Review: Half-life: Alyx, a virtual reality game by Valve

Of all the VR games I have played, I have only encountered two which really take advantage of everything the medium has to offer.

Half-life Alyx by Valve

The original Half-Life game, developed by Valve and released in 1998, marked a shift in the first-person shooter (FPS) genre away from Doom clones or arena shooters into a narrative experience, and paved the way for pretty much every story-driven FPS released since then.

Its sequel, Half-Life 2 was equally acclaimed and after its supplement Half-Life 2: Episode Two finished on a cliffhanger in 2007, fans have spend the past 13 years waiting for the next chapter in the story.

It arrived last year in the form of Half-Life: Alyx but I didn’t have a PC VR headset to review it with, so it sat on my Steam watchlist until I got a copy alongside the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite headset I reviewed recently, and was finally able to play it.

Of all the VR games I have played, I have only encountered two which I thought really took full advantage of everything the medium has to offer and provided a truly immersive, unique gaming experience where VR is integral to the offering.

One is London Studio’s superb Blood and Truth for the PlayStation VR. The other is Half-Life: Alyx – the subject of this review.

Half-life Alyx by Valve.

The game is set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, in the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth by a race known as The Combine. Your character is Alyx Vance, a member of the resistance organisation (and popular with fans following her prominent role in Half-Life 2) working against The Combine to free Earth from their rule.

As with Half-Life 2, the game is set in a place called City 17; located in an unspecified part of Eastern Europe, it is one of the last remaining cities following the Combine invasion.

In Half-Life: Alyx, your father – also a Resistance member – has been kidnapped by The Combine and is being taken off to their main prison for “enhanced interrogation”, so you set off to rescue him, making your way through City 17 and navigating its decaying and dangerous environment.

The game is viewed from a first-person perspective and makes excellent use of VR to create an immersive environment that’s a real treat for fans of the series.

 

This time around, your pal for this journey is superbly voiced by New Zealander Rhys Darby, whose quirky and somewhat deadpan comments serve as a wonderful counterpoint to the grim situations Alyx is experiencing in the game.

From a gameplay perspective, there’s an amazing amount of detail – it’s everything you’d expect from a Half-Life game in that regard – action, low-level horror, puzzles, and a good story.

The graphics are particularly impressive – easily the best I’ve encountered in a VR game and utterly faithful to the series as a whole, too.

There are a three different firearms in the game, and I was really impressed with how operating the handgun was similar to doing it in real life – press a button on the side to eject the spent magazine, grab a fresh one, load it into the grip, then pull the slide back and release it to load a round into the chamber.

In several moments throughout the game, I found myself beset by enemies and frantically trying to reload the gun as they bore down on me, accidentally dropping magazines or not being able to fire because I hadn’t worked the slide; it was a welcome change from the usual “Press R to reload” experience most FPS games offer on PC.

 

The puzzles in the game are well done too and take advantage of VR capabilities to great effect; including lining up glowing nodes in 3D space and seeing a puzzle solution come together because the environmental hint was viewed from just the right angle. It’s something that’s really hard to do in a traditional 2D format and something few VR games properly capitalise on.

Pleasingly, it’s not a short game by VR standards – you’re looking at somewhere between 12-15 hours to finish it, depending on your playstyle. This is in notable contrast to most designed-for-VR games I’ve played which seem to run about five hours or so.

Most of the issues Half-Life: Alyx has are issues with VR gaming as a whole, such as the sensors not always picking up exactly where your arms are, or not being able to adjust the view level when sitting down, or it being a bit confusing to adjust the controls to something you like.

 

The biggest issue facing the game is simply that it’s in VR and hardly anyone, comparatively speaking, will get to play it as a result. PC VR headsets are still expensive and require a powerful PC to run properly, and the newest official instalment for more than a decade in one of the most acclaimed PC games series of all times really should have been on a more widely accessible medium.

If you’ve got a compatible VR headset this is a must-play and represents a shining example of what current-generation VR gaming experiences can be when done properly.