Half-Life: Alyx has Already Received its First Update, Improves Turning Options

Valve did exactly what it said it would and released Half-Life: Alyx right on time this past Monday. The videogame has been lauded by fans and critics alike but there were a couple of things that players didn’t like, one of which was the turning options. So Valve has addressed these right away, releasing update 1.1.

Half-Life: Alyx

While the locomotion options in Half-Life: Alyx are already fairly extensive to suit most comfort levels in VR, players have complained about the ability to turn, especially if you can’t physically in roomscale. So Valve has now added “Continuous Turn” for those that can handle the setting as well as various speed options. Additionally, the Quick turn option has now been to “Snap Turn” so players can clearly understand what the option is.

Aside from the turning Valve has included several other tweaks and refinements which can be seen below.

Full changelog for Half-Life: Alyx v1.1:

  • Improved turning options in Preferences:
    – Added “Continuous Turn”, and associated turning speed options.
    – Renamed “Quick turn” to “Snap Turn” to make its functionality clearer.
    – Added option to disable controller turning.
  • Improved hand-over-mouth pose usability for Windows MR controllers.
  • Improved the resolution of impact decals on enemies.
  • Improved automatic detection of default Quality settings for some machine configurations.
  • Fixed an issue where some sounds didn’t play as intended.
  • Fixed an issue where the main menu could become less responsive if you had many save games.
  • Fixed several crashes.

Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx easily achieved a full five-star rating in VRFocus’ review which notes: “A stunningly rich experience from start to finish, Half-Life: Alyx is one of the best VR titles available, a perfect showcase for what VR gaming is capable of. It doesn’t exactly break new ground, instead providing familiar Half-Life gameplay all wrapped up in a highly polished VR gift bag.”

Supporting Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Half-Life: Alyx’s story is set between  Half-life and Half-Life 2, where players take on the role of titular character Alyx as she and her father fight the Combine, an alien race which has taken over the planet. For further updates on Half-lIfe: Alyx, keep reading VRFocus.