The incredibly ambitious fan-created Half-Life 2: VR Mod, which was originally greenlit on Steam back in 2017, is finally releasing a public beta on Steam today after almost eight years in development, even after being practically abandoned before some new blood took over the project and saw it to completion.
The idea behind Half-Life 2: VR Mod is deceptively simple: add full virtual reality support to Valve’s 2004 masterpiece for a fully immersive new experience. The Source VR Mod Team painstakingly added new features to the game, like tracked motion controls and full roomscale VR, a new, more VR-friendly weapon switching system, realistic weapon handling and a variety of control options and comfort settings, and they’re not done yet, hence this public beta—expect some features to still be missing and potentially some bugs.
Regarding this public beta release, lead developer Holger “cabalist” Frydrych told Metrocop via email that “while the project is not yet finished, it has been a long road to get here, and we’re all looking forward to letting everyone finally play the beta version! Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up, and smell the ashes.”
You can download Half-Life 2: VR Mod for free on Steam if you own the original Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2: VR Mod is fully playable on any VR headset supported by SteamVR, including HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Meta Rift and Quest 2 and, of course, Valve Index.
Tried it myself, and I’m not disappointed ! Though I am a bit of a noob when it comes to VR, so I had to play on Easy Mod x)