Half-Life: Alyx

2022-08-04
Leave it to Valve to step in and create the best VR game out there. I mean the level of fidelity from a graphics and mechanics perspective is so far ahead of the competition it's a bit wild. I mean the fact that it's a full-length Half-Life game that took me 12 hours in VR is a bit mind boggling.

From the intro sequence where you realize you can write on the glass with whiteboard markers to all the little puzzles you have to solve in 3D space (the hacking ones are delightful), I was consistently wowed by the detail put into so many varied elements of the game.

Overall the actual gameplay besides puzzles was fantastic. A lot of shootouts which were challenging and varied. The variety of enemies and the sparseness of ammunition lent it a Resident Evil 4 vibe which made for a consistently fun experience in most of the fights.

Obviously visually it is stunning. Being able to see things like Striders, zombies, headcrabs, vortigaunts, and Gordon Freeman and G-Man in "person" was really something else. And sound-wise wasn't far behind at all. Hearing the screams of zombies while you're immersed in the Half-Life world was fantastic.

Plot-wise I was really pleasantly surprised. We finally got a little continuation of the cliffhanger of Episode 2. And more importantly for me we got some really cool lore with the G-Man. His prison and that whole zone and the implication that the Combine are scared of him is incredibly cool. Also how it ends with Alyx rewriting the future and then being whisked away as a tool to fight Gordon is a really cool setup (that I'm sure Valve will never follow through on...).

And on the topic of writing the writing of the dialogue is perhaps some of the funniest and realest I've ever seen in a game. The quips between Russell (voiced by the manager from Flight of the Chonchords) and Alyx are so, so good. I legitimately laughed out loud numerous times from Russells deadpan responses and Alyx's bemused replies. And other times I was genuinely heartwarmed by what I heard like when Alyx genuinely gets scared as she has to wander through the dark without a flashlight and talks to Russell for some semblance of comfort (that he of course fails to provide to comedic effect).

Where does it fall off and not get a 10? I had some bugs where stuff would clip through walls. Notably right at the start I needed to climb a crate to get up to a window and the one crate you could use fell through the floor forcing me to reload. Things like pulling stuff out of the bag or chambering a round in the pistol could be iffy causing me to die in the intense fights. In fact in general I thought the difficulty maybe was a bit high on Normal. Maybe that's good that it's a challenge but I found with the mixture of bugs of items getting lost and fights that I would die a lot I was basically quicksaving every 2 steps in the game. And reloading a ton in fights. It became frustrating at times and genuinely detracted from my enjoyment enough times that I have to ding the game for it.

That being said this is a high mark for VR games and I just hope others can follow Valve's lead.