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There are still multiple kinds of headcrab, for example, and they still leap violently at your head. You'll spend as much time in combat during Half-Life: Alyx as in any previous Half-Life game, and many of its iconic enemies return - albeit tweaked in small and clever ways to accommodate virtual reality. In fairness, these bullets are extremely useful. I'd fix some wiring, then go looking in the cupboards for something to eat, only to find nothing but shotgun shells and ammo clips. As I moved through the city's factories, distilleries and apartment buildings, I came to think of Alyx Vance as a very hungry contractor. You will spend the game doing three main things: shooting enemies, hacking and repairing machinery, and rummaging around in cupboards. That game introduced settings like Kleiner's labs, where players were encouraged to poke around shelves, tinkering with objects and machinery in ways that were unprecedented for the time.

This feels like a natural conclusion to Half-Life 2's revolution in physics. They even, elegantly, display your health and ammo on their back surfaces, removing the need for a traditional HUD. They're a good example of Valve's design skill: while flipping and catching quickly becomes second nature, the Russells remain satisfying to use every time, and they solve problems relating to movement and constrained play spaces in home VR setups. To help with this, you have the Russells, a pair of gravity gloves which allow you to target objects beyond your reach and flip them towards you. With motion controllers, you can now reach out and touch City 17 - shoving its crates, rummaging around its drawers, and tossing its exploding barrels into the tongues of Barnacles. It looked great and ran smoothly on medium graphics settings, with the only exception being loading screens, during which the framerate would drop and I'd have to close my eyes or remove the headset.īut to paraphrase my friend Tom, VR is a revolution in control at least as much as it is in immersion. I played Half-Life: Alyx at home using a Valve Index headset and motion controllers, on an Intel Core i5-9400F CPU, with 16GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX1660. Half-Life: Alyx's system requirements: CPU: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600 It also gave me a whole new appreciation for the intimidating size and dexterity of Striders, who clamber across rooftops on needle-sharp legs, like angry chopsticks in search of a dumpling. VR conveys scale in a way other games cannot, and gazing up at the under-construction Citadel gave me tingles.

This is a game designed for virtual reality through and through, and it makes a good case for the medium's benefits from the very first moments.

When Eli is captured, Alyx sets off to rescue her father, and to steal the weapon. Alyx and her father Eli have been trying to cause trouble for the occupying Combine forces, and their efforts have led Eli to discover the Combine are holding a weapon of unusual power in a protective vault floating above the city. Gordon Freeman hasn't been seen since the events at Black Mesa, and so you play instead as a young Alyx Vance, HL2's deuteragonist. The game takes place in City 17, five years prior to the events of Half-Life 2. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Yet it's also not without its flaws, both in how it designs around the limitations of current VR tech, and in the more mundane challenges of crafting single player adventures.

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Valve's first full virtual reality game is a masterclass of first-person shooter design that makes clear the company haven't forgotten anything about making these kinds of games in the nine years since Portal 2, or the 13 years since Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Half-Life: Alyx is the Half-Life game you've been waiting for, even if it's not the one you were expecting - and even if you'll never play it.

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