Quote from FMPONE11 hours ago, FMPONE said: To each their own, but the game teased fighting a combine infected gorilla on the loose and I ended up doing a stupid puzzle where the solution is to touch a dimly lit ceiling.
Didn't pay much attention to the zoo itself I think because I dont remember gorilla on the loose. If that's true then that is indeed sad that they killed a cool story momentum there with such a puzzle.
Spoiler There's no gorilla 
It's just that it's a zoo and you have some time to visit the zoo before encountering the antlions. And since it's wrecked and it's a zoo, it's a cool scenario that could have happened for a boss fight. But it's just for the antlions.
I liked the theme of the zoo but it's true that it doesn't go too far, multiple areas for the game felt like that. Maybe they didn't want to take too much risk on that side to ensure that they would finish this game. There are very few friendly NPC with scenes, there are only 3 weapons, the combat options are quite limited with only guns, there is not as many puzzles as there was in HL2, there's no vehicle. But at least they finished it and the ending is a cool twist for a future Half-Life game.
Quote from leplubodeslapin6 hours ago, leplubodeslapin said: http://# Hide contents There's no gorilla
It's just that it's a zoo and you have some time to visit the zoo before encountering the antlions. And since it's wrecked and it's a zoo, it's a cool scenario that could have happened for a boss fight. But it's just for the antlions.
I liked the theme of the zoo but it's true that it doesn't go too far, multiple areas for the game felt like that. Maybe they didn't want to take too much risk on that side to ensure that they would finish this game. There are very few friendly NPC with scenes, there are only 3 weapons, the combat options are quite limited with only guns, there is not as many puzzles as there was in HL2, there's no vehicle. But at least they finished it and the ending is a cool twist for a future Half-Life game.
Yeah I'm aware there was no loose gorrila somewhere and I wasn't simply paying much attention 
What I tried to say is that I think I missed everything that hinted on next "big boss battle" Shawn wrote his post about.
Quote from Lizard2 hours ago, Lizard said: Yeah I'm aware there was no loose gorrila somewhere and I wasn't simply paying much attention
Spoiler If you go up to the gorilla statue, which is easy to miss, it's behind some glass you have to break. Alyx and Russ joke about gorilla zombies. I too was disappointed by the lack of gorolla zombie boss ?
In my opinion this was the most solid VR game up to date in terms of depth and narrative. It felt like a solid single player campaing experience with no compromises. We need more of those.
Spoiler Jeff really rustled my jimmies a bit but after awhile I think we felt a connection. Shame he ended up in the trash compactor.
okaaaay actually really good. someone got it for me as a gift so ive been kinda forced to play it ^^. i do not typically like anything spooky but this changed my mind. going through a scene 50% sheer bloody panicking and 50% shitting it then coming out of it like 'wow that was actually really well designed is awesome..
also the vortigaunts are the chillest dudes
Just finished it. Amazing ending.
So, my overall impression of this game is that wow, it looks incredible. The graphics, sound, animations etc are just wildly impressive. But, as a game, the experience was very inconsistent.
There are some big head-scratchers here for me. The excessive amount of inward opening doors has to be one, there are probably five times more than there should be throughout. Some of the encounters towards the end feel brutal in terms of limited ammo supply. Tracking in general just didn’t feel up to snuff, a good example of this is when you’re given megacharge lightning bolts at the end of the game: presumably, these are meant to make you feel super powerful. Instead I ended up hitting the walls most of the time. It was emblematic of how this game would have simply *worked* better mouse and keyboard. There are a lot of examples of that, sadly. The number of puzzles was egregious. Memorable ones like snagging the shotgun from the hanging guy over the well were severely outnumbered by mind-numbing electrical work/globe spinning. I’ve already gone over the Zoo level, that one was very poor from a design standpoint.
Jeff was the high point in terms of horror/design. It proceeded exactly how I felt the designers actually intended.
The story wraps up so nicely!
As an experience, though, HL:A just seemed to fundamentally misunderstand what I was enjoying about it: amazing, picture perfect graphics, and environmental atmosphere. Those things will age severely with time, but I wanted the game to have more contemplative+explorative moments. Something like waking through the eery train station with the NPCs in HL2, or the cramped apartments, something a bit more slice of life. It felt like the lesson from HL2 was “we overdid the car and boat areas”, but that lesson was too severely overlearned, such that all exploration seemed to have gotten cut entirely.
All the human NPC scenes felt, quite literally, rushed: as in, everyone is running around like their hair is on fire in the beginning. Or, at the end, when you’re in the weirdo apartments, everybody is a ghost. The game just needed a more visible and steady human touch I think, because it is overall such a mixture of alien and strange environments. I felt myself really appreciating the moments with the visible characters, because it breathed life into things. The dialogue was always really on point; for the most part. “I’m not in the Gun lending business anymore, Mmk?”
I’m tempted to just go slamming this game because, gosh, there are a lot of things I would have changed about this one, to be frank. So many design elements just grated over time, from puzzles to doors to pacing to VR tracking to combat to loading times to pacing, and did I mention pacing? This game takes you from a dead stop to rushing you into Combine combat sections where you die in three seconds, have to reload the game (which takes forever!) rinse and repeat probably 5-10 times per every combat beat. Brutal. Not my definition of fun.
Thankfully, it’s still one of the most insane media experiences I can ever remember. When the Vortigaunt was swirling that shit in the sewers around I was in awe, the effects, sound, and visuals around that point in the game are jaw dropping.
While far from the VR killer app, it’s proof that we might get there some day.
This game is what I would say is an incredible stepping stone. Legitimate criticism that comes it’s way in terms of gameplay can be refined.
Also, if you tease an infected gorilla, I’m going to dent your review score if we don’t get it 
I can’t say “perfect game 10/10” as I would have wanted to given the wait time for this Half-Life sequel, but I can applaud the ambition of it. I appreciate that we just got a new Half-Life game, and that it solved the cliffhanger in a truly elegant way. It just broke a lot of utterly mundane stuff along the way that needn’t have been broken — and to be blunt, would never have felt as broken on mouse and keyboard.
Yaaaas, love that this comes out the day I receive my VR!
I tried Source 2 editor that came out with Dota2, and I was really amazed to see how awesome the modeling tools are, in many ways superior to Maya's. Can't wait to give this a go!
Animation Toolset:
[Blocked Image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYFyfyJV…jpg&name=medium]
Demo of motion matching tech:
Anyone reading this should know that there probably will not be another one of these types of opportunities for a while. just sayin
Feels lile 2004 all over again.
Only we grew older, hairy, fat and we all got heavy devices on our heads.
Ganna bring back Interlopers.net and Iwannamap.com LETS GO ?
I'm glad you don't need a vr headset to do stuff
I saw a lot of legacy from previous Half Life game, like all npc_from previous games but not working. I wonder if this will be added in some ways ? For exmaple for people who satrted a mod but felt a bit lazy because, well, ep2 is like 13 years old !! Then the want to try it on Source 2 
Hey it just popped back in my mind that one of the challenges with VR is the player's height, as that affects scale of the environment etc.
What do they do in HL:A in this regard? Are the spaces built to accommodate taller people, the whole map is scaled up in proportion...?
Valve talk about it here:
Gosh I've watched that when was released, I either missed that bit or already forgotten... gonna have to go through it again
The Half-Life: Alyx intro has been recreated in Far Cry 5
video link for the lazy
For those playing with the devkit... you still need a VR headset or can you somewhat test the maps as a normal game? My understanding was there's no non-hacky way to play without VR but I haven't researched
Quote from blackdog1 hour ago, blackdog said: For those playing with the devkit... you still need a VR headset or can you somewhat test the maps as a normal game? My understanding was there's no non-hacky way to play without VR but I haven't researched
You can fire up the editor in non-vr mode. This allows you to walk around the map with WSAD.
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