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Of course somebody recreated PT as a VR mod for Half-Life: AlyxIt’s just a hallway, how scary can it be?
It’s just a hallway, how scary can it be?
Half-Life’s always had horror in its veins. From body-horror aliens lurching down steel corridors to Ravenholme’s infested nest of parasites, sawblades and the living dead, the series has been pushing spooking with its shooting since day one. Sporting more intimate, high-fidelity spooks,Half-Life: Alyxis no exception - and witha modding kit out in the open, it was only a matter of time ‘til someone recreated Kojima Productions’ elusivePTin Valve’s new toolbox.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
AmbientDruth’s mod,available to download here, does the natural next step of putting all that in VR, making it objectively 100 times more intimidating. Something Alyx put into sharp focus was how many of the series' staples (dark rooms, flickering lights, crabs that jump at your face) become scarier with a telly strapped to your head. That holds particularly true for games that were already trying to scare you.
Granted, the video does bring out some of the mod’s limitations. I don’t mind PT ever having a health counter, for one. Plus, despite being a few years newer, Alyx' corridors don’t look nearly as sharp. That’s understandable, really. PT had one corridor, which meant it could make that one corridor look really, gut-wrenchingly good.
It’d be a shame not to call outHalf-Life’s illustrious history in horror mods, mind. With the main games gently nudging towards the scary side, modders went full-force into frights - whether that’s the first game’s three-part Romero-esque zombie epicThey Hunger, or darkly strange survival horrorKorsakovia, a now hard-to-find experiment from a pre-Dear EstherThe Chinese Room. Recreating PT might just be that, a recreation. But it works as a nice proof-of-concept for fan-created scares to come.
Don’t worry, though. It’s not all horror. Some modders are more interested in using Half-Life Alyx’ridiculously-good liquid shaderstocrack open a dystopian Dew.
Fair ‘nuff.
