My vote would have been more like “don’t care about VR, don’t care about Half-Life.”

I respect the franchise for what it’s done, I just don’t really care to play it. I bounced off both Half-Life 1 and 2 back in the day...

Though I enjoyed the first two games quite a bit, having a baby makes VR practically irresponsible to use at most times of the day. The game itself does seem pretty cool, but outside of the possibility of well-developed VR interaction, it's likely going to be an entertaining enough adventure with a beloved character.

After what, 12 years? There's nothing left of Half Life that holds that kind of pull on me now.

I would barely be excited to play a regular Half Life 3, let alone one that would inconvenience me a great deal in the process.

The poll reads like the writer is under the assumption that everyone wants to buy and/or play this game. That ship sailed years ago for me, this game is going to have to pull off some really amazing and innovative shit for me to be at all interested in it, VR or not.

if i had the gear id be 100% in. i still think the world-building and aesthetics of the HL universe are awesome.

buuut not to the tune of the $1000+ id have to spend to play it.

If the poll had a 'no' option, that's what I'd pick. I'm ambivalent about HLA, VR, and Half-Life as whole.

@ntm: Don't worry, HLA will not be on-rails. For locomotion, it supports teleportation, sliding between points, and free movement with an analog stick.

I'm good to go and can't wait! But, I still found this poll odd, where is the option for "No"?

I fully get that some people just don't have the money or interest, which is a massive shame because VR really is one of the best things to happen to gaming in decades. It really reminded me of the first time I saw a "3D" polygon game, it's just a whole new way to experience games that I think everyone should at least try once.

I'm not saying it's a replacement for flat screen gaming, I will always love having a monitor/TV. But it's awesome to have as another platform, sorta like having a console and PC. It also makes me get off of my ass and move around, and it really brings the arcade experience into your home.

Let me preface this by saying Half Life 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, if not the favorite, and I regular replay it and the episodes every couple of years.

My answer is a hard No, I see nothing particularly interesting about the gameplay that I feel like other VR FPS games haven't already been doing, and it's place in the timeline does nothing to help. Honestly i'm so indifferent towards VR that I think even if it was Half Life 3 I would only be excited to watch a Let's Play to see how the story resolves.

Oh God no. I don't understand the appeal of VR and thanks to my epilepsy I never will.

Probably not. But in the extremely rare chance that this is a truly groundbreaking 9.5/10 kind of game... weeeell maybe. I do love the Half-Life world and characters.

Nope. The only way I get into VR is if the platform is so good the industry moves towards it as a whole. Even then, I'm a motion sickness sufferer and that side effect doesn't appeal to me.

nah, VR is quite a way away for me. That said, i think it's generally a good thing that they make a new Half Life for new tech. I wouldn't be super excited for a non-VR half life with some innovations regarding to.. Raytracing? Like i would look forward towards it and perhaps love it, but that could happen with any other series as well.

B is the closest option for me, I'm excited for VR, but the one sane thing Palmer Luckey ever said was that VR is going to fail (again) if it's above $200 for a headset, and, well, that's where we ended up again.

I'd love to get a VR headset, but at an affordable price point, currently most of these things seem targeted at upper class people with mansions or massive warehouses to make use of the roomscale stuff, and software wise we're definitely going to be stuck with all these tech demos and shooting galleries until a wider range of both users and developers can get access to it.

Had the original Oculus and sold it. I love the idea of VR but unless I'm laying down these headsets just kill my neck after a while. I can not see enjoying a 10-15 hour VR game, they are just to isolating that after anything for more then 30 min I am just so tired from playing.

It’s like Bayonetta 2 - I’m invested in the franchise but I’m not getting an entire system for just that one game.

I have a VR headset and have no desire to play this. Movement is important in a Half Life game, and movement in VR is terrible. It also looks like the majority of this game is built on VR gimmicks, so a non-VR version seems kind of pointless.

If Valve was going to make a VR game, I don’t get why they didn’t make a new Portal. Teleportation is already an integral part of the game.

This is a bad poll man, you need a "No interest whatsoever/Not interested in VR" option.

The only options on this poll are yes, yes, yes, and most likely yes.

I guess no one can say no if no isn't an option.

@rigas: you have the answer of “I already own a headset” - “no this will not make me buy a headset” and “yes it will make me buy a headset”

What other option would you need for the question of “will this game make you buy a headset?”

No, I'm not spending over £2000 just for a crappy half-life knock off

I have VR, but I've sorta packed it away.

This game hasn't really got me excited enough to consider getting it all back out.

I was a big Half-Life fan through all those years. Kinda lost my excitement some years ago since it was clear that there won't be another game in the series and Laidlaw releasing "Epistle 3" gave me closure.

Now I'm incredibly excited again. Sure, it's not a continuation of the story, but it's more of the Half-Life universe and its story, so I'm totally down.

Personally got a Rift a couple of years ago and I have a lot of fun with it in Beat Saber, VRChat, Euro Truck Sim 2, Dirt Rally, and Elite Dangerous. But there hasn't really been any single-player story-based game yet that really grabbed my attention. And the only VR games I really enjoy playing that make use of standing and the Touch controllers are VRChat and Beat Saber. Definitely feel that has been underutilised for me.

So bring it on HL:Alyx! I'm ready to go and cannot wait!

I love VR and have a PSVR headset, but not a PC one. Certainly won't buy one for this, though. Nothing against Half Life, it's just that my PC is barely VR capable, and I'm not about to drop stupid amounts of money for a spinoff game of a franchise I like but don't love that probably won't run particularly well for me. There are other killer PC VR apps I want more than this one.

I've yet to actually try any of the VR headsets, so I can't really speak to the quality of that experience. But conceptually there's close to nothing about VR that appeals to me in any way. Certainly not for the price of admission. As much as I'd like to care about a new Half-Life game, I also can't muster much excitement in that regard either. This announcement was really a big nothing for me.

As much as I still like the idea of going back to that world, as it is one of my favorites and I still have a lot of love for it and it's characters even after this long, that's a little too much money to dump on something just to play a new game.

So unless the praise it gets is through the roof and there'll be some other VR games pop up that seem as interesting, I'll be passing on this. There's already plenty of regular games coming out in 2020 that I want to play, even if not all of them tickle my interest as much as going back to Half-Life.

Oh and also having a lot of spare money would obviously affect my decision.

Yeah there's not a single option here for me because my opinion on the game and on VR is "no it will not".

No. Not because I'm uninterested in the game but because I just don't like VR. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to wear a silly pair of goggles and move my head around. I want the traditional m+k or controller experience.

Not even a little tempted. I have little interest in VR, and even if it didn't require a bunch of expensive hardware I don't want this would be a wait and see game for me.

Ye, this poll is sorely missing a "don't care about Half Life" option.

Not interested enough to shell out $1000 for an Index, but I've been planning on getting an Oculus Quest + link cable sometime in 2020 regardless. If Alyx turns out well that'll be another point in its favor. I never got around to playing more than a few hours of any Half Life game, but that announcement trailer had the kind of microcosmic physics objects stuff that I dig, so I'm tentatively optimistic.

It has to be an absolute landmark in the video game landscape. It has to be for VR what Final Fantasy VII was for JRPGs in 1997; what Half-Life was to the FPS in 1998; what Counter-Strike was to online multiplayer in 2000; what Starcraft 2 was for the burgeoning competition scene in 2010; the list goes on, but I think a point has been made.

This game has to tick so many boxes, and be such a breakthrough, for me to care about Valve's games anymore.

Maybe if reviews are good, I'm still interested in a new Half Life game.

No.

No chance. Even PSVR is a bit too rich for my blood.

Even if I was much more into Half-Life, the prospect of spending over a grand to play a single game seems like a terrible idea.

I already have a PSVR but I would maybe consider getting one of the cheaper PCVR headsets to play this. Sadly, my computer is old as hell... So I'd need that also.. If it comes to PSVR2, that would be ideal cause that's likely my next VR hardware purchase.

Also, to those who think that it costs a grand to play this game, please don't repeat that as if it's fact, because you can get a Win MR headset for 200 bucks. 100 bucks used. The bar to entry for VR is super low these days, and that's been true for like 2 years+. 1000 bucks is what you spend if you want the absolute best. It's almost twice as expensive as its facebook competition, and 5x as expensive as WinMR. Don't let anyone put you off VR by claiming that you need the highest priced hardware available. I'm happy as a clam with just my PSVR, and all the PC headsets, even the 200dollar ones, are superior to the PSVR for tracking and resolution etc.

VR is rad as fuck IMO. It's just constantly getting shit on by the press. Anytime people say it's all tech demos and motion sickness, likelyhood is that they've hardly played any of the good shit from the past 2 years, and definitely not much from the last year which has been pretty glorious for VR. Take their opinions with a grain of salt. At least as big of a grain as you'd take with my fanboi-ass enthusiasm.

Don't knock it till you've tried a game that actually sits well with you. If you're a sim fan, plop yourself down in a DCS cockpit, or something like Asetto Corsa, there's no coming back from VR simming. Screens are 100% pathetic afterwards. This goes for all genres for me. As soon as VR does something sorta right, all flat games in that genre instantly lose all of their appeal to me. Once I shot a "real gun" in farpoint with the Aim controller, that was it.. FPS games on a screen were done. And I didn't even like Farpoint.. Now I'm just sitting around waiting for a VR shooter that I want to play (ArmA 4... Please.. I want to go to there..) just like with all the other genres I've found work OK in VR.

If you're a video game person who gets really into the immersion factor games offer, VR is definitely worth looking into. Can't get more immersed than VR. We need a good VRMMORPG so that we can really get sucked in there in an all consuming way...

I've been getting PMs in Discord from friends asking for advice on what to do to get their rigs ready for HLVR so it's been turning some heads. I'm pretty interested in playing HLVR on my Index, shame it's taken them this long to start making games for VR after all the work they've put into the hardware and software side of things. It's like the table has been set for two years and only now they've given us a menu.

Not interested at all.

I would like to play around with VR, but I wear glasses and can't tolerate contacts.

3 of my friends got Oculus Rifts when they had that big price cut a while back and I've played around with one. I found it's not tolerable to wear the headset over glasses for more like 10 minutes.

It's really crappy that there's no standardized solution for this. There's a 3rd party company that makes precision lens inserts for the various headsets, but because every headset has a different form factor and no official solution for mounting prescription lenses, they need to make different lenses for every one. Decide to get a new headset and your expensive lenses are now junk. This is unnecessary. The headset makers need to adopt an open standard for an insertable lens form factor so you can get one set that you can transfer between headsets.

The black friday prices on the Samsung Oddyssey+ headset tipped me over into buying VR. That said, i'm not sure I will buy Alyx, aside from the original Half-Life the wonky FoV in every Valve first person game has made me feel real sick real fast (read, 10 minutes in the game and I need to go lay down for an hour), combining this with VR seems like a terrible idea.

I was somewhat into Half Life & HL2, plus the Episodes 1 & 2. However, as others have also stated, my desire for more HL has waned with the passing of time. The only thing that might make me remotely interested in returning to that universe would be a traditional, non-VR release.

No and no: not interested in VR or HL: Alyx, not even a non-VR version.

Kinda surprised at the comments here...but maybe not? Maybe that's why GB doesn't make VR videos anymore, cause no one will watch something they seem to have made up their mind about? I hope at least those people actually tried, and if they did, for more than 10 minutes?

Yes VR is still clunky and often cumbersome but so are most things in their early stages. (by the way those new Panasonic vr glasses are looking quite comfy, though lacking in power) Yes you get sick at first but your eyes will adjust after some time. If you can get past those issues, then you get a glimpse at what interactive entertainment eventually can become. What could you possibly have against that? Yes there are plenty of tech demos but there are also many full fledged games that are well worth your time, The Walking Dead being the latest and many to look forward to this year. They're not reinventing the wheel gameplay wise, the intent is to create a greater sense of immersion, within a 3d world and motion controls.

Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the bottom line here is give it time, don't just dismiss it based on very limited first impressions. Also Half Life 3 not interesting, what kind of notice me senpai bullshit is that? Both games were revolutionary when they came out and I'm not an fps guy at all. I'm not chomping at the bit, but i'm definitely interested? I just can't help but wonder what the rationale behind some of your comments are.

I voted no because it's too expensive for me right now, but I'm not really interested in a non VR version. I've also never played a Half Life game so I'm not dying to see where the story goes; I just want to see what Valve does with VR.

@pilgrimm1981: I feel like you answered your own question, VR is a damn hassle, especially if you wear glasses, live with people, have kids etc.

Also it's been a long time since Half-Life mattered. I loved those games and their expansions but Valve hasnt put out anything worthwhile in almost a decade, it's easy to be dismissive of them. I hope Half-Life Alyx is good, I hope all games are good, but there are many reasons people may not be excited by it.

@boozak: There's a bunch of companies out there that sell lenses made to your specs so you can just put those on the ones in your headset.

That way you don't need to wear your glasses but still get a sharp picture, prices start around 45 bucks, which is crappy due to yet additional cost, but imho well worth it for the comfort and improved visuals.

It's also not as "in the way" as I originally imagined it to be. Movement-wise you are not needing much more space than some of the more elaborate Wii remote games.

Sure, you don't see your surroundings, but if whoever you live with is aware of that fact they can give you a proper warning when they need to pass through your playspace.

@ntm: You really couldn't have put a straight up "No" option? Poll is biased.

This.

And to add to that, the Half-Life series isn't really in my top ten.

I hate doing it, and I never do, but I might just watch someone else play through it (without commentary) if it's posted to YouTube. I'm just not going to be getting VR in the foreseeable future but I'm interested in where the story goes, and what the environments look like. Also, sorry for the poll options. I guess I wasn't thinking about the simple 'no' answer, although I'm aware not everyone wants to play this game. I didn't assume that at the time either, I just didn't add it as a choice.

IGN has some rather hyperbolic praise for this based on the first four hours. HL2 is one of my favorite games ever, and Alyx one of my favorite characters. If any game would make me invest in VR this is the one. I don't know, though, that I will make the leap.

I sold my PSVR a while ago, it was one of the first gen that couldn't pass through HDR. It was fine when I didn't have a HDR capable tv, but a cabling nightmare when I did. (got a hdmi switch to bypass the PSVR when I wanted to play a game that used HDR)

When Half-Life Alyx was announced and you could get it when you buy an Index I bought an Index. Then proceeded to re-buy most of the games I'd gotten on the PSVR.

With the much better tracking comes the issue that you move around a LOT more than PSVR. So, now I want a wireless adapter for the Index so I don't have to keep untangling the cable around my feet.