Alyx is so good.
Alyx is so good.
I'm just through the tutorial. I've never screwed around in an environment so much before. Everything feels perfect, and as somebody who skipped the ps4 gen entirely, I've never seen graphics like this. This game blows Skyrim VR visuals out of the water. Unbelievable.
So, the first time through is terrifying, and the second time through you feel like a God because you know how to deal with everything. 10/10 gimme more AAA VR.
I've read that it's even easier if you play it in 'pancake mode' or whatever the non-VR mod is called. As much as I want more HL, I'm going to wait until I have a setup that can do it justice.
I assume you mean there's a mod that turns it into a standard FPS? If so, yeah, seems like it wouldn't be as interesting considering the core game was built around VR.
Half Life Alyx: The Final Hours is out on Steam. Geoff Keighley's interactive e-book about the development of Alyx and, maybe more intriguingly, the 10 years leading up to it where Valve released almost nothing.
Basically, Valve's lack of formal leadership seems mostly to blame. Too many projects in early development, competing for oxygen, and never able to reach the critical mass needed to get off the ground.
It mentions three different cancelled Half Life games. The first is Episode 3, which was shelved because the developers were struggling with the limitations of the source engine and wanted to wait for Source 2.
The second one is Half Life 3, which surprisingly does not seem to be a continuation of Episode 3 at all, but rather a game with roguelike elements that used procedural generation combined with bespoke story and setpiece levels to make a replayable FPS. It gets canned because Source 2 is a mess and being pulled in too many directions by different projects.
The last is another VR title, this one headed up by Mark Laidlaw. It's a side story set on the Borealis. It does not sound like an FPS, but it's not clear what the main gameplay elements are.
Lot of interesting stuff covered, worth a read.
Bookmarks