It’s the old joke – Valve can’t count to three. Left 4 Dead, Portal, Dota, and of course Half-Life, they’ve all been left wanting for full sequels and follow-ups. Half-Life 3 especially has become a kind of shorthand for all the dashed dreams and unfulfilled hype of PC players everywhere. But the show’s not over, as the community around Steam’s tentpole FPS game continues to deliver stunning fan-made mods and missions, this time with a fully-fledged new campaign for Half-Life Alyx that looks and plays so well it could be made by Valve itself.
Free to download on Steam, Half-Life Alyx: Re-Education follows the eponymous adventurer as she travels to a safehouse on the outskirts of City 17. Forced off of her train, Alyx must make her way through an abandoned school, a seemingly simple task that soon takes a turn for the worse – and a lot of physics-based puzzles.
With full voice acting, superb visuals, and a focus on environmental storytelling that you would expect from the Half-Life series, Re-Education is like an official Half-Life Alyx DLC. It’s slower-paced than the mainline game, featuring more exploration and ambient narrative than action or shooting. But there are still a couple of good combat sections, and the imitations of both Alyx and Russell are spot-on. You can see it in action below.
Head over to Steam Workshop to try Half-Life Alyx: Re-Education now. You might also want to try Levitation, another Half-Life VR game inspired by the events of Alyx, or perhaps Entropy Zero, a pseudo Half-Life 2 sequel focusing on a rogue member of the Combine’s Civil Protection.
Alternatively, check out some other great VR games, or perhaps the best VR headset for 2023. You might also want to know what happened to Half-Life 3, but don’t get disheartened – one day, one day, it will be real.