While he’s spending quarantine in New Zealand, the national news channel has gotten Valve guy Gabe Newell to sit down and pointedly not answer some of his very favorite questions. They did their best to ask about all the games that end with threes, but Newell of course declined to say anything on the subject. He was willing to say that the company has games in development currently and also mentioned that launching Half-Life: Alyx had created the despire within the company to continue creating singleplayer games.

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Valve have published their 2020 Year In Review for Steam, and I’m a little shocked at how dramatic some of their statistics are. Seeing as we experienced a global pandemic during which everyone locked themselves away in their homes, it may not come as a huge surprise that more people took up gaming to pass the time. Valve say 2.6 million people> bought games for the first time on Steam each month, and Steam had 120.4 million monthly active users to boot (though they don’t mention if these numbers are averages, or the actual numbers from each month). I expected a lot, but wow.

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Half-Life: Alyx

is a brilliant game. A remarkable return to form for the long-dormant Valve flagship. But there was something crucial missing from the prequel’s launch. That’s right – I’m talking about those tiny yellow speech bubbles wot let Valve employees whisper sweet development secrets into your ears. Today, those audio tracks return to Valve’s VR shooter, not as those iconic yellow bubbles, but as floating, fourth-wall-breaking headsets.

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Infants have long known the joys of shaking a bottle to watch its contents slosh and bubble, and now Half-Life: Alyx players can experience that joy too. Valve last night updated the VR explore-o-shooter with fancy new mock bottle fluids, and even as someone whose body wholly rejects VR I am captivated watching players play with bottles of booze. It’s like a real beer, but it’s not even there! Our Katharine hit the bar to shake and spin bottles like a virtual Tom Cruise, and enjoy what is perhaps the closest any of us can get to a quiet drink in the pub. Come watch!

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Half-Life and modding are basically synonymous. Whether it’s painstakingly remaking the original in Black Mesa or spawning entirely new multiplayer genres in Counter-Strike, Gordon Freeman’s misadventures are as much a platform for new works as they are solid shooters in their own rights. This weekend, Valve brought Half-Life: Alyx back into that lineage with Steam Workshop support and the beta release of HL:A’s editing tools.

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I’ve been flitting between lots of different VR headsets over the last month or so, in my quest to find the best VR headset of all. But who needs to spend upwards of 400 quid when the £12 / $15 Google Cardboard can also be used to play big SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx?

Yes, you read that correctly. Thanks to the magic of VRidge, an app that streams VR games on your PC to your phone screen, you can now enjoy all of today’s best VR games for a fraction of the price. Well, sort of.

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In Half-Life: Alyx you will be able to trap headcrabs, the prime nemesis of footlobsters, inside buckets. “It’ll move the bucket as it crawls around”, confirmed the Half-Life: Alyx team in yesterday’s Reddit Q&A, adding that “playtesters all keep reporting it as a bug”. I hadn’t given all that much thought to Half-Life: Alyx but this is honestly a game changer. It’s a little crystallisation of what a Half-Life VR game actually means; something I can clearly see myself doing and enjoying.

Lauren’s already reported that Valve are confident the game won’t be delayed, but I’ve scoured the AMA for other tasty titbits, such as the fact that the 80 people working on Alyx are the “largest single team” Valve’s ever had.

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Delay season has hit the big games of this year pretty hard. Several large releases have been pushed back from their early 2020 estimates to several months down the line. Some haven’t given new estimated dates at all. Today, Valve says they’re confident that they won’t miss Half-Life: Alyx‘s planned release.

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If Half-Life: Alyx has got you wondering whether you should finally take the plunge on a VR headset, have I got some Black Friday VR headset deals for you. Finally, there are some decent VR deals in the UK now, with big discounts on the HTC Vive, Vive Cosmos and Oculus Rift S. So, to help aid you in your quest for the best Black Friday VR headset deal, I’ve been scouring the web for all the best prices. Whether you’re after a top of the line HTC Vive Pro, an Oculus Quest or a cheap Windows Mixed Reality headset, here are the best Black Friday VR headset deals available right now.

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With the release of Half-Life: Alyx lingering on the horizon, many of you (your deals herald included) may be wondering whether, given it’s Black Friday and everything this week, whether you should finally take the plunge pick up a great VR headset deal. Well, to help aid you in your quest for the best Black Friday VR headset deal, I’ve been scouring the web for all the best prices. From HTC Vives to Oculus Quests and even a couple of cheap Windows Mixed Reality headsets, here are the best Black Friday VR headset deals available right now.

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