Half-Life

Oh, yeah.

The headset does come with a complimentary copy of Half-Life Alyx.

I think that's more for the crowd that probably doesn't own the game because most people who are into PC VR most likely don't have Half-Life Alyx at this point, but I think they're going for new consumers at that point.

With that offer.

Yeah, I think you're right.

And especially considering Half-Life Alyx is, you know, there have been some really great sales over the years where you could pick up that game for, you know, virtually no money.

So, yeah, I think there are many times when people just sort of picked it up as as it dropped in price.

I think I got it for like 20 bucks or 22 bucks or something like that when I bought it.

[gasps]

... which was actually for Portal or the Half-Life verse.

I wasn't sure maybe the best approach, but I'm leaning-

Interesting

What would that look like? Um, I'm not sure his idea for that story could have sustained a feature length film.

I'm not sure what you would do, and I don't think the story of, of, uh, I believe it's Chell is the main character from Portal and Portal 2, who is silent and who certainly has, there's been a lot of lore connected to the Portal games through ARG, uh, or, um, uh, y- know, in-game logs and that sort of thing.

There's a lot of, they, Valve created a lot around, uh, Portal and around Half-Life, and these worlds are technically connected.

You know, like, there's Aperture Science, there's Black Mesa.

That, that's why I'm looking at, that's why I might put my hand on it and may- maybe have a look at that Pi- Pimax one when, when, when money allows, when that time comes.

But what I will say, though, is on this Valve headset though, uh, one thing did come to pass that you and I, uh, thought would happen in that "Half-Life: Alyx," uh, is available as a standalone thing.

'Cause we were saying, wouldn't it, wouldn't it be good, I wonder whether they'll bundle Alyx with it or whether there'll be a new VR game or something like that.

Oh, it's not standalone.

Yeah

... would they bundle something, which makes sense.

So yeah, there is, there is now a "Half-Life: Alyx" bundle-

I misheard that.

How do you feel about that for a VR headset? It is standalone, so it runs by itself.

You don't need to plug it into a PC and it can run stuff like Half-Life Alyx, which is included with the cost of the actual device.

But yeah, what's the vibe?

I'm just shocked that even VR headsets are affected by the rampocalypse due to AI.

MetaQuest 3 is like four years old, I think, thereabouts.

Maybe three.

So the idea of a newer model that's better insides, can run Half-Life Alyx, which previously was a game that really had to be a PC VR title plugged into play because it was so intense.

So if they're saying it can run Alyx, I'm sure they've optimized the F out of Half-Life Alyx to make sure it would run well on this.

Until VR starts coming out with games that are must-plays, like traditional gaming.

And not just the odd one, because you could argue things like Half-Life, Alex could fall in that category.

It has to be a constant big library of yeah you really need to get in on this i just don't yeah see it's it's like almost 900 quid for hardware to play games i'm not that bothered about

yeah it's i said in our discord chat but i feel like vr i think i got my vr psvr one is like a bundle box set for like 299 a couple of years ago, and I feel like I had my fill.

occasionally.

Yeah, two controllers, a spacer, a charging cable and a dongle, which plugs into your PC.

You do get Half-Life Alyx bundled in.

Which is what, two, three-year-old at this point?

Yeah.

The effects stuff is really cool though, because you can run Half-Life Alyx, which is included with this headset, directly on the headset for like an hour to an hour and a half, like, mean i don't know about you guys but i think that's a miracle it's an arm chip so they're doing not only translations in some games from windows calls to linux with proton they're then translating those proton calls with effects to arm i mean it's turtles all the way down

well i think they i

think i think they're even saying that they didn't like the steam developers were like there's no way we can make this happen and then somehow they magically made it happen.

curious.

I watched the Dave2D review and I think I agree with it pretty hard.

His point was new VR hardware in 2026 with the flagship title being Half-Life Alyx, which was released in 2020 now.

Where are the games? Where are the compelling use cases for VR? I mean, I think I'm going to buy one, but at the same time, I'm expecting not to use it that much.