Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours
TL;DR: For anyone interested in Half-Life, Valve or game development in general, this is an insightful and inspiring experience that takes great advantage of a compelling storytelling medium.
In the words of Robin Walker, this is “the story of how we fixed Valve”. The reader is privy to the conversations, considerations and concerns of Valve employees as they attempt to shore up instability and quell the anarchy caused by a company “boss free since ‘96”. This storybook provides information on previously unknown projects including story ideas, concept art, script excerpts and development timelines; brief insights into the backgrounds and work lives of various Valve employees as well as anecdotes and conversations; and a greater understanding of Valve’s shift in focus to developing both hardware and software.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Documentary Singleplayer Games.
Visually it looks good, it’s presented well, and like Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar it’s certainly interesting. But it reflects a flawed product, leaves a ton of stories out (including the flaws), and left me questioning if it justified a pricetag.
Missing pieces:
Reliability issues
There was a push to link the sales of the Valve Index and Half-Life: Alyx but there were a lot of hardware problems, with a critical one being the unreliability of the Index controllers - a problem compounded by poor design choices in Alyx that made playing with one controller far more difficult than it needed to be, along with a badly handled RMA system (and the impact of the pandemic ontop of that bad RMA system). Why would a book on the exact subject of those products leave all of that out, especially if it was written by a journalist?
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Zero Point
It’s all very interesting and cool and awesome. But not all of it is. Some parts are downright boring. But that’s cool too, because I’m interested. And I like documentries… where people talk and talk and talk …. and then something happens that’s minutely interesting …. and then more talking. Kinda distracts the awesomeness of the visuals. I wish there was a directors cut where they cut out all the voiceovers.
When it comes to VR, I really don’t care about what life would be like 20 years from now… I’d rather immerse myself in the virtual reality of now…. without someone breathing down my neck about 2035 and whether it will fit in with our post-real neo-simplistic social cloud-based pseudo lives that we are already living in.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Documentary Indie Games.
Very disapointed in myself for buying this. Even at 5 dollars this was a waste of money. Performance issues galor in this thing. After reading multiple reviews about this not working properly I thought to myself Ill download the demo to see if it ran ok on my setup. To my surprise the demo works flawlessly on my setup. So I bought it. Actual game runs terribly after space scene. Even the same scenes that worked good in the demo ran horrendous in full version. Then it stoped at the run down building scene near the end. I love how they made the demo work great but the full version blows. Zero point did a full bait and switch on me. I don’t understand how prerecorded video scenes can be this hard to do. Wish i could get a refund for this garbage.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
qrth-phyl
qrth-phyl falls in the class of games like Lumines or Space Invaders Extreme that offer simple, familiar mechanics, carefully tuned and immaculately presented. It’s a love letter to snake-like arcade games, with easter-egg tributes to the genre’s innovators. You alternate between snaking around the outside of rectangles or rectangular prisms and free-movement 3D snaking inside those prisms. The idea of 3D snake worried me initially, seeming like a potential camera disaster, but the implementation is rock solid and I haven’t had a death that didn’t feel like my fault. Playing well increases “corruption,” which increases the difficulty of the proc-gen levels but offers more dots and a higher chance of encountering the treasured blue dots, which turn your tail into dots for you to consume like Pac-Man CE:DX’s satisfying ghost trains. The dynamic difficulty system persists between runs, and it feels like one of the best such systems I’ve encountered, quickly dialing in a consistently engaging level of challenge.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Documentary Experimental Games.
I absolutely love this game. The aesthetics are working great for the retro-arcade style. The controls are responsive and the game is challenging. Also the hidden sequence adds yet another dimension to the game (pun not intended).
I got this game years ago on IndieGameStand. That store doesn’t operate anymore and I had the only .exe file I managed to download before they went out of business. And here we are, qrth-phyl finally safely in my steam library.
I’m looking forward for future updates. Maybe VR support could be nice?
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
COVID: The Outbreak
get it in 80% off
one of the best game during Lockdown or Quarintie or stay at home order !
compared to another Honor/ shooting / War fighting games flooding in Ste-am Va-lve playing million per day
this is great education game for upperclass and Private school or mutilanguastic or Frequency traveler to learn how the Commerical tycoon/Politican thinking
however according to mogolia/KAKZ conlony PRC citizen think , the wuhan bio-Weapon dead rate is 5% but if they don’t Work in nightlife, the dead rate is 100%
– Real player with 21.2 hrs in game
So I found this game by a pure accident a couple hours before getting published and rushed to buy it, hoping to find a game that’s complex, detailed, realistic and most importantly, let’s me cope with the zombie apocalypse going currently in the world and the quarantine shitshow.
The game turned out to be exactly what I expected and far more, the amount of data available is truly astonishing and immersive, all the actions you can take, quarantine, public order maintenance, research, border closing, decisions you have to make during various random events that can appear, all this makes for an excellent simulation, and the fact that I’ve received a product that already looks very polished despite probably being made rather quickly is mindblowing. I really hope it’ll be updated accordingly as the situation develops and more knowledge about the virus will be gained.
– Real player with 18.6 hrs in game
The Book of Distance
What can I say that hasn’t been said already?
About 30 minutes, not much to “do” but so much to read & feel.
You’ll need a solid 1.5m x 1.5m space to get the full effect.
Ok, enough with the technical stuff…
Such a wonderful VR experience!!! Just wow.
It resonated with me so much, (lens got foggy, something in my eye…both eyes, weird) as I am first generation after my father immigrated to the United States.
He worked very hard & for almost nothing for decades to provide for our family. We were very poor, no Nike’s or name brand stuff but always had food.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
This game is a great way to introduce VR to beginners.
Truth be told I did not believe the other review when they said it will make u cry.
The first 3 minutes when i played this the atmosphere just captured my attention and It made me teared up because of the ambient. From the tone of the narrator to his father’s point of view. It got me on edge. Granted there are a few flaws in the game. But from the way The game was made and told You know that the developers wanted to capture the story telling. Making an immersive experience. Keep in mind that this story is a sad one.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Once Upon a Sea
Once Upon a Sea is a poetic, interactive XR documentary telling the tragic tale of the legendary Dead Sea. Through a physical exploration of the sea’s forbidden, moonlike landscapes, to intimate encounters with local characters, the user gets a rare glimpse into one of the world’s most dangerous, soon to be extinct, wonders. Centuries of human intervention and political neglect have turned the Dead Sea into a precarious place. Its water levels have dropped dramatically, leaving behind sinkholes and collapsing beaches. The experience offers a deep insight into the complexity and very human impact of this ecological and geopolitical crisis. Once Upon a Sea is our call to action.