mod Team are accepting donations in the form of coffee. I’m not the biggest fan of VR in general, but even I’m tempted to give these mods a go eventually. The combat in the VR Mod looks very slick indeed, and Rick Lane called it “a fantastic adaptation of a classic” in his Reality Bytes column last November. “Unlike Valve’s spit-and-paper version of Half-Life 2 VR, this is a far more comprehensive conversion, adding touch controls, reworked weapons that function with said controls, VR-compatible menus, and so much more,” he said. “If you own a VR headset, it’s almost as much of a must-play as Half-Life: Alyx itself.” You can grab the Half-Life 2: VR Mod for free on Steam. There’s no firm date for Episode One’s release yet, but you should be able to play it sometime in the next few months.
