This ain’t Hunt Down the Freeman.
My feet hurt, my back hurts, my knees hurt, and I feel disoriented. I haven’t had this much fun in recent memory.
It’s been thirteen years since the last Half Life game graced our screens, long enough for people who hadn’t been born when Episode 2 came out to now be trash talking me in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Long enough that the game’s industry has shifted to an almost unrecognizably different face than it had back when Gordon Freeman last graced our screens. Entire franchises have been birthed, rose, and died in that time.
Alyx has you playing the role of…Alyx, daughter of Eli Vance and compatriot to the world-saving Gordon Freeman. The overarching plot of the game involves you trying to get into a massive vault that the Combine are probably hiding some great weapon in. They are hiding a weapon in it, right? Otherwise why have a giant floating vault? This is the last I will talk about plot points.
#1: Your Place In The Timeline
Understandably the first thing people might ask is; “how much Half Life should I play before playing Alyx?” The answer is all of it. While Alyx is a prequel to Half Life 2, the game immediately spoils the ending of Episode 2 literally right off the bat with an “X-time before [event]” text scroll at the start of the game. Just like a baseball to the head.
There are references and events in the game that you also won’t understand unless you played through the whole series. It doesn’t make sense why without spoiling things, so I won’t.
You may also notice that my screenshots are all from the Steam store page. I couldn’t get my computer to properly snag screenshots while I was playing.
#2: Is VR Really Necessary?
Short answer; yes.
Long answer; Valve angered a lot of people when they said that Half Life: Alyx wouldn’t work as a non-VR title and understandably many of you are probably reading that and thinking what a load of crap it sounds like. After all, they (other people) said that the Five Nights at Freddy’s game wouldn’t work as non-VR and lo and behold they did it and it worked fine. Alyx is not that.
It makes more sense once you’ve played it, especially in the latter half of the game of why pulling VR from Alyx would strip most of what the game has going for it. You have various activities and puzzles that are deeply steeped in being able to freely move your hands. Your hands move and interact with the environment in such a fluid way that entire levels and mechanics were built around you interacting with your surroundings. You couldn’t slap Half Life 2’s controls on this without ripping the heart of Alyx’s mechanics out.
The big VR function of course is your gravity gloves, a less functional version of the gravity gun from Half Life 2 that still has its uses. Namely you’ll use them to pick up and pluck items from the environment. With a flick of the wrist you can yank items toward you, which is great for grabbing grenades and tossing them back, or just having fun throwing vodka bottles and watching them shatter.
You’ll also interact with your body as you manually reload weapons by grabbing clips from your shoulder, inserting them into the gun, and chambering a round. When it works, it is incredibly immersive. When it doesn’t, well…
#3: When It Works, It Works…
When Half Life: Alyx works, it works great. When it fails, boy does it break hard. A lot of these faults are issues that VR will probably never fix until we find ourselves in the next phase where we are wearing body suits or linking up our brains via the neural networks Valve has been working on. The most frustrating aspect of Alyx is when your hands just fail.
There were numerous parts of the game where I would have to try over and over to grasp on to something with my hands just not holding on. It also felt like my body was roughly a foot above where the game thought it was, with items down on the ground that you can’t whisk toward you (door latches) being far too low. I also encountered a few moments where a piece of debris would embed itself in Alyx’s “body” thus rendering me unable to move.
VR especially has problems with graspable, unmovable objects, and I found myself accidentally falling under the map at a few points where this presented itself. It’s not exactly something you can do by accident, but it is jarring and frustrating when it happens.
#4: The Firefights Aren’t Necessary
I think Half Life: Alyx would have benefited immensely from not including shootouts with the Combine, or scaling them down dramatically. This is where the game tends to forget that it isn’t Half Life 2. Combine have pinpoint accuracy and can kill you pretty quick on normal difficulty. VR makes it difficult to assess your placement and standing and how much cover you’re actually under. If the game had moments of fighting one or two Combine soldiers, that would be fine.
Unfortunately there are numerous points where encounters draw on far too long with more than one wave of Combine soldiers. Enemies also happen to be bullet sponges, or Alyx’s gun shoots lawn darts because most enemies take an unreasonable number of bullets to kill. Considering that bullets in the game are at a premium, you must scavenge everything or risk coming up short at which point you’re kind of screwed as Alyx doesn’t have Gordon’s crowbar or any melee weapon.
There are three guns which might sound disappointing until I tell you that you can upgrade them with resin found over the course of the game. A pistol, shotgun, and submachine gun, plus grenades. You can upgrade with better sights, bigger magazines, and laser aiming to help you out. The weapons themselves look great, even if you’ll be out of ammo a lot.
Alyx is at its highest when you are sneaking around quiet, desolate buildings and avoiding head crabs and zombies. The slower pace allows you to really get immersed in the world and creates one of the more dramatic, suspenseful games that I have played in probably 10+ years. The chapter surrounding a monster that you can’t kill and must avoid by making noise (it is also blind) was better than any Combine fight except for maybe the last chapter.
#5: Valve Magic
Valve has a special way of making games and it’s nice to see that Alyx has continued that trend (Artifact notwithstanding). First of all there are a metric ton of accessibility options for players who might otherwise not be fully equipped to stand for hours on end and climb ladders or crouch for periods of time. There is even a one-handed mode.
The world and its inhabitants are stunning, giving plenty of character to Alyx, Russel (the man in your headset), and even down to the various headcrabs and zombies that roam the world. You’ll come across new variations of old enemies, but with how Valve introduces you to new concepts and designs its levels around basically being subtle tutorials, you’ll never be left wondering what to do next. Aesthetically, the game mechanics just feel natural.
Puzzles in Half Life: Alyx are just at the right point where they aren’t frustratingly obscure but still let you feel kinda smart once you figure them out. I think I may have completed one or two puzzles in a way that the game hadn’t intended, but it’s hard to tell with Valve sometimes.
#6: So Is It A Must Buy?
I’m not going to tell people to go out and buy a VR headset for Half Life: Alyx, that would be irresponsible. It is definitely not the game you want to be your first foray into virtual reality, but if you own the headset and want some more Half Life, this is definitely not one to miss.
Half Life: Alyx is an incredible sign of how good the Source engine can look, and after well over a decade it has me hopeful, and praying that Valve can finally pull together that Half Life sequel we’ve all been waiting for. If you have no intention/ability to buy a VR headset and know you will never play Half Life: Alyx, I recommend you watch a playthrough to get caught up on the story and see where the series is going if/when Valve ever put out a full sequel.
Alyx isn’t perfect, but the positives of the experience make the whole game so much worth it. The campaign for Alyx took me roughly 10 hours to complete. After thirteen years, it’s been worth the wait.
I give Half Life: Alyx an A+
MMO Fallout 