I won’t spoil ‘plot’ details in this video, but will be talking extensively about
the gameplay and how I feel about Half-Life Alyx.
Half-Life Alyx is VR’s Half-Life 1. It shows that it can be done, and does what it does
to a sky-high standard. But when the game ended and I returned to the main menu, my
first feeling was… disappointment. What a horrible thing to feel, after playing the
most anticipated game I could think of! And it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it- I really
did and will no doubt replay it many times, in many different ways. Even while making
this video, I’m craving jumping back in and reliving some of the moments I’ve had
in it. So why ‘disappointment?’ For a while, I couldn’t understand it either.
It was only after talking to myself in the shower that I’ve finally figured it out.
Half-Life Alyx is VR’s Half-Life 1. It was necessary. But what I really want is VR’s
Half-Life 2.
Half-Life Alyx does what it does brilliantly, but I’m far more excited for what comes
next for VR. This game has tackled the problems and has laid strong foundations for future
games to build upon. And that’s what I’m craving now- for them to elaborate on the
gameplay and to see how far they can push it.
That’s what they did with Half-Life 2.
I’ll give you an example: Half Life Alyx introduces enemies, shows their strengths
and weaknesses, then lets you fight them in increasingly elaborate scenarios. Then it
moves onto something else. That’s pretty much what any shooter does. Half-Life 2 was
special because it would get that and then twist it in unexpected ways, like letting
you control the enemy, or giving you a gun that suddenly transformed the world into hundreds
of projectiles you could use. And just when you thought you had it sussed, it would ramp
it up to the next level by letting you use the enemies themselves as projectiles!
It wouldn’t matter if Half-Life Alyx did exactly those things. It’s been done. It’s
hard for me to say what I want from Valve because, honestly, I want to be surprised
by some new gameplay mechanics that I’ve never seen before. In comparison to Half-Life
2’s chapters, those found in this game are rather Vanilla.
But it’s not really fair to blame Half-Life Alyx for being vanilla, is it. Not when it’s
the first big, proper, high-budget VR game out there, with a full-length campaign. VR
is this game’s unique twist and it changes everything, making even the most mundane of
actions feel fleshed out and satisfying. And I’m happy to say it proves it’s more than
just a gimmick. The ‘wow’ factor’s there. Even for me, (A player with prior experience
of VR), the ‘wow’ in this game still lasts for hours. And rather brilliantly, it returns
every time I jump back into it after a break. When it comes to VR’s gameplay potential,
by the time you’ve finished the campaign I’m sure you too will be convinced of the
new possibilities it enables. You’ll be wanting more! And maybe that’s why I was
disappointed that it didn’t do more.
To get a feeling for how VR changes things you simply have to look at a single room.
In Half-Life 2 it would comprise of a few enemies and maybe an item to pick up. An experienced
player could pass it in seconds. But in VR it’s a fully fleshed out place that you
could spend minutes in, even if it’s not an essential area. While I agree that this
game is about the same duration as the other Half-Life games, it’s also smaller and shorter.
You clear fewer rooms, cover less ground, shoot fewer enemies, you explore fewer environments.
From the footage you’ve seen of this game, you might assume it’s all set in and around
dilapidated buildings, infested with alien plants. And you’d be right. If you’re
lucky, you’ll get different colours of lighting to mix things up a bit. I know it’s meant
to be set in City 17, but so was Half-Life 2 and that game managed a diverse array of
envionments that helped give each chapter a very unique ‘flavour’.
The chapters of Half-Life Alyx may have different gameplay twists, but they blur into one another
thanks to the murky, drab colour palette. So that doesn’t help Half-Life Alyx. Its
gameplay may be more vivid, but it all looks samey, and if you were to try and summarise
your travels through this game in a single paragraph, when compared with, say, Half-Life
1, Alyx’s would sound decidedly less epic.
But I see what Valve have done here. They KNOW that VR makes more of less and have transformed
the Half-Life series from being a shooter, into being a scavenging simulator. You have
less inventory space and less ammunition than ever before- you’re never more than one
fight away from running out of everything. This strongly encourages you to scavenge your
environments for whatever you can find. Even later on in the game, finding a pistol magazine
is cause for celebration! You’ll have to make difficult decisions
like choosing between carrying a medic kit, or a grenade. Maybe you’ll decide it’s
worth sacrificing a free hand just to carry an extra one into the next battle. And maybe
you’ll take the time to exploit an enemy’s weakness, just to save a few precious bullets
for whatever lies around the next corner.
I’m not always happy with this. One thing I was expecting from a smaller arsenal of
weapons was for each to be more unique, but it just isn’t the case here. Your gun collection
is lacking, with 2 of them serving almost identical purposes to the point where I don’t
care which I have out, as long as they’ve got ammo in. And the other gun I have a problem
with is the shotgun. On my first playthrough I found so little
ammunition for it that I barely knew the weapon, even after having finished the game! That
was a shame because the few times I did use it, it felt immensely satisfying and powerful.
But being the hoarder I am, I quickly noticed how scarce ammo was for it I chose to reserve
the gun’s use for special occasions. As a result, I ended up wasting most of its
ammo against invincible enemies, and I ended the game without knowing much about this weapon
at all. BUT, on my second play-through, I’ve been
using the shotgun whenever I’ve had the chance. And oddly enough, have discovered
a lot more ammo for it. I think this game has some kind of invisible ‘Director’,
similar to Left 4 Dead. I can only assume it tracks your stats, then scatters more ammo
in the next room for you to find if you’re running low on something. So in other words,
the more you use the shotgun, the more ammo you’re given and the more often you CAN
use it. I just wish it had known that on my first playthrough as I’d have had a lot
more fun knowing the shotgun could be a viable weapon for me to frequently switch to against
tougher opponents. I’m pretty sure in my first playthrough I found a grand total of
about 40 shells in the entire game. The shotgun has traditionally been my favourite
weapon. The one found in Half-Life 2 was brilliant. Maybe I should mod HLA so that I only have
the shotgun and infinite ammo. I’d be up for a playthrough of that.
While we’re on the topic of scavenging, we’ve got to discuss RESIN. This under-explained
element is scattered throughout this game, ultimately letting you buy weapon upgrades
once you’ve found enough. This mechanic is to get you invested in your current playthrough,
and to take pride in searching each and every room from top to bottom.
In earlier Half-Life games it just took a supply crate and a health station and you’d
be in the same situation as any player at that point in the game. But the addition of
resin means that players who take the time to scavenge are rewarded for doing so, and
will have a better chance of winning later on. To me, the resin as a gameplay mechanic
is a trade-off. It incentivises you to explore, but it also means you end up exploring with
the intention of finding resin, rather than exploring for the pure enjoyment of the unknown
and of what you might find. And on the occasions when you don’t find any resin, you end up
feeling betrayed. And while I didn’t get to use the shotgun
much, I did pump a load of resin into upgrades for it. What a waste. I had an autoloader
and everything but think it saw action about twice.
But the autoloaders for the other weapons? Oh, they were great. With the pistol it removes
that dilemma of ‘do you bother reloading when there are just a few bullets left in
the magazine’. And with another weapon it effectively transforms it into a hassle-free
point-and-shoot device like it was straight from Half-life 2. With these upgrades, the
combat goes from mostly being about the reloading, to mostly being about the pointing and shooting.
Which I find a lot more fun. It’s just that you don’t have enough targets to feel you’ve
had a proper fight until near the end of the game, and even then, ammo conservation is
always weighing on every decision you make. I never felt fully able simply to appreciate
the combat for what it was. Most ended too soon, for one reason or another. It’s frustrating
because the brilliance is there, but the game ends before it can reach that firefighting
sweet-spot. Maybe I’ll get what I want in a future Half-Life game.
There are a thousand minigames suitable for the hacking in Half-Life Alyx, but rather
unsurprisingly, Valve has chosen gameplay mechanics that work best in VR. As in, they
would certainly be a lot less fun to try and beat with a mouse and keyboard. They require
you to view and to manipulate 3D space in ways I haven’t seen done before this point.
Obviously, this is to showcase the new possibilities that VR enables, though as these hacking minigames
are only ever a means to an end, I’m not sure I can call the minigames themselves fun.
But each type feels functional and polished and manages to ramp the difficulty up over
the course of the game. Even the ones I didn’t think could be made difficult enough to challenge
me occasionally did by the closing levels. The concept of teleporting through the levels
in HLA has been a controversial one. I started my first play-through with continuous movement
because if I’m going to be making videos with this footage, I don’t want the hassle
of dealing with thousands of comments complaining about the movement type I’m using. But I
decided to try teleporting mid-way through, then forgot to switch back to continuous again
simply because it works. Teleporting may seem unnatural to viewers, but when you’re actually
playing it, movement becomes a thing you do but your focus is on more important stuff
like aiming or looking around. Teleporting lets you get on with the more important stuff.
I don’t recall my time in Half Life Alyx as being one of lots of jumps, but if I had
one complaint about it, it’s that continuous movement feels very slow in comparison and
that Valve should add a ‘run’ option for players who want to use that option instead.
Even when in continuous movement, if I came to a long, straight segment I’d sigh and
slip a few teleports into speed things up a bit.
As for nausea, I didn’t get sick from any of the options. It was only when I tried the
cinematic smoothing that I did- and that mode made me feel sick in about 20 seconds flat.
Were it not for how long the nausea lasts, it would make for a great party game to play
with friends before a night out. Something I am fond of is the health system.
There is no armour- the only things like it are masks and helmets which simply serve as
get-out-of-jail-free cards to save you from the next barnacle you foolishly run into.
Your health is measured in a simple ‘3 hearts’ system. Which I am much happier with. It’s
much easier to understand that being shot takes 1 health point away, rather than 23
health and 17 armour. A health station can heal all 3 hearts, while a health syringe
will heal 1. I like the way the controllers vibrate when you’re on super-low health.
It feels like your heart’s racing and strongly hints that you should make a beeline for the
nearest health station.
The game plays into many common phobias by having you walk through areas of pitch-black.
Or having you shuffle around the edge of a large drop. Or having to inject yourself with
a nasty looking needle. Or having a bug get crushed before its goo is stabbed into your
hand by several nasty looking needles! Valve really utilise VR to make these things seem
more real. This game is designed to sell you on the concept of VR.
And this is helped by the wonderful graphical and audio design. You don’t think there’s
anything wrong with the sound design in other games, but step into the world of Half-Life
Alyx and you’ll suddenly realise what the rest are missing. There are just so many small
and area-specific details and it transforms the environments into real, lived-in places.
It's a shame for the experience to be interrupted by regular loading screens. You’ll know
when these are coming because you’ll run into a room with nothing of interest in and
will think to yourself how this area’s only purpose would be to act as a loading screen.
And then it loads. These occur with about the same frequency as the ones in Half-Life
2, to the point where I suspect Source 2 is just Source 1 but with prettier graphics.
I installed this game on my SSD and they were never more than 5-6 seconds long, but I’ve
heard from others that their loading times were considerably longer than that.
While the loading screens are soooo Source 1, graphically… Source 2 is here! And it
reminds me in many ways of what Source was like, back in 2004. By that I mean that this
game isn’t the best in any one way. It’s just the best-looking all-round. It doesn’t
need raytraced reflections, or parallax-corrected bricks, or millions of strands of grass to
do what it does. It just looks consistently great, convincingly cluttered and masterfully
lit, and is testament to the incredible artistic talent in the Valve studio. And this time
around, while people may complain about the system requirements… for what it looks like,
it’s insanely well optimised! To look comparable to other modern-day games, whilst running
at a high enough resolution and framerate to make VR possible, is nothing short of a
small miracle. And may be what is needed to convince the masses that it’s possible to
have a no-compromise VR experience. VR also transforms enemies from being avatars
on the screen, to being hefty lumps of meat that can quickly get too close for comfort.
I never realised how large headcrabs actually are. And I love it when they launch themselves
and go full ragdoll physics. I’m disappointed that I can’t trap them under a bucket. And
can’t physically pick them up and fling them around while they’re still alive and
squirming. I’m disappointed that there’s no melee
element to fighting zombies, either. Boneworks, despite its many faults, did at least let
you physically assault the enemies if you got close enough and when you had no other
option. But for Half-Life Alyx to let you pick up a METAL ROD, and then not to let you
bash a zombie over the head with it, is simply cruel and a major disappointment.
Barnacles- well, barnacles can go drop off a tall cliff for all I care, they’re everywhere
in this game and I’m ashamed by the number of times they caught me out or sucked something
off that I wanted for myself. Valve identified these things has having the most potential
in VR and by the end of the game I can’t think of another way they could have caught
me out or deprived me of some kind of item. Antlions would be terrifying were their animations
not so cartoonish. They went from moving like convincing bugs in Half-Life 2 to being some
kind of Disney creation in this game- but with extra gore. But in terms of gameplay,
there’s so much more to them this time around. It’s satisfying to get a clean kill on one
of these, and to have your accuracy rewarded with the ammunition left over.
Manhacks have somehow become EVEN MORE ANNOYING as they’ve gotten faster and harder to dodge-
if only you had a melee attack of some kind! The most challenging enemies have to be the
combine. My reflex sights may identify their heads as being weak spots, but they certainly
don’t feel weak as I pump round after round into them seemingly without success. Sometimes
they die and I don’t even know it because the death sounds are a little delayed or quiet.
When combined with the scavenging element, combine encounters require improvisation (Usually
with explosives) if you want to come out of it alive, and with any ammunition left.
These combine are the most intimidating enemy types of them all, especially in the opening
chapters. Since you play as Alyx, who likely isn’t as tall as I am, the combine all appear
to tower over me like formidable 6 foot 6 super-soldiers. They intimidate me!
And this is helped by their animations. The motion capture in this game is the best that
I’ve ever seen. When viewed at high framerates, in VR in 3D, they may as well be real people
in suits acting it out in front of me. I wasn’t expecting this to be one of the
game’s most impressive features… but maybe I should have. Because back in 2004, Half-Life
2’s characters and animations were years ahead of anything else at the time. Alyx shows
that Valve have made major strides since then. Major strides. And while I can’t fault the
performances seen in many other modern games, something about the combine in Half-Life Alyx
just makes them BETTER. Which makes it such a shame that there isn’t
more chance to see them at their best. Half-Life 1 had scientist and security guard encounters
all the way through. Half-Life 2 had several segments where you could just marvel at the
drama unfolding between different NPCs. But Half-Life Alyx is a far more solitary affair.
Which is odd, because like Valve said in the previews, it’s got more dialogue than the
earlier games! And I like Russel. His character is brilliantly realised. Alyx’s back and
forth with him is a great way of explaining gameplay mechanics and fleshing out the characters.
But I don’t know if I want Alyx to be fleshed out. The beauty of Gordon Freeman remaining
silent was that he was whatever you wanted him to be. He could be 14 year old 3kliksphilip,
or 30 year old 2kliksphilip. But Alyx is a 19 year old woman and a lot of her dialogue
reflects that. Even if you want to roleplay a 19 year old woman… do you ONLY want that
option? This is one direction modern games have taken
that I don’t like. Both Deus Ex and Half Life started as series where you could be
whatever you wanted to be. Kill innocents? Sure. Save the world? Sure. Both? Sure. But
as both have advanced, and as the worlds have become increasingly worth interacting with,
your character’s interactions with them have shrunk! With Half-Life it’s reached
the point where you have no choice but to be Alyx instead of yourself.
Also her screams just don’t do it for me. She was much more convincing when I let her
die in Half-Life 2. If it’s going to do this, the least it can
do is to provide more opportunities to watch Russell awkwardly explain stuff to me in person!
Much like the VR gameplay opportunities, it feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface
of what the character animation in this game could achieve.
I feel I’ve been extremely critical of Half-Life Alyx, and that it deserves a minute or so
of unadulterated praise for one of its chapters. This chapter, of which you’ll know about
if you’ve played it, has to be among the most intense and terrifying in the history
of gaming. Half-Life 2’s Ravenholm section was critically acclaimed for its atmosphere
and foreboding. But that’s NOTHING compared with the one found in this game. It makes
you feel vulnerable and utterly helpless. Without a word of dialogue, it communicated
to me just how silly, clumsy and predictable I was. I could practically visualise the people
at Valve watching my playthrough and high-fiving each other as I suffered every step of the
way. I fell into every trick and trap it set for me. And the way it repeatedly got my hopes
up, before dashing them as it slowly dawned on me what I had to do next was nothing short
of inspired. You’ll know the bit I mean when you get to it. Half-Life Alyx is worth
playing for this one chapter alone. It will be remembered as one of the greats. And if
14 year old me had played this game, I don’t think I would have made it through this chapter.
Valve went too far with the terror aspect of this game. And I’m so pleased that they
did. This is Valve at their best. This proves they’ve still got it. And maybe, had this
not set such a high bar, I’d have been more forgiving of the other chapters from the game.
I just wish there had been more ground-breaking moments like that in the game for me. But
instead, the bulk of the game was happy just being an immensely fun introduction to VR
gaming. As proof that it can enable a more intense and vibrant gaming experience than
can be had from mouse and keyboard. And I suspect that’s exactly what Valve set out
to create. Well done, you pulled it off and have left me wanting more. A lot more. I can’t
fault what’s here, only what isn’t. Maybe what I want can’t exist just yet.
Maybe VR needs to mature as a platform first, to give its playerbase time to master the
fundamentals enough to enable VR’s equivalent of Half-Life 2. In the meantime, now would
be a great time to release some regular episodic content, Valve. Let’s see if this time,
you can count to 3.