With the rumours swirling around a new Half-Life game coming, this is an excellent time to play the updated NoVR mod for Half-Life: Alyx if you don't own a VR kit. And there's a big Summer 2024 update out now.
Since Half-Life: Alyx was designed for VR, it's still a little odd to try without it, but it's such an important game it deserves to have life outside of VR too.
With this update all the "toner puzzles" are now complete and solvable from start to finish. All Steam Achievements are now obtainable too and there's been a big upgrade to the movement system too so that it should feel smoother and weapons feel better while moving. Plus some other updates:
- Map Edits - players will no longer get caught on objects on the ground like train tracks etc and have proper smooth locomotion through the levels
- Viewmodel Changes - there have been changes to how weapons sway, bob and overall move as you walk and run
- Boundary Edits - players can no longer break level logic and proper edits have been made so players cannot break the map boundaries and other similar issues that could have arised before
Check out their update trailer:
![YouTube Thumbnail](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/cache/youtube_thumbs/1322d3239c5b1298595f1cdc8f0fdd49.jpg)
Direct Link
More updates are planned for 2024 including support for more mods, new animations, further movement improvements and so on. Perhaps most importantly, they will be getting the Orb Puzzle implementation done too at some point. In case you weren't aware: you can complete the game from start to finish with this mod.
See more in their Mod DB post. Half-Life: Alyx is available on Steam and 66% off until August 19th.
Additionally, I wish the direction they went with porting alyx from VR was something more akin to the way Resident Evil 7 plays than the more semi fast paced direction this has gone in since that makes way more sense for the pace of the game in VR, but hey, I'm just happy more people will get to play the game at all. I'm still rooting for this mod to succeed, just so I can have the ability replay the game on the go with my steam deck, and out of curiosity.
I highly recommend to people that if they are gonna play the game this way, they should install the Merciless Half Life Alyx mod to balance things out a bit.
Last edited by WMan22 on 13 August 2024 at 2:01 pm UTC
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