What happens when one of the most influential game developers of all time writes a love letter to Virtual Reality?
If you’re not familiar with the Half-Life games series, please consult with my subconscious; you’ll find traces of it everywhere. The first game’s release in 1998 was a watershed moment. It simultaneously dropped “levels”, “secrets” and “score”, which had been central to first person shooters up to that point. It was instead all about the story, the atmosphere, the journey.
Half-Life was an experience, not a game; a tale of bravery, ingenuity and survival against all the odds.
It was also a great game. It was phenomenally successful as a result, launching Valve towards the place at the centre of PC gaming that they enjoy today.
There were numerous Half-Life releases after the first, all well-received. The only curious thing about the series is that it was never finished—the story is still open—and it’s not clear if it ever will be.
Then VR arrived, with Vive as a major driver of the software and technology. I wrote about it:
One of the downsides to VR so far has been the somewhat limited range of software available; which company could afford to invest in a first class AI gaming experience, with the market so small?
Valve answered that question resoundingly when they released Half-Life Alyx.
Released in 2020, Half-Life Alyx features a different protagonist to the main series and slots somewhere in the middle of the series timeline.
In terms of story and gameplay it fits right in; what’s new here is all around VR.
The biggest new thing that the game does is something you might not even notice.
VR software has a problem: it gives you hands, by means of precisely tracked controllers; and an environment to interact with; and immediately you try to touch anything, the illusion is spoiled because what you get is either no response or a large, useful interaction. So for example you might be able to pick up an item or move it.
What happens instead in Half-Life Alyx is that your virtual hands do something natural. If you put them next to an object, they grip it, or rest on it, or in any case react to it some way.
Screenshot; note the hand curling to meet the watering can
It turns out that if your VR hands behave naturally, your brain doesn’t bother to tell you that they are out of sync with your actual hands. It’s what you would have done, so it feels like you did it.
The increase in the immersion of the experience is spectacular; it makes the world real in a way that was a first for consumer VR and, as far as I know, for VR as a whole.
Given the option, who wouldn’t want to have telekinesis?
In Half-Life Alyx you wear gloves that allow you to point, grab and pull remote objects; they fly towards you and you catch them. It is a joyful experience.
In the video—no screenshot, because it really wouldn’t show what is happening—the player holds a trash can in their left hand and use telekinesis with their right to pull and grab items of trash before stacking them in the trash can.
It’s as fun as it sounds.
The game really focuses in on what’s simple. The developers knew this was breaking new ground—so they took care to do it well.
Reloading your weapons is central to any first person shooter; typically it’s a matter of pressing “R” when there is a lull in action. For whatever reason, the convention is to ignore the way guns actually work with rounds and clips, and just have the reload action magically mash ammo from your stash into the gun.
In Half-Life Alyx you get none of this. To reload, you interact with the weapon.
For example to reload the pistol you eject the old clip and throw it away—if it has bullets in it, they stay in it—grab a fresh clip, usually from your backpack, insert it into the gun then pull the slider to reload.
This turns the mundane reload mechanic into something wonderful.
You might drop the new clip on the floor, and have to dive to pick it up. You might forget to pull the slider of the pistol, and find that pulling the trigger does nothing. You now care intimately about the exact state of your clips—just as you would have to with a real weapon.
I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?"—Dirty Harry
You can now experience close equivalents to all those classic movie moments for yourself. It’s great.
Half-Life Alyx takes roughly 12 hours to play, and cost something in the region of 50 million dollars to develop. That comes to about 70 thousand dollars for every minute you spend in the game.
It was effort well spent. Every second, every event, every experience, is packed with detail; and care has been taken to use what VR has to offer without making it about the VR.
For example, one of the opponents you met in Half-Life 2 is the strider, a gigantic robot:
Battling Striders in Half-Life 2
VR has something special when it comes to interactions with things that are huge, it conveys scale in a way that no screen can; so it is no surprise that you meet striders in Half-Life Alyx, too; and that that experience is something you will not soon forget.
If you like games, or have an interest in VR, Half-Life Alyx is currently one of a kind.
Highly recommended.
So far today, 2024-11-25, feedback has been received 2 times. Of these, 0 were likely from bots, and 2 might have been from real people. Thank you, maybe-real people!
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