Half-Life: Alyx, Best VR Game to Play in 2020

Valve corporation’s first appearance brand, Half-Life, was released in 1998. It gathered in excess of 50 games of the year rewards. PC Gamer even called it the Best PC Game Ever. Since then, Valve corporation released lots of labels that changed the world. Today, millions of people play Valve’s games on a daily basis.

In relation to continuing the service Valve corporation released a new game, Half-Life: Alyx of their Half-Life series on March 23, 2020.

Today TechShouts try to share the half-life: Alyx game-play experience with you. So, lets started.

Overview of Half-Life: Alyx

Half-Life: Alyx is Valve’s VR return to the Half-Life series. It’s the story of an incredible battle against a spiteful alien race known as the Combine, set between the procedures of Half-Life and Half-Life 2.

Playing as Alyx Vance, you are humanity’s only chance for survival. The Association’s control of the planet since the Black Mesa incident has only supported as they enclose the remaining residents in cities. Among them are some of Earth’s supreme researchers: you and your father, Dr. Eli Vance.

As founders of a fledgling Resistance, you’ve continued your secret scientific activity—performing critical research and building helpful tools for the few humans brave enough to encounter the Combine.

Each day, you learn more about your enemy, and day by day you work toward outcome a weakness.

Half-Life: Alyx- game environment

Obviously, massive expectations go with the first half-life game in 13 years, and for the franchises return to come in the form of a VR exclusive is undoubtedly bold. But at each step of the way, Half-life: Alyx shows that nearly everything the franchise did best thrives in VR. The conservation puzzles that require a keen eye. The threat of a head crab skipping for your face. The mysterious storytelling. The series Staples are as powerful as ever here and in its greatest moments. Half-life: Alex surely shows you why it couldn’t have been done any other way.

Half-Life: Alyx – Roleplay

In true half-life form, the complete game goes from morning to night in a single shot. A first-person action in which you as Alex Vance trek through City 17. Efforts it’s to save her dad Eli Vance from the clutches of the combine.

Half-Life: Alyx – VR Game Experience

There’s a newfound intimacy captured in doing the things that half-life always asks of you. As it’s a VR game, the way you look at and process your environments basically changes, thus making the solutions to conservation puzzles more of a personal achievement than before. Just finding the exact objects to progress was acceptable with a keyboard and mouse. But when it’s your own hands, turning the valves, pulling the levers or hitting the switches or turning your head to see the results. These become enticing gameplay mechanics rather than a means of breaking up the pace without waypoints or objective markers to guide you. Refined visual indications and calculated level design lead you to the solutions and progress feel earned because of that.

Half-Life: Alyx – Upgraded Gravity Tools

You may not have the gravity gun here. But the spirit of its physics-based interaction lives through the gravity gloves, both as a sensible, thematic, fit and tool for proper VR game-play. They allow you to magnetically pull objects from afar and catching them midair is always satisfying, especially when snatching a grenade off a combined soldier to throw it back in their face.

Half-Life: Alyx – Multi-Tool Functions

What’s just as important is Alyx’s Multi-tool, which serves as a way to engage in the game simple yet enjoyable spatial puzzles. Rewiring circuitry to unlock paths forward as the multi-tools most crucial function though, still need a sharp eye tracing electrical currents and cables to progress.

Half-Life: Alyx – Enemy’s Activities & Atmosphere

Half-life Alex revolves around the balance of puzzle elements and suspenseful combat. It might not have the bombastic fights from series past. But most of that has been exchanged for close encounters. Sometimes tapping into a horde that Half-life had only previously toyed with. Head grabs aren’t just annoying pests. They will literally latch onto your head or cause the occasional jump scare.

The same goes for barnacles. You do not want your own virtual body dragged up toward the ceiling by its disgusting slimy tongue.

Other scenarios have you navigating through pitch-black darkness with your wrist-mounted flashlight. There’s also an entire chapter dedicated to an invincible mutant, that can’t see but has a sharp hearing to chase you down. Combine soldiers may still be dummies but when they’re coming for you in VR their threat becomes imminent. You’ll physically duck in and out of cover and peek around corners ready to bust shots and frantically reload like any good VR shooter requires though, here in its distinctly Half-Life form, you’ll hear combined radio chatter and the high pitched ring of them flat-lining. All the while, the odd comfort of the old school techno beats during the heated firefights kick in.

Half-Life: Alyx – Weapons & Collectible Item

There are many types of combined soldiers or styles of encounters. But I was always eager to face them head-on in each scenario. Alyx packs light when it comes to weapons with only a pistol, shotgun, and SMG. All three have a few upgrades to make them more effective, which must be done at combine fabricator stations using residents.

The only real collectible item in the game ammo is often scared and resins tucked away around corners. So scavenging is a core element and honestly, the slim arsenal fits the styled combat sequences with each weapon effective in their own right.

Half-Life: Alyx – Facing difficulties in gameplay

Overall, Half-life Alex takes many of the concepts we’ve seen to evolve since VR inception and distills them to their fundamentals. It brings them together to create a VR experience that’s a full cohesive whole and the game gives multiple accessibility options to mitigate motion sickness or make the game playable if you have physical limitations. All that said, there are a few shortcomings. Doors and mechanisms you need to grip don’t always react to your movements the way you’d expect. And sometimes there are just too many unimportant objects that obscure the thing that you’re actually trying to pull in with gravity gloves. Thankfully, these instances are rare enough as to not dragged down otherwise intuitive mechanics.

Half-Life

Alyx has far-reaching implications for the future of the franchise, both in where it goes next and what forms future games can even take. And in true half-life fashion, more questions and answers linger. But for good reason. And now, without a reminder of why you love the series, to begin with. It made good on his shift to VR, elevating many of the aspects we’ve come to love about the series. The intimacy of VR brings you closer to a world you thought you knew. Over the past 22 years, and as it concludes, Half-life: Alyx will hit you with powerful, unforgettable moments that truly transcend VR tropes and make the 13 years wait all worth it.

System requirements

MINIMUM OS: Windows 10

Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600

Memory: 12 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM

Writer: M Zahidul Kabir