Games

While I really enjoyed Alyx, it's very much a game built around it's own limitations. It's more of a survival horror game in a way, because of the limits on ammo and deliberately mechanical reloading. There's no melee at all, so once you're out of bullets you're done for.

For all the roughness of Half Life 2 VR Mod, I find myself enjoying it more because it has fewer limitations imposed by the move to VR. It doesn't always work (and the vehicle sections in particular really push it), but as a mod of a 20 year old game, it's really good.

Somewhat hot take... I'd argue Boneworks (not Bonelab) was "better", at least if you're used to VR and if you judge by freedom and replay value. Don't get me wrong, playing through Half Life Alyx was fun and engaging, but to me it had little to no replay value, since for all it did great in visuals, audio, accessibility, and especially story, it failed dramatically in physics. Since I played Alyx right after Boneworks, I kept trying to pick stuff up which I ended up not being able to for larger objects, and the first time I tried to knock a Combine over the head with a pipe I was so sorely disappointed. Alyx has absolutely everything Boneworks is missing, yet that physics core is what kept me coming back to the latter. It really clicked for me when I noticed how many things in Boneworks one can solve in alternate ways by "abusing" physics. Climbing is a learned skill and combat can be as much shooting as it can be using knives, fists, shoving someone off a ledge, or grabbing an enemy and throwing it at others. It's what truly made me realize how much potential VR had, being able to interact with a full physics simulation, where even your own body is a physics object, with your physical hands is amazing.

Oh, sod off with those posts allready.

I know perfectly well that I'm old, even without those "Hei, didyo know that yu are closer to WW3 than The first single of the Brian Eno"

Hands down the best game I ever played. The immersion is unreal and the ending left me with goosebumps and a dropped jaw.

And their still asking 70+ bucks for it...

Never got to play this as it was never released for non vr players, can't help but think this terrible decision cost valve a lot of money from potential customers

If you actually want a viable discussion on this game, you're better off posting this into a virtual reality community as the comments there won't devolve into salty sour grapes that they couldn't / wouldn't play it since "vR iS uh GImAuCk"

And, lets review where we are: Valve is supposedly making a new Half-Life that will reportedly be both flat and VR.

I played it last year. It was certainly interesting, though it showed me the challenges of VR games. Before, I always hated the idea of using the teleport feature because it seems cheesy. However, after several tries without it, I can say it’s necessary. You end up feeling very nauseous otherwise. But, as a player you’re just way less capable than non-VR games. You can’t move around as easily and so you can’t take on as many enemies or maneuver as easily around the map. In most encounters with enemies, you can only fight a max of maybe 3, before you start to feel overwhelmed. Even 1 is usually enough to feel stressed and when those saw drones fly at you, you’ll panic and possibly yank a cable or get disoriented and bump into something in the real world. Crouching behind cover and shooting is pretty cool though — possibly the most immersive part.