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.

Oculus Go & Lenovo Mirage Solo, as reviewed by Tom's Hardware

I wonder if they like them?

From Mark Spoonauer at Tom's Hardware:

No more wires! You don't need a phone! I still don't care!

Oh. I guess not.

Overall, these new headsets feel like a necessary evolution of virtual reality, not the leap forward the category needs for them to become must-have devices. For one, you wouldn't want to be seen in public using either the Go or Solo. Cutting the cord from a geeky headset doesn't cut out the geek part.

Second, virtual reality is still waiting for killer apps, or at least titles and franchises that are household names. Where is the Call of Duty in VR? Or Fortnite? Or Star Wars (no, an add-on to Battlefront on the PSVR doesn't count). To me, it feels like publishers and developers like EA and Epic are forever dragging their feet, waiting for true mass adoption before they commit more resources.

These stand-alone headsets have another issue, and that's the fact that no one under 13 is supposed to use them. This is the same health-related warning that comes with other headsets, because childrens' eyes are still developing. It's hard to indoctrinate the next wave of VR heads when they can’t participate.

Spoonauer concludes by noting that he "extensively played with the Gear VR, only to place it in a drawer," so drawerware for the win? Although he did manage to point out something about VR that I had somehow not known already, namely that children under the age of 13 aren't supposed to use them, which nicely undercuts yet another argument that one hears from some VR proponents.
And make no mistake, Spoonauer is a VR proponent -- he's still actively pushing the killer app argument, even though VR is supposed to be its own killer app, and in spite of the fact that it's already got Doom VR, Skyrim VR, Superhot VR, and other high-profile VR titles and popular IPs like Star Trek, none of which have been enough to sell VR. Spoonauer is one of VR's early adopters. And even he doesn't see enough value in these new standalone devices for them to be worth their purchase prices.

VR... still not a thing.