Half-Life: Alyx (formerly: Half Life 3 is coming??)

dreamers75

Absolutely

PLaying HL2 in Coop with Synergy, its ridiculous fun

Are we allowed to discuss the end yet?
Spoiler tags obviously.

Also Game of the year easily do far?

johnny_ultimate

Finished it last night. Incredible game.

It’s a full-fat new Half-Life game, not some disposable spin-off. Sure, most of the plot may be fairly inconsequential

(well, until the ending which is franchise rocking)

but HL has never really been about its overarching plot. Instead, HL has been about smart, intelligent design - and this has it in bucketloads.

There’s a relentless sense of invention here that rivals anything Valve has put out. Levels, especially in the game’s triumphant second half, feel different and full of their own ideas. The new enemy designs are delightfully horrifying (although the hard-hat headcrabs are a pain in the arse!). ‘Jeff’ is of course a highlight, but a number of levels, locations and enemies are similarly memorable. Most of all, it’s great to see Valve double down on the series’ survival horror vibe: in some ways this is the tone and approach of Ravenholm extended into a full game. It’s all the better for it.

So the VR... well it’s fair to say the game would be an entirely different beast without it. There’s no simply translating it to a traditional experience: gestures are built into every part of this design. Interactions have been designed not necessarily to make perfect real-world sense, but instead to feel absolutely wonderful in play. The gravity gloves; the smooth flicking of items into your hands and into your backpack; reloading your shotgun and casually finishing the process with a flick of the wrist; cackling when you see a room full of gloriously "smash me!" glass bottles and cackling again when you realise

Valve have designed a whole level around smashing them

. Just a few examples of the ways you're immersed into this world in a way a traditional game couldn’t. My favourite example was stumbling across a cache of masks and realising I could simply put one on my face. HL has always been about environmental storytelling and details - this ramps it up.

On one hand, the VR also dramatically enhances the game’s horror aspects - whether that’s a smartly hand-mounted torch or the yelp-worthy moment when antlions opt to make their first ominous appearance. But combat too has a certain new-found intensity. Your physical position in the world is key, and the environment is a key asset in the larger firefights. There’s something delightful about literally ducking behind a car and popping out as enemies reload, or indeed opening the car door as a shield and popping off shots through the window. Throwing or launching a grenade feels particularly satisfying here. The combat isn’t perfect - some of the enemy types are a bit irritating and bullet-spongy - but this is a vibrant and clever translation of Half-Life style combat into a VR space.

The only major issues I have to speak of are limitations of the technology. In particular, I find it hard to find an ideal space for play. While this mostly presented few problems when played simply standing in a spot with reaching space around me, it was hard with my Rift to set-up the room for interactions that involved bending down or reaching for objects on the floor. It was possible thankfully, but usually involved some degree of jank. Probably improved in later iterations of VR hardware, but certainly like all VR games the experience is limited by the space available to you. Also, some of the hacking puzzles just weren't as elegant as the rest of the game's design.

Which brings me to: is this the future of Half-Life? Well, it’ll be jarring to go back to a straightforward ‘2D’ HL game when we’ve seen this level of detail and immersion. At the same time, I think it’s unfortunate that only a relatively small number of people get to experience this game (by comparison to usual HL sales). VR drastically limits the audience, and while this is a masterful experience for those lucky enough to be able to afford or tolerate the hardware needed, it’s also proof that Valve design at its best deserves to be as widely experienced as possible. I have no doubt based on this that there’ll be another HL game -

that ending!

- and while this game is a roaring success as a proof of VR’s capabilities, a more traditional HL3 that far more people get to experience and enjoy would be no bad thing

For now though, if you have the kit and your stomach can handle VR, this is the best the medium has to offer. More importantly: Half-Life is back, and it’s as magnificent as ever.

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Are we allowed to discuss the end yet?
Spoiler tags obviously.

Also Game of the year easily do far?

I'd say Animal Crossing will give it a serious run for it's money.

johnny_ultimate

Alyx currently tied with Kentucky Route Zero Act V as my GOTY, although AC gets an honorary title for keeping me sane during a pandemic

I think it now has scope to have both VR and non VR titles

People who have completed the game will understand

mrcheez

This is finally on sale at 25% off if anyone missed out

https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/

Kiith

Half Life 3 finally incoming? :pac:

https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-says-valve-has-more-games-in-development-waiting-to-be-announced

pixelburp

So looks like at least one mod team is making great progress de-VR'ing the game so it can be played on a keyboard and mouse. I'm sure this will be heretical to some purists, but I think a it's fascinating and ingenious project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvhyHWECcE

one armed dwarf

Tbh a LP with motion smoothing might do a better job at delivering why Alyx is good than a mod which will remove most aspects of the game. I don't think it's purism to point that out, at least.

cnocbui

I don't wish them any success with their efforts.

johnny_ultimate

There is some value in making the game available to people who can’t access VR so they can get the essence of the story. But it’s not heretical to point out that playing it in 2D with a mouse and keyboard will completely flatten the game into something that’s a pale shadow of the genuine article. It’s hard to describe how satisfying it is to navigate your way through Alyx - with all its wonderful gestures and physicality - unless you’ve done it yourself. ‘Press E to heal’ or ‘press E to collect bomb’ is just joyless and familiar in comparison to how incredible this stuff feels in VR.

As said, there probably is a place for the mod - especially for those physically unable to play in VR. But for most people, it’ll be the equivalent of half-watching a dodgy VHS transfer of something that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. And honestly I don’t even think that analogy does justice to how good HL Alyx looks and plays in VR.

pixelburp

one armed dwarf wrote: »

Tbh a LP with motion smoothing might do a better job at delivering why Alyx is good than a mod which will remove most aspects of the game. I don't think it's purism to point that out, at least.

Purism only in the sense that the VR aspect is pivotal, which *shrug* maybe. Valve did the medium justice in that respect. But given this game has a fairly significant barrier of entry for many gamers I don't see any major harm in giving some a chance to play it without the necessity of hardware that folks can't access (for whatever reason that might be). If the mod ever became release friendly I'd guarantee a sales bump on Alyx.

I mean, why play any game at all, if a Long Play suffices? Maybe some folk just want to mess around the HL universe themselves without digging into their mortgage deposit, or taking up half their living space I can't, cos my PC wouldn't be near good enough anyway so I'm not invested in this mod at all, to be clear.

cnocbui

The gaming equivalent of fiberglass kits to turn a POS normal car into a Ferrari F40 lookalike.

B.A._Baracus

Absolutely

Kiith wrote: »

Half Life 3 finally incoming? :pac:

https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-says-valve-has-more-games-in-development-waiting-to-be-announced

Interesting.
So according to that article Gabe Newell
is in New Zealand since Corona started. I know this is random but can you imagine being on a virtual call with him? :P as New Zealand is 16 hours a head of Washington (where Valve is) And he's the boss so you'd have to take a call when it suits hid time.

So 9am-5pm Monday in Washington would be 1am-9am Tuesday morning in New Zealand. That's mad ha.

cnocbui

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Interesting.
So according to that article Gabe Newell
is in New Zealand since Corona started. I know this is random but can you imagine being on a virtual call with him? :P as New Zealand is 16 hours a head of Washington (where Valve is) And he's the boss so you'd have to take a call when it suits hid time.

So 9am-5pm Monday in Washington would be 1am-9am Tuesday morning in New Zealand. That's mad ha.

What's mad is thinking Gabe would be the one engaging in the early morning calls outside ofiice hours.

Valve is headquartered in Seattle, so Auckland is 19 hours ahead - or a 5 hour time difference - depending on how you look at it. Gabe calling you on a Monday at a reasonable time for him, would likely involve a Sunday call at an unreasonable tim for you in Seattle.

one armed dwarf

pixelburp wrote: »

Purism only in the sense that the VR aspect is pivotal, which *shrug* maybe. Valve did the medium justice in that respect. But given this game has a fairly significant barrier of entry for many gamers I don't see any major harm in giving some a chance to play it without the necessity of hardware that folks can't access (for whatever reason that might be). If the mod ever became release friendly I'd guarantee a sales bump on Alyx.

I mean, why play any game at all, if a Long Play suffices? Maybe some folk just want to mess around the HL universe themselves without digging into their mortgage deposit, or taking up half their living space I can't, cos my PC wouldn't be near good enough anyway so I'm not invested in this mod at all, to be clear.

In this case I wouldn't say a long play suffices to replace the experience of actually playing something, but more that Alyx is slavishly devoted to making near every part of its gameplay design revolve around VR specific interactions. It is a lengthy campaign that takes established conventions in VR and makes a game out of it.

It is one of those things you can't really explain very well. But for instance, VR automatically gives you a cover system with an extremely high input fidelity because your whole body is involved in it and tons of objects are available for your manipulation. You have to physically open car doors and manually hold them there so that enemy bullets dont shut it on you. There's a whole section in the game about throwing mechanics and accidentally dropping things. Making mistakes is a big thing about the VR experience and a lot of combat encounters revolve around you messing up reloading, or even falling on your arse. Enemy counts are deliberately low to not overwhelm players in a physical sense, but high enough they're a genuine threat. But not so much in 2D. To carry across these systems would require a lot of work and Alyx is fully about all these types of emergent player decisions. Without that high fidelity of interaction VR grants you're left with a more binary version of the experience where the game design completely lacks the technology to get across any of what it's trying to do.

I will say I was pretty pissed off at this being a VR game too, I have posts ITT about it. Chronic pain prevents me spending much time with the medium. But I got around to it in some fashion eventually and can see the argument now that it doesn't really port across without the entire soul of the thing being removed in the process.

So my main point is really only that a LP can at least preserve the parts that are really cool about the game and should be seen as a potentially more decent alternative to a mod which removes that stuff. Rather than being just as good as the VR experience, which it is not.

mrcheez

What's an LP?

Apart from the obvious (the soundtrack kicks ass)

BlitzKrieg

LP = Long Play, youtube videos of someone playing the game through fully with no commentary or interuptions to the game itself.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

There is some value in making the game available to people who can’t access VR so they can get the essence of the story. But it’s not heretical to point out that playing it in 2D with a mouse and keyboard will completely flatten the game into something that’s a pale shadow of the genuine article. It’s hard to describe how satisfying it is to navigate your way through Alyx - with all its wonderful gestures and physicality - unless you’ve done it yourself. ‘Press E to heal’ or ‘press E to collect bomb’ is just joyless and familiar in comparison to how incredible this stuff feels in VR.

As said, there probably is a place for the mod - especially for those physically unable to play in VR. But for most people, it’ll be the equivalent of half-watching a dodgy VHS transfer of something that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. And honestly I don’t even think that analogy does justice to how good HL Alyx looks and plays in VR.

I have no issue with someone making a non vr mod of alyx as a sort of programming experiment of retro actively working something backwards from VR. I think thats highly commendable.

But

(there's always a but)

3 thoughts


the first is what the goal of d-vring the mod, if it's to simply get over the barrier of entry, I think it's a sort of poisoned chalice process, aside from the usual defence of vr was the point, I'd be more concerned about the approach to compensating for that d-vring. I saw from the shared video stuff like a iron sights aiming was introduced to kinda give as much of a literal 1 to 1 translation as they can of the features of the vr mod and what struck me was how not Half Life that was. The Half Life games didnt really do aiming down the sights except on very specific weapons, but here because they need to compensate for the vr of alyx they are implementing aspects that I'd consider not very half life and I get worried whatever sales boom one might see from the mod getting some form of release it might equally cause a backlash not so much because the game feels limited with the vr removed but also that it wont feel like a half life game either, it will have it's whole unique feel which could be very lacking if they are determined to do a 1 to 1 translation.

which brings me to my 2nd thought on it being commendable, are we commending just the technical achievement and disregarding the actual lack of creative vision. I find it apt to compare to the Black Mesa project which kind of started in a similar source, Translate Half life 1 properly to the source engine, but then it took it's own creative journey and came out the other end as it's own amazing thing, actually revisiting flaws of the original game and trying a new approach. Similarly to my first thought, it's not what was there originally but also I can feel its own creative spirit. And I kinda would have like a similar approach to non vr half life alyx, that someone took time to ask if you take away the VR how would one adjust this game to a more traditional half life gameplay.


And then my last thought going back to the technical aspect of D-vring, I kinda was hoping for more technical sillyness in trying to see other approaches to give VR elements without the need of a vr headset. If you're not looking to creatively reimagine the content, what if there was more work to creative reimagine the mechanics, I am personnally curious to see if people could have messed around with elements like simple 3 point headtracking and a wii mote or other bits and bobs to recreate enough of the vr control in a 2d plane.

It goes against the remove the barrier notion you spoke of (as other barriers go up) but I guess to me it's not really a sort of project I see the place being removing barriers and more a place to creative reimagine mechanics or content out of the vr space and into other more familer or new spaces.

Edit: I guess it's less 3 seperate thoughts and more a single thought going 3 different pools. If it's D-Vring Alyx is that a good thing to just to create some frankenstien monster so they could 1 for 1 the elements of Alyx should there not be a more creative lead either to re-imagine Alyx if VR was not involved at all or to have more fun creating something wholly new to play with the vr elements.

I mean anyone remember Trespasser with it's ridiculous floating arm? Maybe it's time for that to make a silly non vr alyx comeback?

mrcheez

I don't see the harm in d-VR-ing the game as an experiment, similar to getting classic Doom working on a Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.

It won't be as good as playing it on the intended platform, but why not allow people that don't have the tech to try to get at least a partial experience?

I think everyone will know that the VR version is the best way to play, so it's hardly going to mean people will treat the pancake version as the de facto standard.

BlitzKrieg

mrcheez wrote: »

I don't see the harm in d-VR-ing the game as an experiment, similar to getting classic Doom working on a Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.

Yeah, thats fine but I think there is a very different goal and mindset with the two products at the moment. No one tries to justify porting Doom to an ATM or any other of the many devices with the "removing barriers" conversation, no one expects ATM Doom to be a viable option for someone who doesnt own a pc or console to experience Doom. I feel the barrier talking point has dominated the mod, when I feel it would be better suited being more like ATM Doom and giving its own creative spin on things.

I think everyone will know that the VR version is the best way to play, so it's hardly going to mean people will treat the pancake version as the de facto standard.

My trust in common sense from gamers is empty, I will not be surprised at all when some review shows up on the game's official steam page after the mod released where someone bemoans how the game is a poor shadow of half life 2's greatness etc etc because that's what happens