Are you excited? We’re excited. Because the highly anticipated Half-Life Alyx VR sequel is due to launch in March. We know it’s not the Half-Life many hoped for, but it’s the Half-life we’re gonna get.

Valve has subsequently decided to make all the previous Half-Life titles free-to-play on Steam leading up to the release date of Alyx. Which means you now have ample time to dust off your Glock 17 and catch up on the series before launch.

What cat?

And everyone has access to the whole series, including Half-Life: Source, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, as well as Opposing Force and Blue Shift. The Steam announcement lists all of the aforementioned games as free for two whole months. So we’ll need to get cracking.

There is a pretty good reason for making all this content available for free: and that is because Half-Life: Alyx plays off before the events of Half-Life 2 and its following episodes. The announcement reads: “…but the games share characters and story elements. The Half-Life: Alyx team believes that the best way to enjoy the new game is to play through the old ones, especially Half-Life 2 and the episodes, so we want to make that as easy as possible.”

It’s also a brilliant method to get new gamers into the series before the launch of Alyx. We know the new game is due some time in March, and you’ll need a PC-compatible VR headset to jam. So gear up.