Is Half-Life: Alyx the killer app that VR has been waiting for?Spoiler Alert: No, it probably isn't. But it does look cool.

In what has to be the biggest hype/news to hit the VR scene for quite some time, Valve Software have finally released another full-blown game, for the first time in forever. But that's not even the big news -- the big news is that the game is a Half-Life game. And while it isn't Half-Life 3 (it's actually a prequel), Half-Life: Alyx is not only a new Half-Life game, it's a VR-only game.

Oh, and it looks pretty good, too.

The stakes couldn't be higher; TechRadar called Alyx, "a gambit where the very future of VR gaming is at stake." And while that might sound hyperbolic, it might not be wrong, with the announcement of Alyx prompting some VR evangelists to dub this the "killer app" that VR has long been lacking.

But, while some of the gameplay we're seeing will clearly need either Oculus Touch controllers, or the Knuckles controllers that ship with the Valve Index, I'm not convinced that the experience on offer here is different enough to convince skeptical consumers to suddenly jump onto the VR hype train; and I'm not convinced that the Half-Life IP, iconic as it is for the video game industry, is actually broadly popular enough to prompt non-gamers to buy VR headsets just to play it.

OMFG, the hype...

OK, here's the pitch.

Do you remember about 12 years ago, when rhythm games like DDR™ were still really popular in spite of having been around for a decade already, so Activision™ published Red Octane/Harmonix's Guitar Hero™?

Guitar Hero™ turned out to be waaaaayyyyy popular, so EA™ naturally pushed out their own version a few years later (also by Harmonix, oddly enough, who were no longer working on Guitar Hero™ with Activision anymore), which they called Rock Band™. Which was basically multiplayer Guitar Hero™, except that you and three friends could role-play as an entire... rock band (I meant to do that), with one player on vocals, another player shredding on lead guitar (naturally), one more on bass guitar, and one drummer... without which no rock band (or Rock Band™) is ever complete.

Rock Band™ didn't do nearly as well as Guitar Hero™, of course, racking up only $600M in sales compared to GH's $2B-plus, in part because it was more expensive. Guitar Hero™ came with a cheap plastic guitar-shaped game controller, but Rock Band™ needed three: mic, guitar, bass, and "drums"... and also three other people to play with you, instead of GH's guitar-solo gameplay.

Still, it did well enough to have earned a remake... of sorts.

So, picture this: Instead of a cheap plastic game controller, the new version will require a few hundred dollars in expensive VR peripherals. And it will be made by an indie developer (no AAA fat cats here!), who will only have budget to convert about ¹⁄4 of Rock Band™'s game play into VR, so they're actually only going to remake the drumming part of Rock Band™. And forget licensing expensive actual pop and rock titles to drum along to, because, fuck, even Rockstar™ can't afford that shit anymore. So instead of popular hits with killer drum solos, you'll get a handful of cheaper, custom-crafted tunes that work well with VR's wonky motion controls.

How does that sound so far? What, VR isn't gimmick enough? OK, then... how about we make the game's weightless, wonky, non-drum motion controls into an asset by making them.... light sabers! Oh, fuck, I meant laser swords, not Light Sabers™. Seriously, Lucasfilm are litigious as fuck. Do not mess with them.

Better? See, I knew you'd like it. Still, it's a shame about the Light Saber™ business. Maybe it's still possible to work "saber" into the title? Drum Saber? No, there's no drums in this beat-keeping game. Maybe Beat Saber? Ah, that's clunky as fuck, too. Oh, well, trademark it anyway, and at least the game will have a name to fall back on... 

Beat Saber™. OK, yeah, that might grow on me.

How does it sound to you?