This video contains my thoughts about the first level of Half-Life Alyx: Levitation, spoilers and
all. This is NOT a full playthrough. Go elsewhere for that, or better still, experience it for
yourself! That’s kind of VR’s appeal, after all. Levitation starts straight after Half Life Alyx
finishes. The floating vault that contains the G-man (Like I said, this video contains SPOILERS)
immediately crashes down, and the G-Mans briefs you in vague and mysterious ways for a while.
‘Such an increasingly fit asset!’ And you know they knew what they were doing there!
If I’m honest, vague and mysterious sums up most of this first segment of the game.
You can find out what Levitation’s all about from the workshop page’s description. G-man’s
initial speech doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and neither do the alien landscapes
you walk through just afterwards, but it serves as a gentle introduction to VR again,
and does give the impression of déjà vu when you finally reach them for real later on in the game
Put it simply, Levitation is about these resistance fighters, who have gone to a
floating building, and you’ve got to head there yourself which will somehow help beat the Combine.
And that’s pretty much the last you hear of it, until Levitation ends. I think Russell’s
later advice of ‘don’t die and continue to not die’ is probably a better explanation
for Levitation’s chapters and the constant threats that Alyx seems to stumble in to!
Not that I mind too much- cos I’m here for the gameplay! Besides, Half Life has never been a
series to cram the story down the player’s throat- it’s normally a vague ‘get to here’
objective and the memories are made from the journey along the way, and from the discoveries
that the player decides to make. Half Life 2’s progress benefitted visually from the Citadel,
looming in the distance and getting closer as the game progressed. Alyx had that floating vault
thing that… Levitation just blew up! And despite Levitation having its own floating building that
you’re meant to be heading towards, you don’t see it throughout the game in quite the same way.
The gnome you had to take through Half Life 2 Episode 2 to earn the achievement is here as well,
presumably for another achievement of some sort. Here’s what I thought to that.
And then it’s off to the clock tower! I was totally oblivious to this at the time,
but in this bit of the game, time has frozen! And you’ve got to get the big clock moving again
for stuff to continue, and for a floating sofa to drop down to allow you to escape this clocktower.
Climbing this stairway quickly reminded me that turning corners in VR isn’t ideal when you’ve got
a cable coming out of your headset- I think Alyx’s main campaign went to great lengths to minimise
the number of turns you had to make- which this clock tower most certainly does NOT do. In this
playthrough I use teleport because, seemingly unlike everybody in the comments section,
I find it makes me less sick than continuous motion does. But regardless of how you choose
to play in VR, snap angle changes makes a lot of sense if your headset has a cable attached to it!
So even though I hadn’t cottoned on that time had frozen, I still got through this section with ease
just by following gameplay cues. Once time has started again,
you’re briefed by Russell. And I’ll show you this bit ‘cos it’s quite amusing.
‘I picked up your signal half an hour ago in the old clocktower. I’m heading into the
metro now and am making my way over to you. Let’s meet inside and definitely, DEFINITELY
don’t die in the meantime. Actually, don’t die at all. Ever! Just… continue to live, Alyx!’
‘Gat it’
This adventure over the rooftops serves as a quick movement tutorial to get you
used to VR again. And you need to get used to it quickly, cos it doesn’t last long!
‘Uh oh!’
During this tutorial stage, I noticed something… rather queer going on. Levitation’s use of
coloured lights- especially red ones- mislead me a number of times. I often found myself drawn to
stuff that LOOKED like it needed poking at, when actually it didn’t! Sometimes,
it was the thing I needed to solve. And other times, it was just there as decoration. It
feels like Alyx’s main campaign would draw your attention to where a puzzle starts,
whereas Levitation highlights the end of one and expects you to work your way back to where it
starts? There’s often a larger physical distance between the cause and effect. And this was more of
a thing earlier on in the campaign but I often knew where I had to go but didn’t know how get
there, or I had activated something, but didn’t know where the resulting change had been made to.
It’s less intuitive. Maybe it’s less dumbed down! But it probably added a good 20 minutes
to my playthrough length where I assumed the game was trying to tell me something… when actually it
wasn’t. Yup, I’m one of those annoying people for whom game devs have to simplify their puzzles for!
I might be stuck in these places for longer than I should be, but I don’t mind too much cos they’re
absolutely beautiful, and of similar quality to Half Life Alyx’s. It doesn’t come for free, mind-
and the mapper of these maps, FMPone, has borne the brunt of it- he tweeted earlier this year
about how long it takes to render these levels. And this very tutorial area took him 14 hours
to render! So if you’re wondering why bug fixes to Levitation are taking a few days to come out,
it’s probably because poor FMPone’s PCs are grinding away at this sort of stuff.
And I suspect his PCs are fast. It just isn’t being helped by how big some of these maps are.
But thank goodness they are- for they give me the freedom to explore that I felt was sorely
missing from Half Life Alyx’s main campaign. Maps in that felt very small and claustrophobic. Maybe
because Valve hated the long compile times too! And I love the height used in Levitation. There
are lots of times where you’re leaping over large drops, or peering over the side of tall
structures, which AGAIN, I didn’t see as much as I wanted to in Half Life Alyx. And
I thought this was the whole point of VR- to make us feel scared and vulnerable and
very small in the grand scale of things. So hats off to Levitation for achieving this.
‘TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN TRAINNNN’
And then, the moment you hit ground level, the combat begins. And it is TOUGH.
If you’ve recently finished Half Life Alyx, or consider yourself to be a ‘good’ VR player,
then you might find it refreshing to be stripped of all your equipment and to face off against
tougher enemies with starter weapons again. It’s the sort of thing that tends to happen at some
point in the second half of most games… but if you’re feeling a bit rusty then Levitation’s
first encounter will come as a bit of a shock. You see, Half Life Alyx didn’t put you against
combine until after several levels against easier creatures first, and by the time
you faced the gun-wielding enemies, you had a number of guns at your disposal,
and had had time to earn a number of upgrades for them. And even then, the engagements are
only against a few enemies at most, all in situations which favour your position and
provide YOU ample cover for you to hide behind. MEANWHILE, Levitation’s first fight doesn’t
care for any of that! You’re in an empty hallway, facing off against multiple combine, all shooting
at you from different angles. You don’t have THAT much ammo, and they are bullet sponges. I beat it
first time, but it was still a little rough for me, leaving me on low health and with no way of
healing up, which raised the stakes for the next bit even though not a lot happened. Along with bug
fixes, it looks like Levitation’s first patch will aim to make this first encounter more manageable.
Truthfully, some of my favourite moments in games have been when I’ve been dropped in the deep end
and have had to somehow pull through against all of the odds. But to start a lengthy campaign like
Levitation with this segment, especially in VR, will cause a lot of potential players to
drop out before even getting started. I think the best solution would be to make combine less
bullet-sponge-y. Have them die in one headshot, and then I’d be happy to fight against even more
of them! But if that isn’t an option, then at least provide MORE ammo before entering the fray,
provide the player with more cover, and have the Combine all attack from the same sort of
direction, and then provide a healing station immediately afterwards. Because… I was still
in tutorial mode at this stage. And I’m sure a lot of other players will be, too.
And then it’s just a case of figuring out how to get down to the Metro station to meet
with Russell. I was exploring this area for quite a while, because there are all
kinds of goodies hidden about, like resin and equipment inside the cars and stuff,
and earlier on in a game like this I feel more inclined to explore and to try and 100%
complete it. So I really love areas like this! I just wish I wasn’t on low health cos for this
whole time, my health warning was going off, and the background music and sounds were quite
loud and overwhelming for what’s essentially a really pleasant moment of exploration!
The bigger and more open the area the game gives you to explore, the more important I
feel it is that the game clearly signposts where you’ve got to go when you’re done
with that area. Now this bit of Levitation isn’t too bad for this, but I do feel a few
easy changes could have made it even clearer. What you’re meant to do is to follow the black
cables from the blue forcefield, back to the control panel. I didn’t do this- I discovered
the control panel while exploring. But it doesn’t help that the cables are plain black in colour,
and disappear into the drains for a while, which to me indicates it’s simply decoration, rather
than be an important part of a puzzle of sorts. And then, once you DO activate the control panel,
the blue force field you can see from that spot DOESN’T deactivate. And I’m in mixed feelings
about that. I feel it could have made it clearer what HAD changed when you pressed the button.
Maybe it could have lit the cables up to hint to the player they’ve got to follow them. But what
it definitely shouldn’t do at that moment is to DISTRACT the player with a massive flying enemy
gunship the moment the button is pressed, which sends the wrong message about what
might have changed with that button press. Any way. That’s just a minor thing, but it
is interesting seeing other playthroughs doing similar to me where they’re just a little unsure
what has changed when the button is pressed. Any way, once you’re down in the Metro,
you’re looking for THIS to start the next puzzle to open the door. Which also took
me a while to find. Again, follow the cables and it makes sense, but a plainer background or just
a light of some sort to highlight this detail would have been appreciated. Because this isn’t
meant to be the puzzle. The puzzle is meant to be the thing you trigger AFTER finding it!
Any way, that’s the end of the first proper level of Levitation.
I had intended to make this a quick summary of the campaign but apparently I have a lot
to say about it! And oh dear, looks like I still haven’t noticed that I’m meant to be following
the black cable. Not sure if that makes me a good or bad playtester, but if you can’t
wait to see what other obvious stuff I don’t notice, let me know, and I might make a part 2.