For those who're looking for the opportunity to lose themselves in new worlds, the Oculus Rift 2 has dropped in price by 25% on Amazon, down to £300.

This means that both the Rift 2 and Quest 2 are now at the same price, a tricky choice for any aspiring VR buyer. Fortunately, our experts at Digital Foundry have listed out the advantages of the two systems here. That being said, it's worth keeping in mind that the Rift is designed for PC use, while the Quest is an all-in-one designed to be carried around.

Whichever one you're more interested in, we've laid out the best options below for you to check out, or take a look at our review of Half Life: Alyx to see one of the best games going on both systems.

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Someone has remade P.T. in Half-Life: Alyx and it's as terrifying as you'd expect.

Modder AmbientDruth took Valve's VR-exclusive, stripped out all that is City 17 and replaced it with the horror of Hideo Kojima's endless corridor. PC Gamer pointed to a playthrough of the mod by YouTuber William McMahon and, yeah... good luck with that.

AmbientDruth has added almost everything that was in the original playable teaser, including the radio ambience, the red corridor ending and Lisa's audio. But there's more to come in future updates, including a flashlight, punishments for "bad deeds" such as breaking bottles, and Easter eggs.

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Like many people, I'm sure, I've found myself reaching for the wine a little more frequently than normal to pass the time during lockdown - and apparently so has the visual effects team at Valve, although perhaps not in the way you'd think.

As shared by visual effects developer Matthew Wilde, Valve has released an update for Half-Life: Alyx which adds liquid to bottles, and it's truly impressive work. Not only does the light pass through the wine in a realistic way, the liquid physics react to the way the player holds and moves the bottle, with some nice-looking air bubbles and sloshing.

While the booze bottles look particularly delicious, alcohol wasn't the only liquid that was added, as you can see in this fan showcase where the player throws big containers of water around. And, of course, you can smash the bottles to make a mess.

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We'll never get to play Ravenholm, the cancelled Half-Life spin-off once in the works at Arkane Studios, but we can at least now see a little bit of it in action for ourselves.

The footage comes from The Untold History of Arkane, a fascinating feature length documentary from Noclip which speaks to several of those behind the project and shows extended sections of alpha gameplay.

Arkane, known for its more recent work on the Dishonored series and Prey, worked on the Ravenholm project as a standalone spin-off from Valve's Half-Life series.

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Rumours that Valve is currently working on a new Left 4 Dead game may have been gathering pace of late, but your hopes are about to be dashed; the company has now stepped forward to categorically state that it's "absolutely not" doing any such thing.

Whispers of a new Left 4 Dead title have been heard from several sources in recent times. Back in December, Valve News Network's well-connected Tyler McVicker told Twitter followers that "Left 4 Dead VR is real", while, earlier today, Chinese HTC president Alvin Wang Graylin shared slides from a recent VR presentation making mention of Left 4 Dead 3.

Following that revelation, Valve has finally spoken up, presumably in an attempt to prevent fans from frothing themselves into an irreversible frenzy. In a statement provided to IGN, the company said it's "absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven't for years."

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Now that 2020 is here we're having a little look ahead at some of the year's new games that have us intrigued.

I can't stop rewatching the Half-Life: Alyx trailer, and it's not just because it's one of the more elegantly put-together teasers of recent years. It's not just because it's another Half-Life game. It's not just because I'm scanning it for clues of what's to come.

It's because of the flow of the thing - and I guess that means the flow of the main character. Half-Life: Alyx takes the gravity gun and puts it on your hands. Ingenious! Even so, look at the handling here: pushing objects aside to get a better view, plucking doodads from distant guards, insouciantly flicking ammo clips into pistols and ramming them home.

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Yesterday, YouTube channel Adam Savage's Tested shared an extensive breakdown of Valve's Half-Life: Alyx, going hands-on to compare the still-in-development game across a variety of VR devices. And, now, the internet has eked out the gameplay from that original 30-minute video and squashed into down into an easily digestible 11 minutes of juicy stuff.

Tested's off-screen footage, taken from around three hours of play-through, steers clear of plot details and certain advanced mechanics for obvious spoiler reasons, but it does give a solid look at some of the motion-control-based interactions that players will be able to deploy over the course of Alyx's reported 15-hour run-time.

The newly released 11-minute edit (created by YouTuber zck2020) features Half-Life favourites like shambling headcrab zombies and ceiling-dwelling barnacles. On the VR front, though, teleportation and full locomotion movement are showcased, as are a range of natural motion-based interactions, including aiming, reloading, grenade-tossing, door-opening, and more.

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VR will not play a significant role on Project Scarlett, the boss of Xbox has indicated.

Xbox chief Phil Spencer told Stevivor in a recent interview that Xbox customers simply are not asking for VR. But it also sounds like Spencer doesn't fancy VR himself, either.

"I have some issues with VR," he said. "It's isolating and I think of games as a communal, kind of together experience. We're responding to what our customers are asking for and... nobody's asking for VR.

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Half-Life is back, and that's all anyone is talking about. But spare a thought for that other old Valve game, Team Fortress 2.

A cursory glance at the Team Fortress 2 community reveals it's resigned to defeat after a recent report confirmed Valve has pretty much downed tools on the team-based shooter.

In the video below, Valve News Network reports on an interview with veteran Valve employee Greg Coomer, who said "hardly anyone" is working on Team Fortress 2. According to Coomer, Valve is "just going to try and not shut it down or anything". Here's the quote:

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It might have taken its sweet time, but a new instalment in Valve's legendary Half-Life series is finally, officially, almost here. But as the shock starts to wear off, there are questions to be answered - with one of the most frequent ones seemingly being, exactly why is Half-Life: Alyx, after a wait of over a decade, exclusive to VR?

Luckily for everyone, Geoff Keighley is on the case, and posed that very question in a video interview with key members of the Half-Life: Alyx team. And the answer, according to Valve's Dario Casali, is simply that VR controllers and headsets permit a degree of gameplay detail that "we couldn't possibly do with a mouse and keyboard".

One example given by Casali revolves around the sort of interactions possible with a simple door. Sure, you can open it and close it in a more intuitive, immersive fashion in VR, but, Casali suggests, it's the additional interactions around that door - opening it a fraction to peer through the gap and see what's on the other side, firing your weapon through the crack, or even slipping a grenade through onto the floor - that makes for a truly unique sort of experience.

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