Half-Life Alyx Gameplay: VR hardware, Oculus Quest, PC Exclusiveness & More

Valve's Half-Life: Alyx releases in March 2020 and requires a VR headset, meaning you may need to splash some cash to get in on the action.

Half-Life is a first-person shooter developed by Valve, published by Sierra Studios for Windows in 1998.

Unfortunately, for now, Alyx seems to be a PC exclusive - however, there's potential for the game to arrive on consoles later.

Here's what you need to know about the gameplay and hardware to play.

Be sure to bookmark this page and check back regularly for updates!

VR Gameplay

The gold standard is Valve’s own Index, with its high-end construction and unique controllers — but that requires a lot of setup and a lot of money. 

The cheaper alternative is the Oculus Quest, which can now be tethered to a PC, but it’s got simpler controllers and a front-heavy design. 

Valve recently invited Tested founders Will Smith and Norman Chan to play a few hours of the upcoming game on a bunch of different PC VR headset systems.

These included the:

• Index
• Quest
• Oculus Rift S
• First-generation Vive
• HTC Vive Cosmos

The systems handle simple actions like walking, reloading weapons, and using gravity gloves to move objects, in various different ways.

The Index controllers, as expected, seemed like the best way to play.

A lot of game elements apparently involve throwing, and since the Index controllers are strapped to your hands, you can completely release your grip like you would with a real object. 

So for those of you who are interested in committing to Half-Life’s VR exclusive dream, we would advise that you start testing out different hardware and finding what suits your playstyle best.

PC Specs

The Index itself demands 8 GB RAM and a GTX 970 at minimum.

However, a closer look reveals it won’t take a beast of PC to meet the minimum specs:

Minimum:

OS: Windows 10Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600Memory: 12 GB RAMGraphics: GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM

It’ll be limited to Valve VR hardware – Alyx will compatible with the HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift, and Oculus Quest if you have the PC link cable.

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Written ByChris Trout@TheTrout91

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