I genuinely can’t believe Half Life Alyx is five years old.
No other video game has felt the way Alyx felt. No one else has taken such a bold swing in what a video game can be. It’s burned into my mind as my Half Life game, the one that came out at just the right time for me.
It was also my “pandemic” game. While everyone else was playing Animal Crossing or Doom Eternal, I was playing and replaying Half Life Alyx.
It definitely feels like it’s somewhat doomed to be less remembered in the popular consciousness than most big games that come out, and indeed the rest of the games in the Half Life lineage. Cries of “Half Life 3 when?” still abound in spite of the very clear effort Alyx made to move the story forward. But to me it feels like a game that still hasn’t been topped in the five years since it came out, not by a long shot.
Half Life Alyx received a Game of the Year win from GameSpot, and nominations from a few other publications. When it came to events like The Game Awards with a dedicated “Best VR Game” category, it won handily.
It wasn’t “my” Half Life but it was a damn good one. It felt true to the series and that brought a tear to my eye. The writing, the environments, the soundtrack all felt very Half Life without compromise. I didn’t like that it was a VR title but I understood why they went that route. In 2D, it would probably lack in depth (in more ways than one).
I borrowed a VR set from a friend to play it and bought the game at 60% off, which it frequently drops to. I’d urge anyone who has a VR capable PC to try and play it some way but VR is always going to restrict access to this. I’ll probably play through it in 2d Mode (via mod) some day in the future to try and relive it. And if non-VR is the only way you get to experience it, at minimum, use headphones… and dont go online saying it sucks after because, remember, it was made for VR.
The reason it’s forgotten because most people aren’t able to play it. If valve really did put important story in a game that they knew most gamers would never be able to play that’s kind of shitty
The idea was people would buy the game and play it.
Plenty of people aren’t interested in vr for different reasons.
Don’t tell me that. Tell Valve.
The idea of sinking $500 into a headset and then another $80 for one game is pretty crazy. Not like Valve doesn’t have the ownership numbers from the hardware survey. It was never going to sell like HL2.
The game starts at 60 USD and goes down to 30 pretty often. If you have VR already, it’s not very expensive.
Do you know about gaming consoles? 3D accelerator cards? Graphics cards? Or… CD ROM drives?
People have been buying hardware to play a certain game for literal decades. The games are called “system sellers”. Games so good they sell hardware. It’s usually even the opposite: if your hardware doesn’t have such a game, it doesn’t sell (atari Jaguar anyone?).
So people should buy hardware to play a single game and then leave the hardware to accumulate dust after a few hours of gameplay? Quite the waste!
I agree, that would silly. Luckily, Half-Life Alyx is not the only VR game.
Sure, but if people love Half-Life and don’t care about other VR games it sucks that it’s locked behind hardware requirements that even Valve doesn’t give a crap about considering it’s the only VR game they made.
Edit: I’m sure all of you would be pissed if Sony released a new PlayStation with one game from a beloved series and then just said “now it’s in other people’s hands, let them take care of creating more games for our hardware!”
This entire argument can be made identically for Half-Life 1 and 2 requiring people to upgrade their PCs to be able to play them.
God damn people want to just argue about everything
It isn’t up to Valve alone to push forward the industry and release top-tier VR games every other year. They took a risk and created one of the best games I’ve played, and I’m not alone in that opinion. Valve are trying expand the gaming experience, they are trying to be innovative, and people blame them for “not giving a crap”. Say what you want, but I thank Valve for what they are doing.
It’s ok, get it out.
I thought you still needed to plug the VR headset into a computer ? is the computer built into the headset ?
Most of the common ones now do wireless streaming from the PC for PCVR. But yes, for PCVR games you will still need a PC to run it. There are some VR headsets that are capable of running some games on it without a connected PC, like my Quest 2 can run Superhot or BeatSaber etc.
Yes for the standalone devices, but you can connect them via cable or wirelessly to a pc too
VR has the extra element of needing a suitable living space to play in, though. Other games I can do at my desk or in my tiny, cramped living room, but I have nowhere I can easily set up for VR that would allow for significant range of motion.
I own a VR headset, but I only really use it for games that allow you to be stationary and just use the headset as an immersive monitor with a standard controller. As one would expect, it doesn’t get much use, because not many VR games are made to play that way!
$1000 and your gaming PC for Alyx is way beyond buying a PS4 for Bloodborne, and even doing that is a bridge too far for me.
You could buy a quest 2, connect it to your 5 year old PC and play it just fine. I ran it off a gtx 1070ti with that headset just fine.
I mean it‘s 5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since? A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware and they know that. It was a failure in the end of the day.
5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since?
You know Valve has released a whopping 3 things total in that timespan (didn’t include deadlock cuz I’m not sure that’s officially released yet), right? A free steam deck teaser, the card game they’ve been working on for a while, and the CSGO 2 update
Valve works slow, my guy
A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware
Good thing there are a shit ton of other games, then
It was a failure in the end of the day
No it wasn’t, you high? They sold out of Indexes around the games launch. Would have sold more if not for COVID, too
Hold on. Why are you replying with unrelated things that Valve did instead of focusing on VR to get people onto that platform? Kind of proves my point, doesn‘t it? Also Covid? Seriously? If anything Covid should‘ve accelerated development on VR games.
Also Covid? Seriously? If anything Covid should‘ve accelerated development on VR games
Your claim was that the game was a failure, my point with COVID was that you would have been extra wrong about that had there not been a pandemic limiting how many headsets they could actually sell, which was the point of the game. In the world that we got they sold out and had Back-orders for a year, had there not been a global pandemic those Back-orders would have been sales, and likely many who couldn’t buy one would have been able to as well
The rest of your comment shows you have 0 idea how Valve works internally. The whole studio doesn’t just work on one project, there are smaller teams that pick and choose what they do. This is why Valve tends to release shit a couple years apart that are wildly different (Alyx and Artefact), but 5-8 years between similar products (Portal 2 and Alyx). It being 5 years or more since their last major VR release is to be expected from them, not a sign of failing at anything
It’s free if you buy an Index
not any more.
Maybe not in your country. I literally just checked on the American store and it’s still included with the Valve Index.
They even give you a free copy of Half-Life Alyx if you buy a pair of knuckles controllers for $279.
It’s also way different from the goal of HL2. Downloading a launcher called Steam for free is not the same thing as buying specific hardware to play one game.
Plenty of people do that to play a single game.
Given how different it is to other, normal 3d games, I don’t think the comparison is fair. Additionally there are a lot of other, really great games in VR too.
Regardless, I don’t think the problem is financial anymore. Rather that VR requires a sort of “commitment to inconvenience” where you feel cut off from the outside world (among other things) that I don’t think a lot of people are comfortable with.
It’s both financial (huge investment for a single game) and not. Playing with a thing strapped to your face does not sound fun. Especially with glasses. Or in the summertime. Plus I’m a Linux gamer, so I’d probably run into a lot of issues before I could run it.
I also run on Linux exclusively and I could play Half-Life Alex almost flawlessy on the Steam Index. And other VR games as well, including Beatsaber, Gorn, Walkabout Golf and many others. I’m really grateful to Valve and their Proton.
Thanks, that’s nice to know in case I decide to get a VR headset in the future.
Its $500 today but at the time it was $1500 and required cable and beacons.
True in regards to the index kit but WMR has been around for a long time as well and that was a fraction of the price without base stations.
Also nobody has missed out on playing it yet! There’s still time before half life 3! 😅
True
it’s doomed now, but I love my Reverb G2, I got it for the same price as a Quest 2 (before the q3 released) and, having used both, its a lot better.
Are “plenty of people” enough to make a game commercially viable? And not in an indie way.
I zone out, completely cut off from others, while playing games all the time. What I don’t want to do is fork over more cash for things that will collect dust (like a headset for a single game).
Given how different it is to other, normal 3D games, I think it’s a bit much to stake your franchise on something most people will never have. It’s obvious Valve knew that, they’re not idiots and have put out good hardware that didn’t see mass adoption in the past (Steam Controller, Steam Link, etc.); it’s clear they wanted to try out something new even if it wasn’t a huge blockbuster. They have lots of revenue from other sources to fall back on.
They probably hoped that some people would take a chance and get the hardware to play the game, and some people did. But to expect that most would do that? Lol. They’re not that dumb.
“The idea” was to do something no one had done before with a beloved franchise. Not to sell headsets.
I don’t think they particularly cared if you bought their headset, but they had the premium offering if you were interested. I think they wanted Alyx to be the Mario 64 of VR.
Valve’s ‘official’ VR hardware costs ~$1500. Ain’t no way 😆
Huh? It’s $1K, not $1.5K. still expensive though for outdated as shit hardware.
With the little box doohickeys it’s currently $1300 CAD. Add on tax and shipping. I believe it used to be more.
What boxes? The 1k pack comes with two base stations. You mean if you want to add 2 more? Then yea, fair.
The whole kit is $1300 before tax
Your looking at it in Canadian. I’m looking at usd. So we’re saying the same thing, just different currencies lol. Woops.
But it’s not required, there are much cheaper options, especially today with used quest 2 devices.
The “other reasons” people aren’t buying affordable VR setups is because they don’t trust Meta or their privacy policies. If the new Valve headset was $300-500 it would go a long way. But $1200 isn’t it.
That is why those other VR sets are so cheap.
With valve, you’re paying for the hardware. With Meta, you’re the product
Psvr2, plus the pc adapter, i got both for a total of like $400 a few months ago, and got hl alyx on sale.
Have you used any other VR headset? I ask just cuz I wanna know how the PSVR2 compares to other headsets.
It’s the only good way to do VR. Otherwise it’s just a gimmick.
Fair but why not include a traditional mode so everyone can experience it. Otherwise it’s still just a gimmick to sell hardware
For the same reason N64 games couldn’t run on the SNES
Oh I didn’t realize connecting a VR headset to my computer made it not a computer anymore
Kingdom Hearts would like a word.
I was really hoping for a PSVR2 port of Alyx, and the timing with a lot of PS games coming to Steam had my theorizing that was a compromise they made with Valve to make it happen but I think that was just wishful thinking now.
Whoa. A bit off from your point but I was going to say if you could use the psvr2 on pc it would have sold a lot better. Turns out Sony seemingly shadow dropped a pc adapter and now you can!
Honestly if that was a launch feature I would have probably bought one since ps5 doesn’t really have a compelling library for it to be worth it alone. Now I’m too broke to justify it :(
That’s actually how I played hl2 Alyx! Great headset, game was awesome. Wish there were more games of the same quality
I would lo to be able to justify buying a 1500€ vr set. But using it for one or two games does not make the threshold for me.
I hope they make more really good games so it become justifiable.
I use the 300 dollar quest 2 and stream it?
you can get a used rift cv1 or a vive for around 200 USD
What? Quest 2 is like $250 and it connects to your PC and works just fine for Alyx.
Here’s a list of VR games I’d 1000% recommend:
- Half Life: Alyx
- I Expect you to Die (James Bond themed virtual escape rooms - 3 games in the series so far, all of them are good)
- Super Hot (slo-motion first person combat puzzle game)
- Beat Saber (a unique rhythm game)
- Pavlov (CS:GO but in VR with extensive modding support)
There are other good ones out there but that’s the list that justifies the headset to me.
Also there are some good VR ports of non-VR games out there such as Myst and The Talos Principle. Also there are some good Minecraft mods that add VR support (Java edition of course). Stay away from the Skyrim port though.
- the walking dead games
- Walkabout VR (putt-putt game)
- Dungeons of Eternity (quest exclusive)
- Any flight/racing sim (this is actually the biggest selling point I can make. Seriously if you like flight/racing sims, please get one. It’ll change your life)
- No Man’s Sky (one of my demo games)
Vertigo 2
The Skyrim port is amazing! …with 100 mods.
Dude, VR has been affordable for over half a decade now. Get with the times.
Never got to play this as it was never released for non vr players, can’t help but think this terrible decision cost valve a lot of money from potential customers
It’s not going to be playable wothout vr, because the game is built fully around the vr experience.
It was made as a tech demo to show off next gen VR hardware and tracking. Why would they port it?
What’s the status of VR games on Linux? With headsets that don’t require weird accounts (Meta)
As I mentioned in another comment it plays quite well. At least with the Steam Index that I use. Most games seem to work out of the box. One thing that isn’t currently implemented is BT communication with the lighthouses which is a bit annoying but there are other apps and tools to workaround that.
If you have a Quest headset, ALVR allows you to stream SteamVR to it.
I believe the Valve Index allows for Linux usage, but I’ve never owned one.
Seems like WiVRn is also a good solution these days, just tried it out for the first time a few hours ago and I’m very impressed.
If you actually want a viable discussion on this game, you’re better off posting this into a virtual reality community as the comments there won’t devolve into salty sour grapes that they couldn’t / wouldn’t play it since “vR iS uh GImAuCk”
Yeah, that would be wise, but by the same token since Lemmy is a bit smaller the amount of people with things to say in those communities would be smaller overall too.
“But… the future refused to change” – game over screen, Chrono Trigger
Still haven’t played it, haven’t bought a VR gimmick headset yet. Is there a 2D mode? I’ll play it tomorrow if so.
But what if you bought a real VR headset instead of a gimmick one?
I tried with that cardboard one but I’m waiting until more controllers become available
IIRC no cardboard ‘headset’ ever had 6dof tracking. It’s about as far as you can get from an immersive VR experience. I say this as someone who bought one before learning about VR and getting a real vr headset.
It’s like VR with all of the downsides, even less apps, and the only advantage over a flatscreen being (limited) depth perception.
What if I were to get the game to play on my 3D TV?
IMO even a normal flatscreen is more immersive on average than a google cardboard, although that’s partially because a flatscreen hides the flaws in the graphics a lot better.
HLA tho needs 6dof controllers for the intended experience. That mod tries to get around it, but that obviously involves some sacrifices.
What is 6dof? 6 dads on fire? I only have Alexis on fire, I’m afraid. Will that be fine?
Thanks essay!
Nope. VR exclusive.
I think there’s a mod for that iirc
The fit site release has a mod included for flat screen mode.
Incredible game. If you ever get the chance I 10000% recommend playing it.
It is such a beautiful game. One of my top gaming experiences.
The environments, the pacing, the story telling, the interactivity - just excellent.
If you are interested in playing it and you don’t have a PC with a 1060 or better; or can’t afford PSVR2 or Quest 3s, then consider giving it a go at a VR game cafe.
Well, I got it with my Valve Index but have not played it yet. I feel bad. Just flying around in MSFS 2020 lol
Five years and I still don’t have a VR headset lol. These things are enthusiast tech and I am not that enthusiastic about having one.
Half-Life Alyx wasn’t called Half-Life 3 because it came out on a platform most people don’t have/can’t afford. It’s essentially a really cool spin-off that I will never play.
Cool that you liked it though, love that for you.
I’m confused though. The platform is the same cost as a gaming console if not cheaper? You can buy a quest3 at a good price.
If you already have a (lower midrange) PC, then yes.
Spoilers, but the ending of the game greatly affects the Half Life story. It’s not just a spin off.
Yeah. It reads like fan fiction. Marc Laidlaw wasn’t involved. Hell, they didn’t ask Merle Dandridge to reprise her role.
It also doesn’t effect the story if there’s no more story. I’ll stick to the fan made spinoffs.
Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
While I really enjoyed Alyx, it’s very much a game built around it’s own limitations. It’s more of a survival horror game in a way, because of the limits on ammo and deliberately mechanical reloading. There’s no melee at all, so once you’re out of bullets you’re done for.
For all the roughness of Half Life 2 VR Mod, I find myself enjoying it more because it has fewer limitations imposed by the move to VR. It doesn’t always work (and the vehicle sections in particular really push it), but as a mod of a 20 year old game, it’s really good.
And, lets review where we are: Valve is supposedly making a new Half-Life that will reportedly be both flat and VR.
