• News

Check out this Half-Life: Alyx Horde Mode mod

Want to be put through the gauntlet against all of Half-Life: Alyx's enemies? A new Horde Mode mod will test your VR skills against waves of headcrabs and Combine.

TJ Denzer

April 14, 2020 9:17 AM

1

You might not expect Half-Life: Alyx to be the type of game where you’d see a Horde Mode. Facing the game’s enemies in wave after wave of combat and resource management might not be for the faint of heart, but that didn’t stop a modder from putting it together. You can now face the gauntlet in the Half-Life: Alyx Horde Mode mod.

XenThug is a Horde defense game mode mod created for Half-Life: Alyx by Steam creator Manello and launched via Steam on April 12, 2020 (Thanks, Upstaged). The mod puts players up against incoming waves of headcrabs, zombies, Combine soldiers, and other such Half-Life: Alyx enemies, complete with various features players have come to expect from similar Horde Modes. There’s a vender that can give you items between rounds, keycards that will open up different sections of the Horde Mode map and more. It looks a little rough, but the gameplay elements appear to be there if the below video is any indication. Manello includes instructions on how to download and utilize the mod with the original posting. The files have also been uploaded on GitHub.

VR Horde Mode probably isn’t for everybody. It’s safe to say you’ll be moving and swinging around quite a bit in this mod to kill each incoming wave of foes. Even so, with all of the locomotion and accessibility updates in Half-Life: Alyx, a Horde Mode is probably more applicable here than it has been for many previous VR games. Manello intends to further support the Horde Mode mod and even invites other modders to create maps using the XenThug mod.

Of course, if our Shacknews review has anything to say about it, you can’t go wrong with the base Half-Life: Alyx game anyways. Truly, with such a benchmark of VR gaming, it’s a good time to try new things with the tool box and environment Valve has offered up in this quality platform. Heck, folks are even designing mods to try to make Half-Life: Alyx playable outside of VR.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.