Half-Life: Alyx Mod Transforms Gravity Gloves Into Amazing Weapons

Last week a new Half-Life: Alyx mod hit the Steam Workshop called Glorious Gloves that transforms the base Gravity Gloves into amazingly powerful weapons more similar to having two Gravity Guns embedded in the palms of your hands.

To be honest, this is probably closer to what most people had in mind when they first found out there would be Gravity Gloves in a Half-Life VR game. It seems like a more natural evolution of the Gravity Gun concept than the boiled down interpretation we actually got in Half-Life: Alyx. It’s still an incredible game, but these gloves just feel more badass. According to the mod’s creator you could finish about 90% of the game using only these new gloves as your weapons and nothing else.

According to the Glorious Gloves mod page on Steam, the features specifically are Levitation, Punting, and Improved Grabbity. Levitation works how you’d think by closing your hand to “grab” something from a distance, except now it can be used from a much further distance and on basically any physics object in the game.

Then if you punch that closed fist forward/away from you, it sends it flying with force — aka Punting. You can even do this on objects you’re not levitating as a sort of shockwave of energy, kind of like air punching. Plus, tethering and pulling objects towards you, aka using Grabbity, works from a further distance and on more objects as well.

You can see some gameplay of this Half-Life: Alyx mod in action at the top of this post and the trailer created by the mod’s author directly above this paragraph. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!

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Community Download: Is Half-Life: Alyx The Best VR Game Ever Made?

Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know if you think Half-Life: Alyx is the best VR game ever made. Why or why not?


Half-Life: Alyx [read our review] is out and it’s real. After many, many long years Valve has finally released a new Half-Life game. Even though you don’t play as Gordon Freeman and instead take on the role of Alyx Vance, it’s as crucial to the franchise’s overall storyline as any other entry and is packed full of amazing moments.

Valve is one of the companies most involved with the early days of consumer VR that we find ourselves in right now. From influencing Palmer Luckey on his journey to co-found Oculus, establishing their own tracking system in the SteamVR lighthouse base stations, co-producing the HTC Vive, releasing The Lab, creating the Valve Index, and now launching Half-Life: Alyx, Valve is at the forefront of modern VR.

Just like the original Half-Life ushered in a new era of narrative first-person shooters and Half-Life 2 took PC gaming to new heights, Half-Life: Alyx is poised to have the same effect on the VR market. It may not be the first 5/5 review score we’ve given at UploadVR (that designation belongs to Asgard’s Wrath, followed by other games like Pistol Whip) but it may very well be the most important one.

From the looks of it, judging from the reception so far, Half-Life: Alyx is definitely a massive hit — even according to Steam user reviews. So, the question is: Do you think Half-Life: Alyx is the absolute best VR game ever made, to date? Why or why not?

Let us know down in the comments below!

For more on Half-Life: Alyx, check out our roundup of coverage right here.

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Half-Life: Alyx Is Valve’s ‘Flagship’ VR Game, Details This Thursday (Update)

Update: Today on Twitter Valve officially confirmed that Half-Life: Alyx is the name of its upcoming flagship VR game, details to come this Thursday at 10AM PT.

Original: According to the unconfirmed rumor, the title is supposed to be named Half-Life: Alyx and will focus on the non-player character of the same name from Half-Life 2. This most recent rumor is by way of PCGamer and suggests a full unveiling would come on December 12 at the annual Game Awards hosted by Geoff Keighley, with release said to follow in 2020. There are also unconfirmed suggestions the game could be teased much sooner than the awards.

The rumor comes from an alleged transcript of a conversation/interview between an unknown person, Valve’s Robin Walker, and Keighley. In the conversation several details are discussed that will be easy to fact check when the time comes, such as the game’s title being Half-Life: Alyx.

Usually a rumor like this wouldn’t be worth giving too much attention, and to be clear we haven’t confirmed the rumor mill here, but last year sources told us Valve was working on a Half-Life VR game. At that time we also heard the possibility that you would play as a female character (such as Alyx), and that would likely place it after Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and leading directly into the next full installment in development. Valve founder Gabe Newell even joked about Half-Life 3 at the Valve Index launch event.

Other recent nuggets of information add weight to the rumor as well. Earlier this year a DOTA 2 update included mentions of a “hlvr_weapon_shotgun_prototype” and “SPORE damage” in its code. Further, just a couple months ago, intrepid fans found references again to Half-Life VR in an update for The Lab.

Valve told us earlier this year that their “flagship” VR game is in development and will be released this year for all headsets compatible with SteamVR. We’ve contacted Valve representatives multiple times for clarification of the game’s release timeline and haven’t received a response. Recently, Valve programmer Kerry Davis talked at length about how intricately simulated mechanics will be in the game, such as the doors.

Additional unconfirmed rumors suggest the game includes a lengthy campaign (at least by VR standards) and a new weapon called the “Grabbity Gloves” said to leverage hand tracking, with writing from Jay Pinkerton, who worked on Portal 2 and the Aperture Hand Labs project released with the Index Controllers earlier this year. Half-Life 2’s 15-year anniversary was last week and The Game Awards specifically posted about it.

Hopefully all of this adds up to an amazing game getting announced soon, but as of yet all of this remains unconfirmed rumors and second-hand reports. Half-Life would be a great fit for VR, so fingers crossed it materializes as a real product. In the meantime, at least you can play a modded version of Half-Life 1 on Quest.

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