Steam Community :: KUWNA

Recommended

132.2 hrs on record (101.4 hrs at review time)

Great game with friends

Posted 23 November, 2022.

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Recommended

5,969.9 hrs on record (1,511.2 hrs at review time)

OG

Posted 23 September, 2022.

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Recommended

21.4 hrs on record (5.3 hrs at review time)

yes

Posted 20 November, 2021.

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Recommended

46.0 hrs on record (32.3 hrs at review time)

golf wang

Posted 9 April, 2021.

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Recommended

21.6 hrs on record (7.4 hrs at review time)

Contains spoilers!

Alyx has some of the most impressive VR wizardry I’ve ever seen. A lot of it is tied to your gravity gloves, which are both your virtual hands and user interface. You can also use these to pull items toward you. You just aim a hand in the objects general direction and flick your wrist to whip it toward you … and then you have to catch it. It makes something mundane, like picking up ammo off the ground, fun and interactive.

Gunfights are also exhilarating in VR. I was actually ducking and peeking behind cover, sometimes even dropping onto my knees (thank god I played in a carpeted room). This gives fights a kind of tension you can’t feel in a normal first-person experience. Small things also stand out, like medical stimpacks that you have to literally shoot into your chest or thigh and the grenades that you have to squeeze in your hand to activate.

You have just a few guns in Half-Life: Alyx, but you can improve all of them with special stations throughout the game. For example, you can add a laser sight to your pistol, extra ammo storage for your assault rifle, or even a grenade launcher for your shotgun.

These upgrades cost resin, which are scattered around the game. And I do mean that they are scattered. You’ll be turning over buckets, looking into the rafters, and opening drawers trying to find as much resin as possible. It’s a great incentive to have you exploring every corner and nook of every room.

Puzzles are a big focus in Alyx. Sometimes you’re hacking into electronics by connecting nodes in a holographic display (which you can rotate with one hand). Others are based on your environment, like figuring out how to get power to an lift and then dislodge it from a a giant pipe stuck in its supports.

One sequence involves a nasty monster that will kill you as soon as it comes into contact with you. On the bright side, it’s blind. However, it can hear just fine. You can do things like throw bottles to distract it. The game has a lot of fun with this part, and it’s easily the highlight of the whole experience. Sometimes you’ll open a door and knock over a glass, only giving you a second to reach out and grab it before it crashes to the ground. You can even cover your mouth by moving your real hands up to your face.

Half-Life 2 is one of my favorite games ever, so it’s great to finally be playing a new game in this series. Even small things, like seeing a headcrab again or hearing that iconic Half-Life healing sound effect, get me excited. And since it’s been so many years since the last Half-Life game, 2007’s Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the graphics and character animations have seen some big upgrades.

I was worried that Half-Life: Alyx being a prequel would mean that we wouldn’t see the series’ story move forward. This isn’t the case.

Half-Life: Alyx is one of the most immersive and impressive VR games out there. If you’re a fan of VR or of the Half-Life series, it’s an easy recommendation. But if you don’t want to play something this stressful at this particular moment, I wouldn’t blame you. This game makes Half-Life 2 look like a fun jot through Disneyland. Alyx ups the scares and the pressure with its focus on survival-horror.

Posted 25 November, 2020.

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