I really wish virtual reality was accessible to more people, because folks, I’m here to tell you that Half-Life: Alyx is very good.
I mean, of course it is. It’s a Half-Life game, and Alyx has all the delectable ingredients from those timeless classics: The fantastic atmosphere that emanates from its environments; the tense gun brawls designed to almost always resolve with you on the brink of death; the understated character moments that make its wacky sci-fi narrative feel grounded.
“But there’s no crowbar! No gravity gun!” I hear some of you chuff. “How can this VR sideshow call itself Half-Life!?” My friends, my cynical friends. Those were the crowning tools of the old games. Half-Life, as always, is trying to do new things.
Look around you right now. Find a small object in the distance, and point to it. Yank your wrist back, as if there was a string connecting your finger and the object, and imagine it flying directly towards you. Open up your hand and pretend to catch it. That’s what it’s like to use Half-Life: Alyx’s new signature device, the Gravity Gloves (also affectionately known as “The Russells”).
Now imagine you’re pulling shotgun shells from the floor, slamming them into your gun as soon as they land in your hand with a thud. You’re plucking an airborne grenade from the air and then throwing it back. You’re maneuvering your arm through a crack in the wall and trying to jostle a medical injector, just out of reach, into your hands. It’s an incredibly unique and satisfying series of actions that only has the impact it does because of motion-based hand controllers and the all-encompassing experience of VR. And it never gets old.
Half-Life: Alyx is built around these wonderful “only-in-VR” moments. Physically using your hands to rummage through boxes and lockers for supplies. Cowering behind a pillar with enemies closing in, frantically trying to fumble another magazine into your pistol. Desperately trying not to make a sound in a life-or-death situation and catching a falling glass bottle in the nick of time.
Gravity Gloves aside, these ideas aren’t brand-new if you’ve been keeping up with the VR space. But Half-Life: Alyx is the most well-put-together version of these ideas by far, a package of some of the coolest stuff VR has to offer, wrapped up in Valve’s penchant for excellent storytelling and exquisite attention to detail. At the very least, it’s a major landmark for VR games, and like any good landmark, you need to stop and check it out the next time you have the chance to take a VR headset for a drive.
Also, it’s the second game Valve launched this year? What a wild time we live in. | Edmond Tran, Senior Editor
