Review: Half-Life: Alyx
Virtual reality came to our world as a crazy attraction at game exhibitions, where players stood in line for half an hour for a minute-long dizzying flight in a VR headset. Many had issues with seasickness, their eyes were tired – but the creators of VR devices did not give up. Hand controllers like PS Movie and a camera like in Kinect were added to the headsets – and now the whole body of the player has been transferred to virtual reality. Fiction? Future? It’s not that simple.
To understand the whole glory of the Half-Life: Alyx, you need to play it only on a VR device. If you’ve seen the walkthrough on Youtube, you haven’t seen anything. If you started the modified version of the game on a desktop PC without a headset, you also did not see anything. Don’t be fooled: Alyx is made to twist your head in all directions, to help you to feel the atmosphere of a huge living world of Half-Life. Let us make a comparison. Playing HL: Alyx without a VR headset is like playing on the best gambling sites instead of a real casino. Yes, you will get the opportunity to try the game, but you will miss the atmosphere of the real club. However, even this is a bad example, since you can play at live casinos with live dealers in one of the clubs listed here – bgaoc.com/online-casinos. The point is, to play HL: Alyx – you need a VR headset – this is the only way.
Half-Life: Alyx – Storyline
We’re in Alyx Vance’s body, five years before Half-Life 2. The Alliance hasn’t come into full force yet, Dr. Breen isn’t broadcasting on screens, but the Resistance is already entrenched among dilapidated houses. The whole journey will be accompanied by the feeling that the ruins are some kind of Soviet city, and it’s not even about the inscriptions in Russian, but about interior items, models of cars, especially dirty entrances, and doves on the roof. Immersion – 300%.
Alyx escapes from the Alliance paddy wagon, then goes to the aid of her father, who is being taken to Nova Prospect, and for this, he enlists the support of Vortigaunts. In return, the latter asked to destroy a certain flying fortress that hangs over the city. The plot is dynamic, but short, and it was not in vain that the speedrunners passed Half-Life: Alyx in half an hour. The game does not torment players with long corridor levels or hundreds of enemies. As soon as you get used to the new mechanics or understand the essence of the next obstacle, you will be asked to move on.
Half-Life: Alyx – Gameplay Mechanics
Shooting in VR is both easy and hard at the same time. You have a larger viewing angle, faster reaction, but you also have to aim not with a cross on the screen, but by combining the sight and front sight. Different optics simplify the task, but there are new complications. First, it’s scary to play in VR, because the headcrab literally jumps in your face. Secondly, reloading. Try to throw a couple of cartridges into a shotgun in the fire of battle – that will be pretty hard to do. However, Half-Life: Alyx does not load you with complex firefights from the first minutes. Opponents show cool AI only towards the end of the game and only on high difficulty settings.
There are only three guns in the arsenal: a pistol, a shotgun, and a machine gun. However, there are upgrades for each. For example, a pistol with attachments shoots in short bursts and holds 15 rounds, while a shotgun can fire grenades.
In addition to shooting and manipulating objects, Alyx breaks locks, hacks into systems, and fixes wiring. Hacking is a puzzle, like “connect the dots”, only here they remind you that the world is not flat, and a person has two hands. It’s more interesting with the wiring: with the help of a mega-screwdriver, Alix inspects the walls and tightens the broken contacts.
But apart from VR games, the levels of Half-Life: Alyx are not without fiction. A couple of times you need to hide from an unkillable boss, in one location everything explodes from an incautious shot, in another, it is dark, in the third – poisonous dust, and you need to clamp your mouth with your hand.
The game, in principle, is designed for a user who is not very familiar with VR, therefore it is sparing. With normal control, of course, there would be a lack of dynamics, but in VR the sensations themselves amuse: you throw grenades, turn valves, climb stairs – and so on there are hundreds of different movement types.
The environment is interactive, no less than in Half-Life 2. Many items are for fun, but you can do something with them (read a newspaper, for example). Add to this that the graphics are at the level of the best modern games, and even the walkthrough locations are full of details.
Half-Life: Alyx is full of surprises that are hard to list. After all, the last game in this universe came out a long time ago, and that’s why it’s cool even to just meet familiar monsters or view panoramas that are exactly like in Half-Life.
Half-Life: Alyx can be played on monitors, but it will be like Doom with a side view. Full immersion and the variety of available actions are equally important here. The HF: Alyx is recommended for the game, 10 out of 10.
DC Fanboy! Superman is the greatest comic book character of all time. Favorite movies are Man of Steel, Goonies, Back To the Future