One of the first games I wanted to play after I learned you can play PCVR games on the Quest
2 was of course Half Life Alyx. Many people claim it to be the best VR game in existence.
So far.
And I have to agree with them.
Since it's launch in March of 2020 there has yet to be a VR game released that compares
in terms of visuals and overall game play, at least in my opinion. While the core game made
by Valve is fantastic there are also a bunch of community made mods that add new levels to play,
different skins for your weapons, new game modes and a lot of other things.
The cool thing about modding Half Life Alyx is Valve has made it insanely simple to do.
Most of the time if you want to mod a game there's a bunch of steps you've got to take
and different pieces of software you have to download and install...
Generally speaking it's a pain to do.
To mod Half Life Alyx though all you have to do is open Steam... click on Half Life Alyx in your
library... Yes! You do of course need to own a copy of the game. Then click on Workshop here
and this is where you'll find all the mods. They even sort them for you by Most Popular,
Most Subscribed and Most Recent. You can also search for specific mods in the search bar here
toward the top of the page if you know the name of a particular mod you want to try.
For this video I'm going to click on the first one here in the Most Subscribed list,
"Overcharge" and then click on the green subscribe button. This will start the mod,
or addon as Valve calls them, downloading to your PC annnnd... yah that's pretty much it.
Now we just need to put on our VR headset and fire up Half Life Alyx.
Once loaded into the menu you click on Addons here, and then you'll see a list of all the mods
or addons you've subscribed to. To activate an addon you just click on it's name or the
toggle switch here to the left. Now all you need to do is go back to the main menu,
and click on Start New Game. If you're using an addon that just changes the look of your gun or
something else you can use in the original game you can then start a game using the addon you
enabled. If you're playing a new custom level though like I subscribed to for this tutorial,
you'll then click in this field up here to switch from Original Game to Add on Maps.
The addon levels you enabled will show up here being highlighted like this one. Click on it
and then select your difficulty, your movement type and your weapon hand and then Start Game with
Addons. The game will then ask you if you want to create a new game slot which you have to Accept.
Your game will then load up with your selected mods applied and you can start playing.
While we were getting our addons set up and running you may have noticed this button here
that says Browse Workshop. Not only can you browse for and install mods from Steam on your PC as I
showed earlier you can also browse and install addons from within Half Life Alyx using this.
Some Addons do require you to restart the game for them to take effect though
which is why my preferred way of looking for addons is through the Steam interface on my PC.
When I first learned this was possible and started looking into the different Addons for this game
I was pleasantly surprised to see just how many there are. Some are of course more polished than
others but I've had a lot of fun just trying different things out. There are mods to change
the skins on your guns for example. I found this one that turns your handgun into Han
Solos blaster from Star Wars. Another that changes it into the pistol from Doom 2016
and there is a whole crap ton of others, many of which can be used in the games original campaign.
As for the Addons that allow you to play completely new levels and games modes;
one of the more popular ones out there is called Return to Rapture,
which is Bioshock in VR if you're a fan of that game. And for old guys like me who spent countless
hours with my friends playing the crap out of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 in the late 90's
someone has remade several of the levels from the old N64 game and they both look and play
great. It's been a really long time since I last played GoldenEye 007 but I feel
like these remade levels in VR are even more difficult to beat than they were on the N64.
There's even an addon level that allows you to run around in a Minecraft styled world. The level is
really short and pretty easy to get through and you're killing Combine soldiers and headcrab
zombies rather than skeletons and creepers and whatnot but it's a fun experience all the same.
One of my personal favorite addons is a series called Gunman Contracts. It's basically
John Wick in VR. There are currently two chapters of Gunman Contracts and both take
about 20 minutes to complete but they're non-stop action all the way though. They're
pretty freakin' intense and will have you carefully peeking around corners and
watching your back at all times as you're hunting down a gang of human traffickers.
So far I've really only begun to scratch the surface of what's available
in the workshop though. So if you guys have some favorite addons you think I need to try;
please share your recommendations in the comments so myself and everyone
else can check them out and give them a try.