Half-Life Alyx

[leplubodeslapin]

I've only heard about that solution but never looked into it (i don't have a problem with the cable for now).

[blackdog]

~

@[HP] quick google search says that’s only £35 on eBay. Well worth looking into, especially if you have the space like @dux

[dux]

On 4/5/2020 at 6:35 PM, leplubodeslapin said:

9m x 12m ?! Wow that's big!

Have you considered hanging the cables on the ceiling ?

Nah foot not meters my house aint that big haha

[dux]

27 hours in and I think I'm near the end  

[Radu]

Damn, 27 hours.. Are you stopping at every toilet in the game?

[dux]

Haha nah. About 7 of those hours are me leaving the game on and wrestling with the headset. But I've gotten a solid 20 hours of game time, easily. I like to look at the details and see if I can find anything broken (lotta gaps in the walls if you look for them  ) 

[Radu]

The Gaps in the Walls by  H.P. dux

[dux]

Ok I just finished it 5 minutes ago. I'm gonna go off for a bit and digest this experience and come back and post my thoughts. Because I know you are all dying to know what I think.  

[will2k]

The first mod that will let you finish Half-Life: Alyx without VR is here

 

[Vaya]

2 minutes ago, will2k said:

The first mod that will let you finish Half-Life: Alyx without VR is here

 

 

[blackdog]

2 hours ago, will2k said:

The first mod that will let you finish Half-Life: Alyx without VR is here

 

 

[Zarsky]

Seems almost as exciting as watching a movie blindfolded.

[dux]

Ok here we go. Long, long rambling nonsense.

Spoiler

 

I've already spoken on the headset so we'll skip that.

Ok onto the game!

I'm just gonna type out my experience from what I remember the most. This will be my descent into madness...

The opening vista is pretty incredible. Did anyone play with the radio and tune it to get the G-Man music that you hear in Half-life 2 on the TV in the caved in apartments? Brilliant little touch. If only I knew then what that was really hinting at.

The Striders walking around and up buildings carrying power cables, oh man. The sounds they made were fantastic.

Fucking Snark! You can FEED THE SNARK! GOTY.

A picture of baby dog!

The poster in the laundry room about a missing cat. Nice little detail again.

Metrocops! Can't wait to shoot these guys later on! Haha, yeah nah have some dudes in a boiler suit instead. Oh well.

I like Russell. Shame you only get to see him once and then he just becomes a voice in your head. Kinda weird this whole talking in a Half-Life game, not saying bad! Just it's new!

Man barnacles are weird and gross in VR! I sure do love my hard hat.

Shooting my first zombie was a complete panicked cluster fuck haha. I can't aim for shit. I was aiming down the sight of my gun but game said no. My aim was very off, apparently. So I ended up closing one eye when I aimed and that seemed to get results.

I like opening doors. Any door, all the fucking doors!

The environments and the level of detail are incredible but I don't know what it is - I'm not feeling like I'm in city 17. Maybe because it's VR and I'm just not used to it yet, being so used to experiencing Half-Life on a screen. Or maybe it was because I was struggling with the headset it kept me from being completely immersed.

Getting the shotgun was incredibly confusing for me to the point I had to google how to get it out of the zombies hand. I kept doing what I had been taught which was pulling with the grabbity gloves but it wouldn't come loose. I don't know why it never occurred to me to just grab it out of his hand. I just assumed that if the grabbity gloves can't pull it out of his hand what difference would grabbing it do? I thought you had to draw him all the way up and drop him down so when the rope extended fully the force of it would get the gun out of his hand or something. Nah, over thought it.

Headcrabs are hilarious and cute now.

Man, the bit before the vort with all the paintings of black mesa and gordon, etc. So cool! And how the cardboard shows you the button combo, one of the most memorable parts of the game for me.

Ohhhh it's the twirly corridor from the trailer!!!!! Ohhhh shit it's a vort! Oh fuck he's tall. Oh damn he just ripped that headcrab in half like it was cardboard. Very cool.

The bit where you get your flashlight was cool and creepy. I expected worse to be thrown at me than 3 poison headcrabs, though. I was anticipating a poison zombie here or a fast zombie or something but nope. Slightly anti climactic. Those shadows though.

The further I progress the more dead combine I start to find and I say out loud to myself at one point "Who fuck is killing all these dudes?" Is it Barney?! Oh boy I hope I get to meet Barney! Haha, yeah nah. Just lots of dead combine for whatever reason. I guess it was from zombies and headcrabs but these guys are pretty tough to fight and they are getting wiped out by some zombies? Nahhhhh. I felt like someone had come through here already and done all the hard work for me...

I find a combine boiler guy with half his mask shot of and take a closer look at it. Man his head is all darth vadered and shit, gnarly. They still have regular american accents though when they talk? Weird.

Crashing the train was coooool!

Oh shit it's dad, don't fall dad I got you buddy... just gotta reach out and grab yo- BONK. Punched my wall.

Oh neat the hanging dead boiler suit guys from one of the trailers! Looking at how they ended up like this, man, they must be braindead to get caught on these barnacles. *proceeds to get caught on a barnacle*

By this point I'm kinda starting to find the environments kinda samey and then I reach the hotel and damn look at that combine shit. Dope. Lets get in there!

The hotel was cool for the first 3rd... then it started to drag on a bit too long for me. The room with the zombie flushing the toilet and walking out was strange and also weirdly amusing at the same time. Then I found this cool newspaper on a bench about the 7 hour war!

I think I got all the guns now. The guns are super cool to use and are amazingly detailed and sound fantastic but to me it didn't really matter what weapon I chose to use as long as it had ammo.

It's cool I guess that Russ is talking to me... but I sure would love some more character interactions it's like one of the strongest points of the game for me.

Man it's really sporey in here.

Who's that I can hear calling out? Sounds like the dad from rick and morty. Oh cool some character interaction aga- and it's over.

Oh boy. Ok so we are at that bit of the game. It's Jeff. I'm probably about to say the most controversial thing I'm ever going to say on MapCore...

I didn't enjoy the Jeff portion of the game.

Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. I found it a frustrating experience please dont vacban me  

Swiftly moving on

The ant lions were kinda cool.

Ok it's night time baby oh it looks pretty now and we getting real close to this floating boi. We gonna save mofucking gordon freeman. But why is he up in there though what the hell this shit getting wild now.

Oh I'm in the walls now baby nothing can hide from me not even this random woman talking to herself wait what the fuck. Oh shit getting real now. Whoever she is, is making sense too - I'm here wrecking your shit combine grub, you really should move this floaty prison cuz im about to drop it like a hot mix tape

I really really dropped it. That was really cool! When I was pulling all the levers and Russ frantically losing his shit at me pulling all the wrong ones. Good stuff!

Oh it's a dead strider, cool! I bet he's totally gonna get up. Yeah he got up. This was a fun section right up until you get on the very conveniently placed gun haha. I struggled a bit using the gun, found it a bit clunky.

What's that dad? Don't go in? Too late for that now. We in the floaty prison and I was wondering in the back of my mind if there was going to be something happening to your grabbity gloves like the gravity gun in HL2 and yes it did occur! wasn't expecting to be going full dragon ball z, though. That was pretty fun!

These floaty mirror rooms were fucking creepy and weird and the section of corridor that like leans away from you genuinely gave me a brief sense of vertigo. Marvellous. Then a fucking headcrab jumped out the floor at me. Fuckin jump scares man! And then a dead body rose up like it was fucking possessed and I shit my pants.

Oh shit we on a platform now and there's like a portal to zion ahead of me or something. Ok my hands are glowing what do I do here? Took me like 20 seconds to realise you had to grab the things beside you. Derp. Ok let's do this and see who we got here. Hello Gordon!

Hey wait a minute that silhouette isn't Gordon Freeman! 

Oh my fucking god. It's G Boi! This part of the game is an absolute mesmerising masterpiece.

The way he looks. He looks fucking REAL. I got goosebumps on my arms and neck when it went dark and all you could hear was his voice, holy crap his voice! Mike Shapiro nailed this to a rocket and blasted it into space. Amazing. Then you hear footsteps, then two glowing eyes slowly drift towards you and he steps into the light. Fuck man. This was the best part of the game and absolutely blew my dick off. For all my gripes with the headset and other sections of the game, this made all that go away. Well done.

I then obviously stood there jaw agape reading the credits. I made sure to spot out Bram and Magnar! Good job guys, you achieved the highest MapCore level attainable. Being in the credits of a Half-Life game in 2020.  

Hold on. Why is there an H.E.V sound.

HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED BABY 

 

 

[-HP-]

https://www.pcgamer.com/almost-1-million-new-people-had-a-vr-headset-after-half-life-alyx-launched/

1 mil, not bad at all. Specially considering it's nearly impossible to buy a VR headset right now, in normal times that number could easily be double.

Now the ball is on the side of all the other VR devs, after playing and finishing Alyx, people will be hungry for more games to play on their headsets. 

[Radu]

1 hour ago, [HP] said:

Now the ball is on the side of all the other VR devs, after playing and finishing Alyx, people will be hungry for more games to play on their headsets. 

You'd think so, but maybe people are really not that hungry. If you look at the achievements on Steam, only 30% have managed to finish the game. And that's funny because people couldn't even be bothered to get to the end of the game despite the significant financial investment on their side. I think HL:A is a well made game with some awesome moments to be experienced in VR, but now that the initial hype has died down, I can't say that I want to replay it anytime soon or experience another HL in VR or keep playing in VR. 

There's some people that say VR is the future and are pretty convinced about it, but I just can't see it.