Half-Life: Alyx - Valve's full-length flagship VR game set between HL1 and HL2

[Dexter]

But it can certainly make a mediocre game more interesting if you are in the game world and can look around and interact with things

What the fuck is suposed to mean?
That you can pick up objects and manipulate them?

It means that if you play something in VR you experience it differently than when you play it on a monitor, you feel like you're in the world and want to generally look around and explore more and notice things like details more easily and want to interact with things more. They've also noted this in some of the Half Life: Alyx coverage that they found in their play-testing that people tended to look around more while on the monitor you might woosh by something without even noticing it.

Some things are also a lot more visceral of an experience in VR, like Horror. A good example is back in the Development Kit days when I was trying what are essentially short, simple Unity Demos, and things that might not even draw a bored yawn out of you on a monitor in your room, like a level where the lights slowly go out and you're being followed by some unknown ghostly entity and you have to stay near the lights to survive or a simple spaceship level where I looked around in the cockpit, engine room and whatnot for a bit to suddenly turn around and see some big alien thing standing behind moving towards me and static appearing can draw entirely different genuine reactions very close to "WHAT THE FUCK!?!" out of you in VR.

Even something as simple as this, even played the way he does on a phone is a very different experience than playing the same on a monitor:

 

[Venser]

For your third point, tactile feedback always feels better than no tactile feedback, which is why I'm no believer in "hand tracking" or "glove" stuff, even though it was possible for quite a while:

https://www.oculus.com/blog/thumbs-up-hand-tracking-now-available-on-oculus-quest/

I hope they apply some similar process to track your arms so we don't have floating hands or the weird bone-bending arms from Boneworks. Maybe some smart AI that could accurately predict your arm position based on your hand and controller position.

 

[tritosine2k]

If it was more widely understood that VR's "presence" is an euphemism for "throwing the kitchen sink" at responsiveness, there would be so much less misunderstanding.
Also outlines how 90's light gun shooters are false parallel, because that's the opposite (sluggish camera imaginable and cool wired periphery for GUN instead of this weaksauce).

 

[tritosine2k]

... GUN instead of this weaksauce).

... perhaps also explains the "effectiveness " of contemporary horror/ visceral VR titles

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Morgoth]

The boss himself:

 

[ADL]

tl;dw summary - Valve is gonna continue being Valve in TYOOL 2020 with some more Half-Life ambitions. Gabe is gonna continue bankrolling brain computer interfacing technology. Dorito Pope's interview where they apparently discuss all the cancelled iterations of Half-Life 3 is gonna be far more interesting.

 

[Egosphere]

I sat down to replay Half Life 2 last week and was .. disappointed, almost. HL2 was one of my all time favourites, but I haven't played it for a decade or so before last week. Still really enjoy Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt and all of the levels that follow the latter, but the vehicle sections really drag on. I never really thought about how little sense the story makes until this playthrough.

Didn't help that I played Dishonored for the very first time right before touching HL2. Despite some weaknesses, I preferred the experience overall.

 

[Sentinel]

Half-Life: Alyx has surpassed 300K owners on Steam ahead of its Monday launch on Monday. With launch sales it will likely become the top-selling Steam release of 2020 so far, beating games such as TemTem, Wolcen: LOM, Borderlands 3, and Metro Exodus.

 

[Wilian]

"This VR is a gimmick and will never amount to anything and you don't even want VR because no good games on VR but don't release good VR games because no one (me) has VR. Gimmick gimmick gimmick!"

 

[Monk]

I can't afford to buy VR.

 

[vortex]

I can't afford to buy VR.

Maybe they'll release it as M&K version.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I easily gets motion sickness so i dont want to shell out thousands of bux just to puke on my computer

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I sat down to replay Half Life 2 last week and was .. disappointed, almost. HL2 was one of my all time favourites, but I haven't played it for a decade or so before last week. Still really enjoy Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt and all of the levels that follow the latter, but the vehicle sections really drag on. I never really thought about how little sense the story makes until this playthrough.

Didn't help that I played Dishonored for the very first time right before touching HL2. Despite some weaknesses, I preferred the experience overall.

I understand your feelings. I have that with a lot of FPS games that I used to adore; Half Life series, Jedi Knight series, Return to Castle Wolfenstein/Wolfenstein 2009, Star Trek Elite Force, FEAR/Extraction Point/Perseus Mandate.
Back in the day I thought this never would get old even though I would sometimes need a break in order not make it so that playing these games would become like getting through the motions.

But when I played these games more recently again I realized that they had become old. Well some more than others.
I had hoped that by now I would be long enjoying their sequels or spiritual successors. (Half Life basically stopped after HL2. Jedi Knight died a sad death after JKA and I don't want to touch that IP after what Disney did to it. Wolfenstein games, well I still love the pulp secret war of WW2 setting but I can't give a damn about TNO/TOB/TNC/TYB, I am looking forwards to Blade of Agony though. I would welcome a new Trek FPS game based on TNG-DSN-VGR era or Original Series era but like hell would I want to play anything set in Kurtzman Trek. FEAR, I never bothered after the original)

BTW, playing Half Life 2 again reminded me that I was being teased with a storyline but never actually get much other than "Freeman returns to lead revolt", then "Freeman must flee city", and finally "Freeman must deliver thing to rebels with promise we get more plot".
Looking back now I feel that Half Life fans got kind of gypped with a tech demo with some plot attached to it while having to hang around with the developer's pet which they much rather wanted to use as a main character.

 

[Egosphere]

BTW, playing Half Life 2 again reminded me that I was being teased with a storyline but never actually get much other than "Freeman returns to lead revolt", then "Freeman must flee city", and finally "Freeman must deliver thing to rebels with promise we get more plot".
Looking back now I feel that Half Life fans got kind of gypped with a tech demo with some plot attached to it while having to hang around with the developer's pet which they much rather wanted to use as a main character.

This in particular really irked me when I replayed HL2. Also, there's little to no reason why Freeman, or anyone from Black Mesa really, should be held in high regard by the freedom fighters. If Black Mesa didn't run its shady experiments, the alien invasion of earth might have been avoided. Logically, anyone even tangentially connected to that facility should be held in contempt, not venerated.
The decision to have the main cast comprised of B.Mesa personnel - Eli, Kliener, Barnie etc. - that also doubles as the ruling caste of the freedom fighters was a wrong move, imo.

There's also a lot of inconsistencies in the world building that are never explained. Barnie infiltrates the combine by wearing a gas mask, but the combine overwatch are biomechanical beings, with their masks grafted into their skulls ( at least according to the concept art and the leaked BETA levels ); Freeman appears out of thin air after missing for 20 years, yet no-one is surprised to see him, or wonder what he was doing for all that time; He's a theoretical physicist, yet nobody makes any attempt to bring him into the fold to accelerate portal tech development, opting instead to simply shuttle him between various hideouts, before making him into the standard bearer for the revolt.

I guess Laidlaw's leak of the planned episode 3 plot solidified the notion that Valve doesn't actually have a plot for the series. They're making it up as they go along, so there never will be a satisfactory resolution. They should have switched to Adrian Shephard as protagonist when they had the chance - at least mowing down aliens as a hecu grunt makes sense.

 

[Wunderbar]

There's also a lot of inconsistencies in the world building that are never explained. Barnie infiltrates the combine by wearing a gas mask, but the combine overwatch are biomechanical beings, with their masks grafted into their skulls ( at least according to the concept art and the leaked BETA levels ).

Barney was wearing a Civil Protection white mask. Civil Protection are collaborators who work for Combine for more food, better living conditions, authority over other humans, etc.

 

[Egosphere]

There's also a lot of inconsistencies in the world building that are never explained. Barnie infiltrates the combine by wearing a gas mask, but the combine overwatch are biomechanical beings, with their masks grafted into their skulls ( at least according to the concept art and the leaked BETA levels ).

Barney was wearing a Civil Protection white mask. Civil Protection are collaborators who work for Combine for more food, better living conditions, authority over other humans, etc.

Oh yeah, one of the guys in the apartments at the start of the game mentions something about joining them, I think. Still, that's just kicking the can down the road. With the combine's resources, and complete absence of ethical considerations (ie. stalkers), it's a wonder why they even need a potential fifth column presiding over the cities.

 

[Dexter]

I easily gets motion sickness so i dont want to shell out thousands of bux just to puke on my computer

VR Sickness ain't the same as Motion Sickness, it's the inverse of it. You get Motion Sickness when your inner ear is telling you that you are moving e.g. in a car but your visual system says you're standing still. You get VR Sickness because your visual system is telling you that you are moving but your inner ear says you're standing still. You can get the one but not the other.

From personal anecdote I found that most people that didn't have problems playing fast-paced shooters like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes2, DOOM and the likes back in the day usually don't have problems in VR, but you need to try it out yourself.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I easily gets motion sickness so i dont want to shell out thousands of bux just to puke on my computer

VR Sickness ain't the same as Motion Sickness, it's the inverse of it. You get Motion Sickness when your inner ear is telling you that you are moving e.g. in a car but your visual system says you're standing still. You get VR Sickness because your visual system is telling you that you are moving but your inner ear says you're standing still. You can get the one but not the other.

From personal anecdote I found that most people that didn't have problems playing fast-paced shooters like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes2, DOOM and the likes back in the day usually don't have problems in VR, but you need to try it out yourself.

Exactly those last words: I'd need to test VR extensively before shelling out any money on it. So far I've only had a chance to briefly try out a flight simulator, and considering what arse-end of the world I live in it'll be a while until I get a proper chance again.

 

[Metro]

VR is still a gimmick, dawgs. Also funny how Gabe calls this the next Half-Life game. It's an off-shoot.

 

[agentorange]

BTW, playing Half Life 2 again reminded me that I was being teased with a storyline but never actually get much other than "Freeman returns to lead revolt", then "Freeman must flee city", and finally "Freeman must deliver thing to rebels with promise we get more plot".
Looking back now I feel that Half Life fans got kind of gypped with a tech demo with some plot attached to it while having to hang around with the developer's pet which they much rather wanted to use as a main character.

There's also a lot of inconsistencies in the world building that are never explained.

What irks me is that the combine supposedly have infinite technology and the ability to subjugate the entirety of Earth after a 7 hour war, but are unable to stop a single scientist. And yeah I'm fine with video game logic, plenty of games like Halo or Quake where a lone super soldier takes on an entire alien race, but it seems particularly absurd in Half-Life 2. I think part of it is that Half-Life 2 tries to maintain some semblance of realism, and also in part because it ties into the lack of enemy variety where the only counter measure the combine can throw at Gordon are handfuls of disposable ground troops for the vast majority of the game, with absolutely no logical reason given for this.

It's not like you are assaulting the Citadel from the outset so you could up with a reason like "It's a surprise attack and the combine can't call in reinforcements from across the globe in time." Or maybe the game takes place during the war or immediately after it so the combine have their hands full dealing with other threats. But, no, instead Gordon is running around in wide open, outdoor areas, far away from City 17 for most of the game, and the combine are aware of him, so why don't the combine just nuke him? They clearly don't give a shit about the condition of the planet. Or drop 50 Striders on him (which they are shown to have no shortage of in the final Citadel factory scene).

There's other things too like the way the characters react to Gordon's return. The guy disappears for years, then suddenly appears out of nowhere and people barely raise an eyebrow? Barney acts like he was waiting for Gordon to show up even though he had no way of knowing Gordon would be on the train.

Or Nova Prospekt. Supposedly this is where tons of citizens are carted off for being processed into stalkers or various combine soldiers, but when we get to Nova Prospekt it is completely empty. I think in the entire place there is only a single Vortigant lying in a torture chair.

Normally I wouldn't autistically care about this stuff but the combine were so well done from a visual and thematic design standpoint and the game utterly wastes their potential, turning them into nothing but a bunch of incompetent storm troopers.

 

[Sentinel]

What irks me is that the combine supposedly have infinite technology and the ability to subjugate the entirety of Earth after a 7 hour war, but are unable to stop a single scientist.

What do you mean "are unable"? The combine never tried to stop Gordon until Episode 2, where they literally make him pass out when he comes in contact with an alive combine alien. They just never cared about him until he blew up the Citadel.

 

[Egosphere]

What irks me is that the combine supposedly have infinite technology and the ability to subjugate the entirety of Earth after a 7 hour war, but are unable to stop a single scientist. And yeah I'm fine with video game logic, plenty of games like Halo or Quake where a lone super soldier takes on an entire alien race,

The former was genetically engineered 7ft tall, 450kg behemoth, the other was an uber chad who went to lovecraftian hell armed with an axe and some nails. HL1 made some sense in that at least you were (mostly) fighting against weak enemies at the start, and then against the hecu when they were shellshocked and in disarray. Still, Shephard was the best choice of protagonist for a game about protracted scraps against storm troopers.

Or Nova Prospekt. Supposedly this is where tons of citizens are carted off for being processed into stalkers or various combine soldiers, but when we get to Nova Prospekt it is completely empty. I think in the entire place there is only a single Vortigant lying in a torture chair.

My guess is this was probably cut. The leaked beta had that level with the children in the factory, 'cooking' the heads of the incinerators. The stalkers were also planned to become the main enemy by mid-game.

On the other hand, HL2 always has more stuff happening most of the time, and the increase in scripted things didn't necessarily mean that it had less actual gameplay.

It hurts the pacing. They give you a lot of these unskippable events - meeting Barnie, meeting Alyx, meeting Kliener, meeting Eli etc. - when the game is just picking up the pace. You feel like it's just starting to settle in before it grinds to a halt. I wouldn't mind them if they took the story somewhere interesting, but they're really there just to point you in a direction and set you on your merry way.

The combine never tried to stop Gordon until Episode 2, where they literally make him pass out when he comes in contact with an alive combine alien. They just never cared about him until he blew up the Citadel.

They do though. Breen makes a big deal out of Freeman returning when you accidentally teleport into his office. Then, when Barnie is throwing you the crowbar, he mentions the citadel going on full alert ( you can see the scanners pouring out in the hundreds ).

 

[Perkel]

The problem with HL2 is that they made Gordon into Jesus for some reason. In HL1 it made sense because you were just bystander of showoff between aliens and military and as a scientist you figured out that maybe you can "fix things" which ultimately ended up with Xen.

 

[Taxnomore]

Apparently, the ending has leaked and has angered many people, but I cannot find it online. Can anyone spoil it for me ? I will never play a VR game.