EvaUnit02 on 18/3/2020 at 19:00
GabeN interview.
[video=youtube;I0zXkwLs_lo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0zXkwLs_lo[/video]
Developer commentated walkthrough.
[video=youtube;S9FvzTEH3Z8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9FvzTEH3Z8[/video]
Volitions Advocate on 23/3/2020 at 15:28
I know I've been away from the party for awhile.
I'm short of funds and really had to decide where to put my Canadian Monopoly money, Alyx won out over Doom and RE3 and a couple of others.
I don't know if anybody is hyped about this or not, but I just finished playing Black Mesa last week and watched a few documentaries on Youtube about half life and found that I was firmly in the mood for this.
So if anybody cares I'll share my thoughts after a few hours in game. Or... maybe after 20 minutes, because I haven't strapped my vive on for anything in months, and the only game I had been playing recently was Beat Saber, so I might be either retiring to nurse a headache, or trying not to puke my guts out. Hopefully I'll fall right back into it though.
Would love to hear any body else's experiences on day one, if you bought it already. Unlocks in about 30 minutes.
henke on 23/3/2020 at 18:03
I'd certainly love to hear your thoughts on it.
It's getting (
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-alyx) glowing reviews from the critics, and I'm kinda sorry I didn't preorder and get the 10% discount.
Tho I still haven't finished Walking Dead S&S, so I'm not sure I'm in the mood for this kinda thing at the moment.
Thirith on 23/3/2020 at 18:09
Okay, first impressions, covering the first 45 minutes of the game or so. (I'll probably only continue over the weekend.)
Valve is back, baby. I've not seen more than perhaps two or three VR games that immediately feel this polished and this confident. They know what they're doing in terms of controls and interactivity, and they've done a gorgeous job of transferring City 17 into modern tech and VR. There's very little jank - mostly I'm just struck by how polished everything looks and feels, perhaps with the slightly negative point that like Valve around the time of Portal 2 had certain design tricks that made the games feel somewhat safe, for want of a better word. They clearly want the player to enjoy this, but there is a small degree of, perhaps not pandering but gentle hand-holding - though, hey, it's the first 45 minutes, it might let go a bit more later on.
But this does feel like Half-Life 2, and it's great to both slip back into this world that feels so familiar, yet it's made fresh by VR. I've played a number of games that looked and felt fine in terms of movement and scale, but this strikes me as *perfect* in those respects. Not a regular 2D game adapted to VR, but a VR game through and through. There's a small but pretty cool thing where you're given these gravity gloves and you can pull objects towards you by grabbing the air and flicking your hand backwards, which results in the tethered object flying towards you - but you still have to catch it. There's something that feels just perfect about flicking some ammo towards you with one movement and catching it with the same hand and stashing it behind your back.
As I've said, I'll probably only continue on Friday or so, but I'm already very much looking forward to returning to this. And I think I'll try to avoid videos and GIFs and the like, because while I'm looking forward to hearing how the gang here likes the game, I want to experience it all fresh without being spoiled.
Volitions Advocate on 23/3/2020 at 19:45
Thirith is right.
Good Fucking God this Fucking game....
I've been playing for about 2 hours now. Aesthetically it is a great melding of Half Life and HL2. Like from an art perspective. I've been playing Black Mesa, so my idea of what Xen is supposed to be is skewed right now because of their interpretation. The bits where you can see Xen sort of creeping into the world are 100% HL1, and it is just the perfect mix of homage and bringing the concept 20 years into the future.
I'm glad I skipped on Doom to buy this instead.
I could talk about how Valve does their usual magic as far as training the player, mixing in old familiar things to give you some visual queues if you're been playing Half Life for the last 22 years, but I'll talk about that later. The game has been out for all of a couple hours so I might as well wait and play some more after I eat.
So far the only gripe I have is a puzzle that sort of felt slightly out of place. The setting was great and the setup for the puzzle was stellar, but the puzzle itself felt a little bit like they tried to shoehorn Myst into Half Life for 5 minutes. I was so tempted to jump on reddit to find the solution because I just wasn't getting it, then through some trial and error and some very vague logic, I accidentally figured it out.
Once the gunplay really starts though. Well over an hour in, it starts to feel amazing. Dodging headcrabs is visceral and really fun. But the gunplay mechanics take a bit of getting used to.
I found the shotgun really clunky for instance, and you don't get much time at all to figure out how to use it (read: literally seconds) before you have to use it proficiently. But maybe that was the design. I made it through that part without dying, and I felt really accomplished for it.
Like in Arizona Sunshine, being used to shooting real guns is ironically a real help here.
This game can't exist like this, in any way other format than VR. It would be boring.
I'm curious how you're playing it Thirith. I was worried that having a Vive would sour the experience. It's a BIT clunky, I was trying to save up for the Index controllers, if not the rest of it, but it was still too rich for me. Still is engaging and it doesn't feel at all like they ignored the old hardware just to sell the new.
I do this though. I gush and I have some rose tinted goggles on. So take my filthy valve whoring with a grain of salt, and eventually I'll start to be a bit more objective about it.
I've played a lot of VR games in the last 2 1/2 years. And while this thing isn't fundamentally different than other stuff I've played (if you've played Arizone Sunshine, or even Dead Effect 2 VR, this will be very familiar) But it is polished to a quality a couple orders of magnitude higher than either of those games, with just a little bit more attention to the detail of the world, and how you interact with it.
Meh! I'm going to eat then come back and keep playing.
FYI I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, and so far the only time I died was just now, because I was curious to see if it would let me jump off a ledge that was too high. I'm using blink for traversal, and the little icon literally showed a skull and crosbones, but I did it anyway and sure enough it let me kill myself. Nice.
Renzatic on 23/3/2020 at 21:49
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
I'm using blink for traversal...
How many methods of traversal are in the game? From what I've seen, it seems to only work with a point 'n click style setup. Does it give you the option to move about more like a regular FPS game, even at the risk of getting motion sick?
Malf on 23/3/2020 at 21:49
It's very, very good, and once more it feels like Valve are showing people how it's done.
I too skipped Doom Eternal for this and am glad I did so.
Graphically, it's astonishing, and that first bit with Alyx on the balcony had me gawping. Before I threw a bottle at a pigeon.
Being able to duck and weave still feels great in VR, and the flick-catch of the Russels is, as Thirith says, just perfect.
A few criticisms:
The audio effect when an item attaches to your backpack could do with being louder.
The guns are a little too fiddly for my liking. I get they're going for those panic moments, but when you first get the shotgun, it's almost too fiddly to bother with.
And speaking of the shotgun, the first upgrade, the laser sight, looks cool when you first get it, but just plain doesn't work when you need it. In fact, it actively makes the gun worse, as with the laser sight attached, you can't see your regular iron sights. With the benefit of hindsight, I would save the upgrade material for later upgrades.
It's incredibly linear, and quite claustrophobically narrow. Maybe it opens up a bit later, but at the moment it feels like one long, thin corridor.
But these are outweighed by the sheer amount of polish and prowess on display. Is it finally VR's killer app? Personally, I'm not sure yet. Superhot's still probably my favourite overall VR experience.
But I have no doubt that it will make an incredible splash, and possibly be the title that finally makes VR go properly mainstream. And given the climate it's been released in, I'm sure it'll get a lot more press and play than it would have had we not all been self-isolating.
But really, it's just so good to see Valve back in the saddle an giving us a proper game again.
I predict the next Half-Life will be the one with mind-control, given Gabe's enthusiasm for brain-computer interfaces :D
Edit: Oh, and I'm playing on Rift CV1 with Touch Controllers. No graphical problems, and flawless controller implementation.
Edit 2: And yes Renz, it does offer the option to move smoothly with the sticks. I'm not using that myself, instead sticking with blink, but I would imagine it's fine if you have your VR legs.
Volitions Advocate on 23/3/2020 at 23:58
Quote Posted by Malf
I would imagine it's fine if you have your VR legs.
That's all it is really. I switched to shift for about 10 minutes but found it didnt' add anything on top of blink and made me very mildly uncomfortable. With the vive wands the continuous traversal is too jarring for me. I'm surprised they didn't include even a mild ADSR envelope to the movement, but at least you can vary your speed with the touchpad and/or analog sticks.
This game makes me wish I could play my vive with oculus touch controllers. I like them so much better. Too bad they didn't include that weird 2 handed arm swingy method that some of those indie games are doing. I still haven't experienced that yet.
I've been thinking about this recently. HL2 was overshadowed at launch by Halo 2. But it's definitely the more influential game in the long term. Not much fanfare about the release of Alyx compared to Doom or ResEvil3, but I think it breaks a lot more ground.
I don't know if this means we might get HL3 someday, but if it ends up being a VR app like this. I won't be disappointed. It's good stuff.
I only just started fighting with combine troops properly, and I haven't quite found the swing of it. I'm getting my ass handed to me, but the firefights are genuinely frantic and intense.
Renzatic on 24/3/2020 at 00:20
Quote Posted by Malf
Edit 2: And yes Renz, it does offer the option to move smoothly with the sticks. I'm not using that myself, instead sticking with blink, but I would imagine it's fine if you have your VR legs.
Damnit. I'm gonna have one of these damn VR headsets, aren't I?
Malf on 24/3/2020 at 00:36
If you do go for one, the Rift S is probably the best for price/performance at the moment. To be honest, I have no idea how the Vive or Index sell when the Rift's so much cheaper and with great controllers out of the box.
But having said that and just doing a check, looks like everyone else thinks the same, as it's out of stock everywhere.