Half-Life: Alyx (2020)

I re-played a bit with the new laptop just to see how it performed compared with the old. Pretty well. I had an old save with developer commentary on and I'm still amazed at all the small details they did right.

One interesting tidbit is that a lot of interactable objects like levers and valves do not move following physics, but instead have baked-in animations that play following the player's hand. As soon as I heard that I couldn't stop noticing how smooth they worked compared with other VR titles that use all physics objects, with all the physics jank that it involves.

Finally gotten around to playing this and it's incredible. It's everything that a VR game should be in my opinion. The level of interactions within the game world is astounding and really satisfying, I mean you can write on god damn windows with a whiteboard pen! When the lid on one of those flappy bins moved as I touched it my tiny brain imploded - would love to see more VR titles strive for this kind of immersion.

My only gripe with the game is the controller settings. I'm left handed and for some reason VR developers think left handed people want the movement controls swapped to the other hand? Majority of us have grown up with the left analogue stick controlling movement on console controllers, so why they think we'd want to use the right analogue stick is beyond me, at least give us the options to change it. Valve go halfway with addresssing the issue as you can change the controller bindings within the steam menu for an official 'movement on left controller' layout but this breaks the other bindings such as the reload button... alas, left handers continue to suffer in this cruel world.

Saw a video about mods for the game and decided to try them. So I searched for the best mods. After playing some of them, I'm not very impressed. They aren't horrible to play, because they use the engine and mechanics from Alyx, but they are fan-made games and it shows.

The Contract: Very bland and generic shooter. Totally dumb enemy placement and AI. On the first level you need to escort an NPC and then defend your position through waves of enemies, the nadir of gameplay design.

Return to Rapture: Somewhat impressive in its attempt to emulate the classic, but it just doesn't nail the feel. Perhaps is the atrocious dialogue delivered with cringe-inducing voice acting, or the total lack of difficulty curve, but I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes.

Levitation: This actually has very decent voice acting by imitators that do a good job bringing life to Russell and the G-Man, but the gameplay is not interesting and the level design is terrible. The most inane multitool puzzles that are just long cables that you need to connect by activating every single junction. And then, usually they activate something that has nothing to do with the door that opens so you need to run around the map trying to understand where to go. Also a whole subway level, the other nadir of game design.

Just to be clear, they are impressive fan-made mods that add whole new campaigns and which probably took a lot of effort and are made with love. But they are just not enjoyable to play.

There's a No VR mod for Half-Life Alyx that is now feature-complete. Apparently it even runs well on the Steam Deck.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/04/half-life-alyx-is-now-fully-playable-without-vr-hardware/

https://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-alyx-novr/news/full-campaign-playable-without-vr-update-out-now

I'm not sure how well the game translates to non-VR, considering that much of the charm relies heavily on VR-only interactions. My sense is that if you are not a Half-Life fanatic, it would be a relatively mediocre shooter but if you do love Half-Life and are super invested in the story, then you will like it at least to experience more of that world.

Tried this out briefly. I'm sure there's an adjustment period, but it kinda felt like a bit much for me at the moment. It's so immersive in VR that I was getting very startled by stuff in a way I never would have for the equivalent thing played on a TV. Quite a bit beyond most of what I have played in VR personally. Kinda cool but, again, kind of a lot and I don't know if I'm really into that intensity level after my long days at work. I got tired of playing pretty fast.

As immersive as it can be visually, it is also quite a challenge to get used to the controls—this is my first time playing this kind of VR game where you teleport around to move. Pretty awkward, it reminds me of first learning to play FPSes on a controller 20-something years ago.

But don't get me wrong, while I'm not sure that I'm really into the game for now, I am definitely impressed by it. The immersion and general feel of it is indeed totally different from other stuff I've played, in its own way that is pretty wild. Maaaybe one to come back to later on, though I have my suspicions that it will still just be a bit overwhelming.