I hate how badly the Quest performed because when it did work, I didn’t feel constrained using a non-Index system. The Quest is immensely popular by VR standards, so Alyx could be a huge stress test for Link and a potentially frustrating experience for users if anything goes wrong.
#WHAT IS HALF LIFE PC#
Compared to dedicated PC headsets, though, the Quest is a troubleshooting nightmare: a device with its own operating system connected with a detachable cable and enabled with the Oculus desktop app and SteamVR. It’s an experimental feature, so I expect rough spots. That’s not unprecedented for a VR experience, and some issues might be Oculus Link bugs. When the Quest worked, I never felt like I was missing out After I finished the game, Valve released updates that seemed to mostly fix the problems, but my later sessions still involved stopping for reboots or resets. My PC easily meets Alyx’s specs, but the headset froze or the game’s frame rate massively dropped at regular intervals. So I played Alyx with the Oculus Link system, which turns a standalone Oculus Quest into a tethered headset. Valve promises support for almost any PC-based VR setup. Valve’s Index headset is the gold standard for Alyx, but The Verge’s Index ended up in pandemic lockdown along with the rest of our office. It’s easier for games like Alyx to make your screw-ups feel like natural mistakes, instead of a designer stacking their deck against you.Īctual VR headsets, unfortunately, do screw up. VR hand controllers, by contrast, mimic your physical motion in a fairly natural way - and players haven’t been trained to expect mathematical precision. Unsteady aiming or awkward skeuomorphic controls can be effective, but they seem like handicaps on a “normal” point-and-shoot experience. It’s tough to make PC or console shooters feel messy yet not artificially clumsy. Valve’s approach to VR is perfect for a character who’s very skilled but fallible.
She’s got a history with the world already, having grown up under Combine occupation, so she can bring some context and familiarity to your journey - until a massive curveball near the game’s end. Levels have the same forward momentum and minimal backtracking, but Alyx moves at a slower pace through denser and more fully formed spaces. Where Valve poked fun at Gordon’s stoic ‘90s-shooter hypercompetence, Alyx has more realistic - if top-notch - fighting capabilities. That’s partly because Alyx is a more human-seeming character than Gordon, and City 17 is nearly the whole setting, not the pit stop it was in Half-Life 2. At the same time, it feels like a very different kind of game. Alyx is more like the sequel’s add-on Episodes, extending the plot without starting a new chapter. The series’s first two installments practically took place in different worlds. While there’s a lot more detail, you’re facing a similar crowd of hostile alien fauna and transhuman soldiers as well as similar weapons and environments - although soldiers give those classic Half-Life barrels a wider berth. ‘Alyx’ is an extension of ‘Half-Life 2,’ not a new ‘Half-Life’ chapterĪlyx is set in the same urban dystopia as Half-Life 2: a washed-out and decaying Eastern European metropolis called City 17. It’s not just a good VR game it’s a good video game, period.
It advances the series’s main plot, but it doesn’t come close to resolving it.īut if you keep these admittedly big reservations in mind, Alyx is a worthy addition to the Half-Life universe. While it’s about as long as the landmark Half-Life 2, with my game clocking in at 15 hours, it doesn’t feel as big or as narratively and mechanically fresh. The game is fighting VR’s inherent hardware limits, a pandemic-related headset shortage, and the difficulty of building a game for a new platform. That’s setting a very high bar, and, for now, I’m not sure Alyx clears it.
#WHAT IS HALF LIFE SERIES#
Many series have VR adaptations or tie-ins, but Valve promised to deliver “the next part of the Half-Life story” in a package that could help take VR mainstream.
#WHAT IS HALF LIFE SOFTWARE#
These are answers to some big questions Valve Software raised last year when it announced the first new Half-Life game since 2007 - but exclusively for virtual reality. And City 17’s exploding barrel industry is still going strong. It is a full-fledged game that expands the Half-Life universe. Half-Life: Alyx is definitely not Half-Life 3.