The game's sound design takes full advantage of positional 3D audio. It's easy to feel dwarfed by the alien striders casually walking across rooftops and the immense buildings floating far off in the distance. After playing over a dozen hours of the game on the Index, I found it to be an incredibly immersive experience that takes full advantage of the scale that VR offers. Half-Life: Alyx is a reminder that Valve can still make a compelling game that isn't DOTA. That said, if you have access to a VR-equipped PC, you're in for a treat.

We've seen great Windows Mixed Reality headsets like Samsung's Odyssey priced as low as $230, and the $400 Oculus Quest offers great value since it also lets you play VR on the go. Sure, the ideal playback experience is with the $1,000 Index setup, but you can get away with something that costs far less. It really does feel like Valve is putting a gun to gamers' heads - get on the VR bandwagon or miss out on Half-Life: Alyx forever.Īt least the game is playable on other headsets that support SteamVR, like the Oculus Rift, the Quest (when connected to a PC over a link cable), and Windows Mixed Reality devices. Understandably, that's enraged plenty of gamers, who have been waiting over a decade for the follow-up to Half-Life 2: Episode 2. There's no other way to play it: If you want to fight the Combine again, you'll need to have a headset and a decent PC. Half-Life 2 upped the ante with the gravity gun and a focus on elaborate physics, something that would become a huge deal for practically every 3D game afterwards.Īnd now with Half-Life: Alyx, Valve is taking advantage of everything it helped build with the SteamVR platform, HTC's Vive, and its high-end VR headset, the Index. There weren't any cut scenes to sit through: Instead you had full control of Gordon Freeman to explore the world, even during key dramatic moments. The first Half-Life was a landmark for immersive storytelling in games.

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