These sorts of interactions aren’t just gimmicks, either. All that fuss about Alyx’s absent arms seems especially silly once you slip on her high-tech gloves. You can gently tip a box over to spill out the contents inside. It means you can brush messy shelves clean with the back of your hand. Your hands are solid, which means that you’re not just interacting with predetermined objects in predetermined ways and either adding them to your inventory or putting them back down. Yes, you’ve heard this so many times about VR – at this point, it’s a ‘See that mountain? You can go there’ cliché – but there’s an astounding sense that you have a physical presence in the world. It’s tough to overstate how good it feels to simply rummage in Half-Life: Alyx. It also ensures that you’re constantly rewarded for performing VR’s most engaging actions.
It walks the fine line between comedy and tragedy to feel like a perfect dialogue between real people staying hopeful in a dark situation.Ī lot of Alyx is spent scrounging for ammo and items in these detailed environments, creating a vibe that sits somewhere between the intimate exploration of Gone Home and the frightening resource management of Resident Evil. There's a frequent back-and-forth between Alyx and her guide, Russell, about the state of the world and what life was like before the Black Mesa incident. This remains the focus throughout the story, though your understanding of the nature of the Vault changes several times over the course of the adventure. Your goal is set early on: take down a Combine weapon called the Vault. Except, of course, ‘narrative-driven virtual-reality horror action shooter’ is not a widely explored space.Īlyx is as lengthy as a full Half-Life game, though smaller in scope. Alyx is at once conservative and quietly radical – a confident game that feels like the natural refinement of a genre we’ve been playing for years. Forget about a system seller: VR still needs a game that satisfies in the same way as a robust, traditional triple-A campaign.Ĭan Half-Life: Alyx live up to its promise as both a new Half-Life game and a full-scale VR experience? In short: yes.
If that weren’t enough, it’s also shouldering the hopes of the virtual reality industry. It’s the first new entry in a beloved series which left us on a cliffhanger a decade ago – a series that redefined PC gaming multiple times over. Half-Life: Alyx sits under the crushing weight of impossible expectations.
0 kommentar(er)
