Half-Life: Alyx features polished physics interactions that may represent one of Valve’s not-so-secret weapons.
Physics-based interactions have become an expected feature of major VR titles after games such as Boneworks and The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners. Virtual environments are now becoming more interactive, leveraging the unique gameplay capabilities that VR with positionally tracked controllers enables. For more on why these mechanics are compelling and represent the future of VR, I recommend reading Jamie’s article Getting To Grips: Boneworks & The Walking Dead Prove The Future Of VR Gaming Is In Physics And Interaction.
While Half-Life: Alyx avoids melee combat, the project showcases the same kind of compelling physics interactions as the Walking Dead and Boneworks. In particular, though, we’ve noted a general smoothness to the handling of multiple objects in the new Half-Life game that puts a spotlight on Valve’s forthcoming Source 2 toolset. That smoothness may point to a related Valve project in the works for at least 8 years: a custom, in-house physics engine called Rubikon, and that engine could point to Valve’s next steps in VR.
Rubikon: A Next Gen Physics Engine
Games are built using game engines, but the majority of game engines do not handle physics internally. Instead this is handed off to a third party physics engine which is often pre-integrated.
Half-Life 2 and its ‘episodes’ used Valve’s new (at the time in 2004) Source game engine. But while the game represented a major leap forward in the implementation of physics, the physics engine used was a third party solution called Havok (which over the next decade became the most popular physics middleware).
Half-Life: Alyx uses Source 2, the successor to Source first used in Dota 2, also used in SteamVR Home and the Robot Repair scene in The Lab. Source 2 is a Vulkan-based engine which allows for the impressive visuals seen in Alyx. But the Rubikon physics engine built into Source 2 is even more interesting for VR.
Not much is yet known about Rubikon. It was first unveiled at GDC 2014, six years ago, during a talk titled ‘Physics for Game Programmers’. In this talk Valve’s Sergiy Migdalskiy explains that Rubikon has been in development since 2012, and serves as the replacement for Havok.
A custom physics engine using best practices and state of the art algorithms could be one of Valve’s key offerings in the next generation of game development, and Half-Life: Alyx appears to be the first major showcase of this.
The State Of Physics In Unity & Unreal
Most VR games, including Boneworks, are built using the Unity game engine. Unity is currently going through a slow, gradual full stack overhaul of its major components. There are actually three major physics engines at the time of writing: NVIDIA’s PhysX, ‘Unity Physics’, and Havok physics.
PhysX has been used in Unity for over a decade now, and is used in Boneworks (it was the only option available when Boneworks development began).
‘Unity Physics’ and Havok were announced quite recently, in March 2019, and are still in preview. Both leverage leverage Unity’s new DOTS (Data Oriented Tech Stack) architecture. DOTS requires developers to program their games very differently than before, but enables significantly more entities to be simulated each frame. DOTS is also still in preview.
‘Unity Physics’ is also based on Havok, and is data compatible (developers can toggle between the two). Unity Physics trades off performance for supporting network rollback for multiplayer titles. Havok is the highest performance option but more suited for singleplayer.
DOTS is planned to be fully released this year. Epic is also working on a new physics engine for Unreal Engine, an in-house solution called Chaos. Like Unity’s DOTS, it will allow for higher performance and higher fidelity than PhysX (what Unreal also currently uses). But it’s also still in Beta, not yet ready for use in major projects.
The timelines for these engines suggests that studios using Unity & Unreal may need to take some time before they adopt these technologies because they risk losing time due to significant changes in the tools during development. So how will DOTS Havok & Epic’s Chaos stack up against Rubikon when they are fully released? We can’t answer that yet. But a company like Valve would likely not have spent much of the last decade building and improving a replacement for Havok without benefits in doing so. Developing a physics engine is no minor undertaking.
Half-Life: Alyx appears to be the first showing of an investment in physics that Valve has been making for most of the past decade, and until Unity & Unreal’s next gen physics systems are ready for developers to use, Source 2 games may end up becoming showcases for the types of physics so many are learning to love in Half-Life: Alyx.
Half-Life: Alyx from Valve is supported across the overwhelming majority of PC VR headsets. Whether you’re playing on a Valve Index, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive or even Windows VR headset, Valve has you covered. However, one important subset of users is those who will play the game on Oculus Quest, either tethered via Oculus Link or wirelessly with the sideloaded version of Virtual Desktop.
For these users, the biggest question is how the game runs on either service and which is better. I played my entire first playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx exclusively on Oculus Link, and then went back and tried a couple of select sections using Virtual Desktop after that.
In terms of which is better, the answer depends very much on your internet connection. You can rely on Oculus Link to give you a solid experience with no latency right the way through. It’s almost as good as playing on any other PC VR headset. Virtual Desktop, meanwhile, remains impressive from a technical standpoint, but your experience will be down to the quality of your connection. Personally, I found it still delivered a subpar experience that I wouldn’t recommend to Quest users looking to play Alyx for the first time, but our reviewer, Jamie, also tried his hand at the streaming and had far less issues than me.
For Virtual Desktop, you’ll need to buy a copy of the app from the Oculus Store on your Quest and then sideload an alternate version of the Virtual Desktop app that is available on SideQuest, enabling SteamVR and other VR games to be played through the app.
In terms of performance, here’s a more detailed breakdown of how Oculus Link and Virtual Desktop stacked up:
Oculus Link
The good news is that Half-Life: Alyx plays exactly as you would expect on Oculus Quest via Link. Provided you have a capable system, the performance is solid and I encountered very few technical problems, frame drops or glitches at all in my playthrough. This stability is not something exclusive to playing via Oculus Link, but a byproduct of good performance across all headsets.
Visually, the game is stunning and on Link this is no exception. While the Oculus Quest obviously does not have the same visual fidelity as headsets such as the Valve Index, I found that the detail and aesthetic style of Alyx made me more immersed than I’ve ever been in any other VR game. That being said, there was some slightly noticeable compression which prevents the game from looking quite as clear is it does on other devices. Overall, though, the game ran and looked excellently, if not better than I would have expected.
It’s also worth nothing that unlike headsets such as the Valve Index and the Oculus Rift S, the Quest does feature an OLED panel. This means that dark sequences (of which there are quite a few) appear hold a visual advantage on the Quest, with deeper, richer blacks. It’s not a huge difference but it’s there.
The Oculus Quest only has four cameras compared to five on the Oculus Rift S, which can be a source of tracking woes in certain situations. Before starting Half-Life: Alyx, I was mainly concerned about tracking issues with the frequent over-the-shoulder actions used when storing ammo and reloading guns. However, I encountered surprisingly few tracking issues at all. The inside-out tracking was reliable and the Touch controllers are identical to the Rift S, so you have controller parity when playing via Link.
While Alyx can be played seated or in small spaces, I would recommend playing with as much space as possible and with an ample Link cord length. I played in a space that was roughly 2m x 2m with the official Oculus Link cable, and had plenty of slack to move around freely.
Virtual Desktop
Virtual Desktop, on the other hand, can be a different story with mixed results.
This section comes with some pretty heavy disclaimers. By all accounts, the quality of your experience using Virtual Desktop to stream PC VR games to your Quest varies hugely depending on the game itself, your computer, your router and the physical layout of your space. Something as simple as a wall in between your Quest and your router might cause havoc with the wifi signal from time to time, meaning you might experience stutters.
Personally, I’ve always had mixed results with streaming VR games to my Quest via Virtual Desktop. Despite what I say below, you might find that your setup provides a smoother experience than mine. It’s very hard to make definitive statements regarding something as fickle as Virtual Desktop wireless game streaming.
With those disclaimers out of the way, what I experienced was both very close and very far away from playable. The bottom line is that I wouldn’t recommend using Virtual Desktop for a first playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx. I experienced frequent stutters, frame drops and out of sync audio. The input latency was also very noticeable in combat and when using the gravity gloves. Even if you consider that my latency may have been higher than the average Virtual Desktop user, I can’t help but feel that some of the magic and satisfying feeling of using the Gravity Gloves would be lost in translation (or latency) when playing via Virtual Desktop.
But, like I said, I wasn’t the only one that tried Alyx with Virtual Desktop.
Jamie also played a bit of the game this way and reported a much smoother experience than mine. He could see some latency in controller movements from time-to-time but very rarely did it effect his ability to play the game. The compressed image quality definitely didn’t compare to playing on Rift S or Valve Index where he spent the bulk of his time, though; certain sections really lose their detail unless you’re inspect items and enemies (not a good idea) up close. Even then, though, Jamie agreed that it’d better to first experience Alyx in a much more dependable way and then maybe running back through it on Virtual Desktop to enjoy the tetherless freedom.
You can watch some footage I captured natively on the Quest while playing Alyx through Virtual Desktop, embedded above (if you’re wary of spoilers, most of the opening sequence and the beginning of chapter 3, about an hour into the game, are featured).
I also encountered a strange bug when I put on a gas mask, also visible in the footage. Gas masks are usually only partially visible on your face while you wear them in Alyx. While using Virtual Desktop, the mask was pushed out further from my face, obscuring a lot of my view.
I tried both smooth (continuous) and shift movement options, and found that continuous provided more frame drops and stuttering, as you would expect from the increased movement. There were also many more noticeable compression artifacts. Smoke effects looked muddy and featured lots of banding, as did darker areas of the game. Given just how beautiful Half-Life: Alyx is to play on any other system, it would break my heart to think someone would play it on Virtual Desktop with such obvious and frustrating compression. This is, of course, just an inevitable byproduct of wireless streaming, but it’s also one that would heavily dissuade me from recommending it as an option to new players.
That being said, it’s not all bad. It’s definitely far from ideal, but it’s also very close to being a workable solution. Despite my issues, many people have anecdotally noted that they don’t encounter as many problems as I have while using Virtual Desktop. So while I wouldn’t recommend it — and neither would Jamie with an improved experience — your mileage may vary, potentially quite a bit, too.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you have a VR-ready PC and an Oculus Quest, your best option to play Half-Life: Alyx is definitely Oculus Link. If you don’t own a Link-compatible cord, Alyx is the kind of game you might want to consider buying one for. It’s definitely worth investing in to properly experience the game, removing the chance of any potential issues with Virtual Desktop. The only situation in which we would recommend using Virtual Desktop over Link is if you don’t own a Link cord and are 100% confident in the stability and performance of your equipment when using Virtual Desktop. If not, Oculus Link is not just a formidable solution, but an excellent one.
How will you be playing Half-Life: Alyx? Let us know in the comments.
Finally available to PC headsets owners everywhere, Half-Life: Alyx is a stunning interpretation of AAA VR. It’s as polished a spectacle you’ll find in the industry. But, despite what you might expect, it’s not a physics showcase comparable to, say, Boneworks.
Don’t get us wrong, Alyx is an impressive technical demonstration of physical interaction in VR. Littered surfaces can be realistically sifted through for items and heavy crates and barrels require two hands to be hoisted aside. But the game is completely devoid of melee combat; you can’t pick up any item and bring it crashing down on a zombie, nor can you use broken glass or knives to stab and there’s very little in the way of platforming-based puzzles that were strewn throughout Boneworks.
So why didn’t Valve pursue these ideas like others have? We put that to the team’s Jason Mitchell in an interview that will be published in full later this week. He pointed to one key limitation with current VR tech: force feedback.
“I think one of the things is the property of VR, right,” Mitchell said. “In Half-Life 2 of course, there was no expectation of force feedback. We were watching the Gravity Gun and then the physics took over and cool stuff happened, right? In Alyx if we have the player hold something large and rigid there’s a lot that’s gonna happen in a physical simulation that’s not gonna feed back into your hand.”
It’s true that sensations like weight and force are missing from current consumer VR headsets. Boneworks tried to workaround that issue by asking players to literally simulate the lifting and pushing of heavy items, acting out the motions slowly. It doesn’t sound like that was going to work for Valve.
“So basically you’re not going to have any kind of haptic feedback” Mitchell continued. “Don’t even worry about bludgeoning and impaling something; even something just as simple as tapping a tool on a desk or whatever. You don’t get the force feedback from that sort of thing. I think it’s just inherent in VR that we aren’t in the sci-fi future exoskeleton level of VR where every bit of our sensory input and output can be manipulated. So it’s not a strength of VR systems now, so we decided not to lean into it for that reason.”
We were definitely surprised to see Alyx rein its physics in, and felt like there was more the game could have done in this area. But the decision undoubtedly resulted in a tighter, more polished overall package.
What do you think? Do you wish Half-Life: Alyx had more elaborate physics-driven gameplay? Or were you happier with the cinematic finish? Let us know in the comments below!
Half-Life: Alyx (2020) launched yesterday on Steam, which not only symbolizes Valve’s first dip back into the Half-Life franchise from over a decade, but also marks it as their first full-fledged VR title. You might not be too surprised to learn that Half-Life: Alyx likely broke some serious records on the platform yesterday too.
According to SteamDB, an independent database which tracks game and user statistics on Steam, Half-Life: Alyx saw a peak concurrent usership of 42,858 players, practically putting it head and shoulders above the competition for top concurrent users in a VR game on Steam.
Keep in mind that SteamDB has no affiliation with Valve; following the website’s stats however, the second place for highest concurrents on Steam was BONEWORKS (2019), which reportedly saw a peak of 8,717 players right after it was released late last year. The physics-based shooter from Stress Level Zero also generated over $3 million is revenue in its first week across both Steam and Oculus platforms, so while there’s no telling just how much Half-Life: Alyx has earned in comparison it seems well-positioned to break a few more records in that department as well.
At the time of this writing there are reportedly nearly 12,000 operating SteamVR right now, if VRLG data can be believed. Both VRLG and SteamDB are currently reporting the same concurrent user numbers of over 8,000 users in Half-Life: Alyx, putting it at a hypothetical 66.6% VR users on the platform playing the game.
While many games have their largest glut of concurrent players on launch day, juggernaut multiplayer titles like Dota 2 and CSGO can see concurrents peak even years after initial release, although these are typically exceptions to the rule. While Half-Life: Alyx is likely destined to follow the former and not the latter in terms of concurrent user drop-off, we may very well count it among one of the most important milestones in VR history to date.
The big day is upon us, which means that, pretty soon, people are going to be talking about the insane Half-Life: Alyx ending.
To say that Alyx’s ending is full of surprising twists and major revelations is to put it lightly. There are some developments in the ending that cast new light on previous Half-Life games and might hint at what’s to come for the future of the series, Valve and possibly VR. Let’s unpack exactly what happens and why it means so much to this legendary franchise. Obviously things are about to get very spoilery…
FULL SPOILERS FOR HALF-LIFE: ALYX ENDING BELOW
As you probably know by now, Half-Life: Alyx is a prequel set before the events of Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions. You play as Alyx Vance, a member of a resistance group fighting back against the rule of an evil alien race known as the Combine.
Much of Alyx’s story sees the titular character trying to reach the Vault, a floating behemoth hovering above City 17, kept airborne by a set of massive cables surrounding it. Alyx’s father, Eli, discovers that the Combine are keeping something inside the Vault. At first they suspect it’s a superweapon. Then Alyx learns (via a nod to future games) it is in fact, a living being. Everyone immediately assumes it’s Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Thus they set off to save him.
Alyx decouples the cables powering the Vault (with the help of some friendly Vortigaunts) and a backup power generator. The Vault promptly crashes and Alyx is able to get onboard. There she initially discovers a surreal facsimile of different buildings, presumably within City 17, following a ghostly figure.
Once Alyx passes through this area and makes quick work of some final Combine soldiers, she gets to Gordon’s containment cell. Only upon opening it does she discover that it’s not Gordon at all; the Combine have actually captured G-Man, the mysterious supernatural figure that stalks Gordon in past Half-Life games, still fitted with his iconic blue business suit and black briefcase.
In return for his release, G-Man grants Alyx one favor. She immediately requests getting the Combine off of Earth but G-Man declines, reasoning that that is too big of a push. Instead, he has another idea…
Suddenly, Alyx is subject to an out-of-body experience and time travels to end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. In that infamous cliffhanger from 2007, Gordon and Alyx are about to set out on a new mission when a Combine attack kills her father, leaving Alyx cradling him in her arms. Only now, G-Man reverses the scene just a few moments, giving Alyx a chance to kill the Combine. Eli picks himself up, alive and well, but is clearly in search of something.
Alyx prepares to leave but G-Man informs her that, in return for this favor, she now works for him. The game transitions to the credits with a nod to Half-Life 1’s ending, leaving you with your jaw on the floor and plenty of questions you don’t think will be answered in the Half-Life: Alyx ending…
Except, toward the end of the credits, you hear a voice. It’s Eli but noticeably different from how he’s sounded for the rest of the game. He’s gruffer, older like in Half-Life 2, and he’s not calling for Alyx; he’s calling for Gordon.
The world fades back in and, boom, you’re Gordon Freeman, standing right where he stood at the end of Episode 2. Eli is alive and Dog is there too, but there’s no sign of Alyx. Eli seems to be perfectly aware of what’s happened, cursing “unforeseen consequences” and vowing to save Alyx. But, of course, he’ll need Gordon’s help to do that. So he hands you the crowbar and, just for a split second, you get to hold it before the game ends.
—
Whew! What a rush, right? It seems like the Half-Life: Alyx ending is definitely setting up for the return of Gordon Freeman in, dare we say it, Half-Life 3. But the ending also leaves questions about the games we’ve already played. Does Alyx know exactly what’s going to happen at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2? Did Eli know about the deal she’s struck with G-Man?
We’ll have more coverage on the ending later this week that might help answer some of that but, for now we’ll let you sit with that. Make sure to check out our Half-Life: Alyx review, too, where we give the full rundown of our impressions. Half-Life: Alyx is available now on SteamVR.
It’s here! Valve’s flagship VR game Half-Life: Alyx finally released across the globe today.
Before you dive right in, you might want a few handy tips that will help you in your playthrough. So, we’ve collected all the tips and tricks that UploadVR staff picked up on during our own playthroughs.
But don’t worry – we won’t post any story spoilers here, just stuff about gameplay and mechanics that we wish we had known earlier or before we started our own playthroughs.
Save Often
Although there are some autosaves, you’ll want to save often. This isn’t because you’ll be dying an awful lot (especially not on lower difficulties) but the game has perhaps a few less autosave slots than you’re used to in modern AAA titles.
Get into the habit of saving often again. Just open up the menu and it’s the top option. You can thank us later.
Lean Into Combat
To get the best out of Half-Life: Alyx, you’ll have to commit yourself. You could, feasibly, play the game on a lower difficulty setting with Continuous movement and just run and gun through every area, firing from the hip. But doing that would be a disservice to the action, which has been built specifically around VR.
When you get into a firefight, choose good spots to hunker down behind cover; somewhere you can lean out and get a good vantage point on the enemy. Only move between cover points when you feel a break in the enemy’s attack patterns is coming. Make it a physical experience; it’s designed to be played that way and you’ll have more fun.
Environmental Protection
There are some items that you can find that will protect you and act as armor — but we wouldn’t blame you if you never realized, as the game doesn’t tell you.
You’ll often see hard hats and some gas masks, particularly in the underground sections. If you pick these up, you can actually wear the hard hats and attach the gas masks to your face. If you’re wearing them, they’ll protect you from one attack from a barnacle and a headcrab respectively.
Get Your Reflex Sight ASAP
The Reflect Sight, available for the pistol and machine gun, is an essential tool for surviving Alyx. Not only does it make it considerably easier to aim down the sights, but the scope highlights enemy weak spots in orange. This is essential for picking out zombies that hide growths that will kill them in one hit. You can also use it to ensure that enemies you’re walking past really are dead, saving you a horrid jump scare or two.
If There Is A Room, There Is Resin In It
Resin is the game’s currency, used on your weapon at Combine Fabricators found in select locations across the campaign. The game is linear, meaning you’ll only get a few opportunities to upgrade you weapon. You’ll want to make sure you’re finding and collecting as much resin as possible when moving through the chapters, so that you have enough for upgrades when needed.
As a general rule of thumb: if you think a room might have some resin in it, it probably does. In almost every area of Half-Life: Alyx, there’s a main path that will progress you through the plot, and an area that is probably a dead end but has some ammo and resin.
You can also find resin without straying for the main path — you might just have to look in a certain direction. If you can tell the game wants you to walk one way, take a minute to look to stop and look in all directions. Make sure to push boxes out of the way on shelves and check under desks; you’ll often be rewarded with something.
Ammo, Ammo, Ammo
On a similar note, always be on the look out for ammunition. Ammo is not infinite by any means in Half-Life: Alyx. While it’s rare for you to get stuck with no ammo, you might get alarmingly low especially if you favor one of the three guns in particular.
Ammo can be find lying around the environment, on shelves, the ground and even on some dead bodies. Shooting a barnacle will also sometimes reward you with ammo, but not always.
There are some storage boxes that open to reveal ammo inside, likewise with filing cabinets and drawers. You also might recognize wooden crates that take visual cues from Half-Life 2. These can be thrown on the ground and smashed open, often containing ammo.
You’ll want to keep a particular eye out for shotgun shells. While these are sometimes found in a package of 3 or more, you’ll more often find one or two shells sitting by themselves. Because of that, they can be very easy to miss and don’t stick out as much compared to pistol ammo.
Seven Shotgun Shells
The shotgun, unlike many conventional shotguns in video game history, can be loaded with up to seven shells at once. Not two.
The game never explicitly tells you this, so you would be forgiven for never realizing — just as our own Half-Life: Alyx reviewer Jamie didn’t, even after two playthroughs (which he is very embarrassed about)!
Comfort Barnacle Options
Half-Life: Alyx is pretty good at providing you with options to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible and play in a way that ensures you can minimize sickness. To that end, besides the standard movement options, you can also change the way Barnacles interact with you in the menus.
By default, Barnacles will latch onto you and drag you up toward them. However, that kind of artificial movement can be pretty nauseating for some. In the settings, there’s an option to turn off that artificial dragging movement. The Barnacle will still attack and you’ll take damage, but you’ll be stationary on the ground the whole time.
Save Slots
You can have up to 10 save slots on one account, and switch between them super easily. The game will default to continuing whatever save slot was last loaded, but you can easily switch. On the main menu, simply click on the ‘Games’ tab and you’ll see all your save slots listed, with their most recent save details displayed.
Similarly, opting to start a new game doesn’t wipe over another save slot automatically. The game will allow you to choose a save slot to start a new game on, so you can easily share your headset in a household and play through the game without affecting each other’s progress.
What are your tips and tricks for Half-Life: Alyx? Let us know in the comments.
Second chances. Not everyone gets one. And yet, in Half-Life: Alyx, Valve finds itself with an embarrassment of them.
Forget all that ‘back from the dead’ stuff for a minute; you don’t need me to tell you Half-Life has been away for a very long time. More pressing is the make-or-break moment Alyx represents for VR, a potential do-over for a platform that, let’s face it, still has a lot of people to win over. Second chances like that don’t come around often. Rest assured, Valve doesn’t take that responsibility lightly.
Return To City 17
Half-Life’s big return is, for starters, unparalleled in production. Alyx has a world so lavish in apocalyptic dressing and setpieces so thoughtfully sequenced you’d be forgiven for mistaking the game for a flagship PlayStation or Xbox exclusive. And yet, for better or worse, Alyx is also a game of surprising familiarity, not just in the DNA it’s dusted off after these many years but in how it approaches the platform. For a long-time VR player, Alyx doesn’t hold a lot of ‘new’, and it doesn’t have many answers to the medium’s more persistent issues. But what it does right, it almost always does the best.
The decision to double back to a time before Half-Life 2 and cast you not as the crowbar-wielding Gordon Freeman but instead the pistol-slinging Alyx Vance is a wise one, freeing Valve up from at least some of the crushing pressure that putting a ‘3’ in that title would apply. And, conveniently, it pits Alyx at a crucial and unexplored time in the Half-Life canon, with the human race still licking its wounds as it adapts to life under the rule of Combine stormtroopers.
More importantly, though, it’s a great way for the franchise to find its feet again, especially in uncharted territory. Much of Alyx is spent both re-familiarizing yourself with the world of Half-Life and re-examining what its staple elements mean in VR. It’s a game of physics and, now more than ever, the physical; Combine encounters, for example, evolve from their run-n’-gun roots to heftier, more tangible slowburn shootouts in which the world is both a weapon and a shield.
Combine Combat
If you’re prepared to pantomime, Alyx holds some of the most active and immersive combat you can experience in VR. In its tougher battles I’d find myself huddled on the floor, opening car doors to fire through the gaps in driver seats, instinctively flinching at the hammer of gunfire above and then poking out remaining shards in a shattered window to access a stray ammo clip with the flick of my Gravity Gloves before fumbling a hasty reload.
Oh, and those gloves — more appropriately nicknamed ‘the Russells’ after their inventor — are a wonderful thing, effortlessly intuitive and moreish to use by executing a simple flick of the wrist to summon an object to your hand with a well-timed catch. Alongside streamlining scavenging without sacrificing it, they’re a big part of what gives Alyx’s action flow, a mechanically dependable linchpin in the middle of the juggling act firefights often prove to be.
Comfort
Comfort is a big concern for Valve, and it shows. Alyx is littered with different options to accommodate as many people as possible. You can choose between a traditional “Blink” teleport, a “Shift” where the camera dashes to the next point, or “Continuous” aka smooth locomotion directed either by your head or hand. Each of these options can be further tuned to your preferences. The game even has a one-handed option mode. Whatever comfort or space concerns you have, chances are Half-Life: Alyx has an option for you.
Alyx is also more directly interested in puzzles than previous games, keen to utilize VR to the fullest extent. Your Multi-Tool is in constant use to unlock doors and ammo crates by beating holographic challenges. They’re hit and miss, with some of the more menial challenges getting tiresome — like guiding a beacon on a holographic sphere past a maze of mines. But when they hit they’re absolutely fantastic, like the act of following wires inside the walls to reconnect electricity which might require you to push items out of the way or create makeshift platforms to find the right path forward. It’s a brilliant application of VR.
What the game loses in its transition to VR — namely intuitive movement and weapon variety (there’s only three guns) — it makes up for in the versatility of full human control. But there’s a smoothness to it, a certain amount of hassle-free fluidity that games like say, Boneworks, don’t quite match, that gives it a sharper edge. It might not be Half-Life in feel, at least not straight away, but it’s unmistakably Half-Life in approach.
Half-Life Goes Horror
Nowhere is that more true than in the encounters with Xen aliens, which are given vicious new life. They’re no longer solved with a waggle of a crowbar but fought tooth and nail in a battle of proximity and rushed reloads, often channeling the pressured intensity of a game like Resident Evil 4. Not just in the plate spinning act of keeping zombies and headcrabs at bay but in the unavoidably anxious and utterly human desire to want to be as far away from them as possible.
In fact, you might even label Alyx as a horror game and, as unnerving as that may sound, it’s one of the game’s most natural transitions. How could it not be? Jumping, fleshy (and sometimes disturbingly hairy) face-suckers spring at you in the cruel knowledge that your brain will trigger momentary panic, and wailing, whimpering zombies swagger and stumble out from the shadows, no longer marching forward, giggling like a Beavis and Butthead cartoon.
What makes Alyx’s brand of terror work so well, though, is in how manageable it is. Valve is rightly responsible with its arsenal of gruesome minions, at least at first. The game is sensible in its scares; very rarely so mercilessly nightmarish as to overwhelm you, but also unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes. Only a couple times in the game are headcrabs hidden behind corners or sneaking through vents, appearing at the flick of a flashlight. Instead they’ll make themselves known to you, swinging out from behind pipes or leaping down from ceilings a good few meters away to help lull you into a necessary security, however slight.
It’s a masterclass in VR horror; not so much teaching how to make it as how to deal with it. By the time Valve trusts you with some of its more heart-rending moments — including one spectacularly mean-spirited puzzle twist — you’ve taught yourself to toughen up. It’s a remarkable bit of player conditioning, an achievement in working with you to push and help conquer that which you might not have thought you’d be able to face.
Old Headcrab, New Tricks?
This is very much a case of teaching an old dog new tricks, then. If, as a long time Half-Life fan, these changes sound startling and unruly, consider that, to long time VR fans, they instead sound surprisingly familiar. And that’s because Alyx is a shockingly recognizable experience to the initiated.
Much of what I’ve described above, the physicality of combat or the realness of the horror, has already been seen in VR before. Think Superhot VR’s handful of expertly-crafted combat sequences, or Budget Cuts’ striking spontaneity, and you’ll get a reasonable idea of what to expect here. You might go into Alyx ready for Valve to turn all of that on its head, but the truth is it doesn’t. Instead, Alyx feels far more concerned with bookending the last four years of the VR industry, surgically dissecting its strongest elements and then applying them to a campaign of over ten hours in length.
Rift S vs. Index Controllers
Though Half-Life: Alyx can be played with basically any PC VR headset, it’s been designed first and foremost with Valve’s own Index device. Index’s premium spec sheet undoubtedly makes it the best way to play Alyx, but the gap between playing on that and the Oculus Rift S isn’t too big. In fact, Index’s ‘exclusive’ gameplay features, made possible by controller finger tracking, are very, very insubstantial. You can squeeze the controller to activate grenades and crush cans and, of course, you can flip off the Combine. That’s about it. If you can play it on Index then absolutely go that route, but you won’t be missing too much going without the Index controllers.
Undoubtedly, it is every bit the polished campaign you’re hoping for, but Alyx rarely feels as revelatory as you might expect. It can, at times, echo the spark of constant reinvention the series is known for but it’s less concerned with charting new mechanical territory for VR as it is just giving you, well, something that’s damn good to play. I suppose, in a way, that polish, scale and thoughtfulness is its contribution, and it’s a valuable one for sure. It’s just not the one I was quite expecting.
It steers well clear of the muddy waters of melee combat, for example, which games as recent as The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners established a pretty good grasp on, and you can’t turn everything into a weapon like you could in Boneworks. The puzzling thing is that there is that potential of physics wizardry in the game, it just never really necessitates it.
First and foremost this is a gun game for more than it is a physics playground like Boneworks. You can and scoop a headcrab up in mid-air and stuff it into a barrel or toss it out of a window. But if you do, or you try anything beyond that, there’s a chance things might go a little janky. And besides, you always have a pistol with enough ammo to kill it instead — so why bother? Valve misses an opportunity not to capitalize on these more groundbreaking elements in the way its contemporaries have.
With Alyx, there’s a sense of getting the basics down before Valve might move on to more ambitious concepts (something the game hints might happen). Though that’s a four-year task in itself, it’s disappointing – and somewhat surprising — that Alyx doesn’t plant a flag in many truly new areas.
New Friends And Old Haunts
There are flags to be planted elsewhere, though. If Half-Life 2 made City 17 an iconic setting, Alyx makes it a more convincing reality. Alyx and her companion-over-comms Russell’s search to save her captured father quickly escalates into a race to find a mysterious Combine item of interest that has her making a beeline through the city. What begins as a familiar trek across rubbled train stations and hushed streets soon reveals a side to City 17 yet unseen.
Within an abandoned vodka distillery lurks a horrific monster that can be lured by breaking the scores of bottles that surround him. A zoo is turned into a headcrab pen, with cages of critters daring you to open them in a mad scramble for spare ammo. These sections, and others, offer up high concept scenarios that, until now, have been practically alien to VR and, importantly, start to pile on thick and fast once the game is through its lengthy — if very necessary — onboarding hours.
Different, too, is the tone, which carries an abnormal and welcome strain of optimism. Alyx and Russell longingly daydream of ‘when’ the Combine are defeated to pass the time. “The Combine aren’t going to be around forever,” Russell states early on. Their misplaced resolve shows a side to Half-Life we haven’t seen before.
Recognising what a disservice it would be to bottle Alyx’s warming personality up in the silent protagonist role, she’s free to quip “Bye zombie” as she quietly lets grenades slip through her fingers and onto the heads of unsuspecting enemies below. Though it’s a shame not to see Merle Dandridge returning to voice Alyx, Ozioma Akagha fills her shoes with the perfect amount of pep and unbeatable enthusiasm. Flight of The Conchord’s Rhys Darby, though, injects Russell with the compelling blend of naive curiosity and distracted humor his sharp script requires. Adding Firewatch developer Campo Santo to Valve’s team seems to have paid off.
Write On Point
In fact it should be little surprise in a post-Portal 2 world that the writing in Alyx is pitch-perfect, deftly balancing absurdist and genuinely hilarious humor with moments of concentrated power and connection. And VR proves a potent ingredient in forming that bond.
Early on in the game, you’re hesitantly making your way through a pitch black environment, aided only by a flashlight. Shaken, Alyx asks Russell to recall pre-Combine Earth. He instead waxes about the miracle of the club sandwich. I catch myself laughing, first at his ridiculously exhaustive monologue, which spares no detail, and then because I realise that, heaven help me, it’s working on me. I — a self-confessed VR coward — am no longer quivering at the thought of edging forward; I’m thinking about that grandiose monument to human decadence, just like Alyx. It’s a moment of full surrender to the VR spell in a way that I have simply never experienced.
Reality Bites
And yet that spell can also be broken quite easily. If there’s one thing Alyx isn’t, it’s the remedy to some of VR’s most troublesome intricacies. The game’s plethora of movement options, for example, cater to both the comfortable and the more immersive, but neither focus is entirely cohesive with the world around you.
Smooth movement often slips and slides over bumps in the game’s geometry and proves too tempting an alternative to properly utilizing cover in combat. I started with that option but, about halfway through, switched to Shift. Most of the game feels built around this option but still struggles with aspects like opening doors. It’s a process that never feels quite right (in fact, you spend so much time fighting them you might consider them an enemy). Plus some of the more explosive setpieces, including a late-game chase sequence, are at odds with this style of movement. These are troubles many VR games share but feel more damning under the light of Alyx’s expanded appeal.
At other points, it’s more of an own goal. Early on the game is teaching you how to jump, with a small gap to navigate. It’s not immediately clear what to do, but I remember a ladder just around the corner that could make short work of the obstacle. Much to my surprise, I can’t pick it up and hoist it over the gap as I would in Boneworks. It’s a jarring moment, to be sold this much on a reality this dense only to discover a gap in its rules that early on.
When the rules don’t bend, though, Alyx is a technical showcase to marvel at. Its environments, staggering in clarity, are quite literally littered with ‘stuff’, be it the rotten apples and half-squished toothpaste tubes resting in lockers, hiding upgrade points known as resin beneath them, or the scattered hard hats and debris quickly summoned to hand and then just as easily tossed onto an unsuspecting barnacle tongue to clear the way.
Half-Life: Alyx Review Final Impressions
The difficulty of Half-Life: Alyx is that all eyes are on it, not just as a game but as a justification of VR. And, though it shoulders that burden sincerely, Alyx’s jitters — no different from those found in its contemporaries — and adherence to established VR standards likely won’t persuade the platform’s biggest pessimists.
But, for the already-initiated and those susceptible to it, Alyx is a triumphant return; a stunningly produced, meticulously refined capping off of the past four years of VR learnings. Its 10+ hours of best-in-class combat, evolving level design and, every so often, moments of truly inventive ideas swiftly establishes it as a new benchmark for the platform.
And yet, Alyx leaves you with the lingering suspicion that there is yet more ground to cover, that there’s far more this series and this developer can do with this new set of tools and that this is only the first part of that story. Though you’ll find yourself hungry for more, there’s something comforting in the knowledge that, for Valve, this is the dawn of a new era. Half-Life: Alyx makes good on its second chance, it is as essential a VR game as you’ll find in 2020, but perhaps the most exciting thing about it is the message is that the best is yet to come.
Final Score: 5/5 Stars | Fantastic
Half-Life: Alyx is available now on SteamVR for PC VR headsets for $59.99. To find out more about how we arrived at this score, make sure to read our review guidelines.
Looking for an Oculus Rift S? You may be disappointed to hear that the $400 PC VR headset is now officially sold out globally. We have a few alternatives you might consider though.
Now every supported country is out of stock, leaving only a few Oculus Quests in some last holdout regions. You may still be able to find Rift S at independent retailers, but with social distancing coming into effect, you’re probably not the only person out there looking for a distraction from reality; because of disruptions in the supply chain due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), there’s little indication when stock for either headset will be replenished.
Come March 23rd, Valve’s continuation of the Half-Life series is set to launch on all SteamVR-compatible headsets, breaking a 13-year gap between Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (2007) and the upcoming HL2 prequel Half-Life: Alyx. At $400, Rift S represents one of the best price-performance ratios out there, which may explain why the last remaining stock was snapped up. Check out our Rift S review here for more.
If you’re wondering how to play HLA when it launches, you could of course pay the a markup through independent sellers on eBay and Amazon, but you might consider a few other SteamVR-compatible headsets currently available too.
HTC Vive Comos & Cosmos Elite
HTC Vive Cosmos is a pricey alternative at $700, and while HTC’s faceplate modularity scheme aims to appeal to a wider audience, it’s difficult to recommend the base headset due to its finicky inside-out tracking and power-hungry motion controllers. Here’s our review for Vive Cosmos if you’re on the fence.
Image courtesy HTC
The premium-priced Cosmos Elite, which was recently released, does the job of eliminating all tracking weirdness with its included SteamVR faceplate and 1.0 base stations, but it does so at a hefty $900 price tag which puts it just under HTC Vive Pro in pricing. That $900 is admittedly offset somewhat by a free code for Half-Life: Alyxin the box though.
Yes, Vive Pro is still available too, even though HTC is phasing it out soon along with the standalone Vive Focus. Vive Pro is more expensive as an all-in package at $1,200, but it’s undeniably a solid headset. Both Cosmos Elite and Vive Pro use the 2016-era Vive wands though, which could conceivably be swapped out for Valve Index controllers at a later date for $200. Check out our review of Vive Pro here.
There’s also Valve Index—clearly the best-in-class specs wise—although it’s not only $1,000 for the full kit, the lead time for shipping is currently at eight weeks.
Pimax VR & More
Pimax consumer version, Image courtesy Pimax
Pimax has a load of different headsets; they seem to change their large FOV headset lineup every six months, further adding to the confusion. The Pimax 5K XR is however included in a pretty enticing bundle that included everything you need to get into VR for $1,100, which includes a pair of Index controllers, two SteamVR 2.0 base stations, and a code for Half-Life: Alyx too.
Unfortunately the entry-level Pimax Artisan, which retails for $450 for the headset alone is currently out of stock.
And finally, one of the cheapest ways of playing Half-Life: Alyx is invariably getting a used Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Windows Mixed Reality headset. Just make sure to sanitize it thoroughly. Please.
Did we miss anything? Let us known in the comments below!
If you want to play Valve’s upcoming videogame epic Half-Life: Alyx then you’re going to need more than just a PC because this new instalment is only for virtual reality (VR) headsets. Half-Life: Alyx will be Valve’s flagship VR experience but there’s more than one way to dive into this virtual world on 23rd March.
Before you buy a headset you’ll need to make sure your PC is up to spec. Below are the minimum specifications Valve recommends to ensure a smooth Half-Life: Alyx experience. Obviously, if your PC exceeds these all the better.
So onto the headsets compatible with Half-Life: Alyx. Naturally, the Valve Index is the go-to device if you’re buying into VR specifically for Half-Life: Alyx, with all of its nifty finger tracking but getting hold of one is another matter entirely. Luckily Valve has ensured the videogame will work on all SteamVR compatible headsets and there are quite a few.
There are of course incompatible headsets such as older versions of the Oculus Rift (DK1/DK2) and mobile devices like Gear VR and Daydream. When it comes to current VR headsets that won’t work the main one is PlayStation VR, Half-Life: Alyx is a PC VR-only title.
