Creating Half Life: Alyx reignited a spark in the company to develop single-player games… probably just not that single-player game.

We’re not done yet though! We’ve still got a few more games to recognise, and because we’re a bunch of lazy hacks who are counting down the minutes until we go on vacation, we’ve rounded the remaining standouts of excellence below. Here they, the best of the rest that 2020 had to offer.

Following Valve’s trend of going behind-the-scenes on the development of games like Portal and Half-Life 2, it’s always a fun time to listen to the process of making a massive game.

Following the overwhelmingly successful reception of Half-Life: Alyx, it seems that Valve is a little more confident in its long-dormant franchise.

For everyone who isn’t sold on the idea of spending thousands of rands on a headset just to play Half-Life, there’s a solution...kind of?

Half-Life 2’s episodic series was meant to flesh the world out further, to drive home the impact of the Combine and how humanity had been conquered by an insidious force. The right man in the right place at the right time could indeed make a difference, but after two episodes it looked like Gordon Freeman had lost his serendipitous talents.

Half-Life: Alyx was designed to be Valve’s flagship title for their Index VR system, but it looks like the game has gone above and beyond that goal to deliver VR’s killer app. Critics are raving, possibly frothing, and claiming that Valve just raised the benchmark for VR to ludicrous new heights. Here’s what they have to say.

The gameplay demonstrations have shown off some truly impressive technology as well as a lot of headcrabs just asking to be poked.