Back in January, the makers behind the excellent Half-Life 2 VR mod announced they were moving on to making a virtual reality goggle version of Half-Life 2: Episode One – and we now know it will be arriving on Steam later today. What’s more, we also have a release date for their VR mod of Episode Two. That will come next month on April 6th, according to its Steam page.
You’ll need to own the original versions of Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two on Steam in order to take advantage of the mods, but the mods themselves cost nothing to download – although you can support the Source VR Mod Team developers on Ko-Fi to say thank you for their efforts.
Naturally, you’ll also need a VR headset that supports SteamVR at your disposal as well. This currently includes the Valve Index, Oculus Rift / Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive headsets, as well as any Windows Mixed Reality headset.
Both episodes will be playable at roomscale, allowing you to move around, lean over objects and use your hands to pick things up. We haven’t played them ourselves just yet, but they should function much the same as the Source VR Mod Team’s VR adaptation of the original Half-Life 2. Rick Lane was very impressed with their Half-Life 2 VR Mod when he looked at it for his Reality Bites column at the end of last year, calling it “almost as much of a must-play as Alyx itself.” High praise indeed.
To relive Gordon Freeman’s journey in VR, you can grab the Half-Life 2 VR Mod here, Episode One here and, on April 6th, Episode 2 here. It’s also worth noting that Valve’s own Half-Life: Alyx is 60% off in the Steam Spring Sale at the moment, bringing the best VR game around to just £20/$24.
Did you also know that Valve were toying with a VR Half-Life game long before HL: Alyx came out? Find out all about it in our extensive interview with Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw.
