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 3D 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
Eye of the Beholder
My Experience
The game got off to a semi-interesting start, and I became invested in the story pretty quickly. It’s always a little odd playing a game that was designed for VR without a headset, as the sensation of being on rails and being teleported forwards is more prominent.
The game fell apart a for me during the scene that takes place after the radio repair. The character that had been helping me said to an enemy combatant, “There is no place for your kind anymore […] You Sokranian scum get what you deserve […] You don’t belong in our country.” Immediately, I lost sympathy for this character and his “side” in the conflict. As an American, I just can’t get behind this sentiment. These statements hit too close to home with respect to the way that some intolerant people see those south of our borders. Of course, on the other hand, we have a faction that is acquiring and planning chemical weapon attacks that run afoul of international humanitarian law. So no sympathy here either.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Documentary Casual Games.
Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2
This is a mostly narrative-driven, cinematic experience with some basic interactions. You’re basically in a war-torn situation in the Middle East involving the possible use of chemical weapons. You basically have to decide which side you’ll be helping early on and then live with the possible consequences. Whole thing took me 16 minutes.
The game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps. There is no locomotion, instead you are automatically teleported from one scene to the next. You use a flashlight to highlight objects to either make a decision on how to act or clear an objective.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game