The sensory overload of Half-Life: Alyx points to the promise and problems of VR
The story is light, which only fuels my suspicion that the game’s Half-Life branding is meant as a Trojan Horse for VR. Still, the industry would do well to learn from Alyx’s successes and failures.
Manually loading magazines for your weapon feels like a revelation. The mere act of emptying and refilling chambers is recontextualized to something more frantic and harrowing under the hail of gunfire and the threat of facehugging aliens.
But the most important new feature is Alyx’s “gravity” glove. Aim your hand toward an object (anything from a bullet magazine to a tin can), hold down a button and flick your wrist toward yourself. The item will fly into your hand (provided you catch it). This trick never felt old, not once. But more importantly, it solves an ever-present problem in VR games in registering how to “collect” items. Gamefying reloading with simple hand motions takes a few minutes to get used to, but the sooner you get used to it, the faster you’ll feel like a super-soldier Jedi.
A midgame threat forces you to make as little noise as possible, a classic horror movie trope ala “A Quiet Place.” When two cans fell and I caught them just before they hit the ground, I purposefully whispered “yes!” rather than saying it out loud. The creativity of the moment, my quick response to it, and the terror of the situation all folded into a perfect virtual reality moment. This segment will likely become a popular discussion point among horror game developers.
Interacting with the virtual world is the game’s strength. Alyx’s hacking tool can manipulate electronic locks that circle around your body. Precise lever-pulling never felt more intuitive, because pulling on a lever is just like real life.
And yet, less than an hour in, the limitations start to become clear. As the game ramps up in intensity — enemy fire all around you — you’ll start missing the agility of standard first-person shooters like Doom Eternal. You’ll wish you could open doors with the press of a button, not by laboriously grabbing the handle and pushing it open.
It’s fair to compare Valve’s Half-Life series to Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” Both are less known for their stories at this point, and more for how those stories were told, and their place in culture. Half-Life: Alyx is the closest thing to a “must-have” title in virtual reality. Ultimately, what Half-Life: Alyx is today is less important than what it may inspire.
See the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/03/31/half-life-alyx-vr-problems-future/