The jump that Virtual Reality needed. Reviews of the new installment of Half-Life on PC.
There are times when the wait is worth it. It is almost thirteen years since we received the last installment of the well-known Valve saga. Since then, video games have changed enough that these last episodes begin to show their years. What were once spectacular sequences, gigantic battles or innovative puzzles have become everyday with the passage of time, the minimum to expect from a blockbuster. Whoever jumped into Half Life 2 and its episodes for the first time now could be excused for not understanding the real revolution that the gravity pistol or the frenetic rhythm of those adventures once supposed. But what concerns us today is different. Welcome to Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's new masterpiece
Something like that Valve employees must have been feeling in recent years. People asked for more Half Life but they were aware of the shortcomings that time had revealed. A Half Life 3 that continues the story using current technology to simply add new enemies, new weapons, and new battle scenarios would have pleased fans, yes, but that's not what Half Life is for, despite what the Black Mesa's recent success can demonstrate. For Valve this is a saga to bring up to cross borders. It has taken Virtual Reality to progress (not in small part thanks to Valve's own efforts) to have a truly worthwhile frontier. Unlike the large contingent of skeptics of this technology, the Seattle company has seen potential to take the next big step in video game design. With the ferocity of a host of dogs after a few weeks of forced hunger, they have jumped on this opportunity and the result transcends the current limitations of this technology to offer us one of the most exciting experiences in our environment.
Return to the City 17
Half Life: Alyx follows, as its name suggests, the adventures of Alyx Vance during the period between Half Life 1 and Half Life 2. Its spin-off nature does not mean that the story is in the background, far from it. Those who missed Valve's classic charisma when it came to creating their stories shouldn't worry, that old-time charm remains and permeates every aspect of the story. At the forefront of the comic touch of this adventure is Russel, an affable member of the resistance against the Combine Empire. Since we have known this scientist, who sins too excessively sincere, his dialogue with Alyx serves not only to get to know him but the latter as well. Through their conversations we discover new facets of Alyx Vance's personality, her extreme curiosity about the world before Combine being our favorite.
The traditional structure is kept here when it comes to telling the story, with most going through the aforementioned dialogues during our adventure and the most important parts taking all our attention to present us with frankly spectacular action and drama sequences. We are afraid of ruining any part of this adventure and therefore we ask you to trust us when we assure you that, regardless of the format in which it should be played, this is a full-fledged Half Life adventure, with little or nothing to envy. previous installments and that will leave both fans and new initiates in the saga perfectly satisfied.
But almost more important than the story is how it is told and it is here where we must begin to talk about the typical idiosyncrasies of virtual reality. In the last decade we have become used to action games exposing us to increasingly lasciviously explosive scenes, so much so that it has lost some of its effect. The first time we see a big bang from a helicopter in an action game we can't help but be impressed, the fifteenth maybe not so much. But here these explosive scenes take a new look thanks to the sense of presence that only Virtual Reality can bring, truly putting ourselves in the shoes of those who experience them and never taking control of the player. The feeling is more of living the events than of being a simple spectator with the possibility of moving the camera. The great variety of these scenes only increases your delight.
Designing over limitations
Today virtual reality continues to take its first steps and it's time to discuss how it got here. Until now the games that had come out could have stood out in one facet or another, but none could be considered a great work within the entirety of our world. Games like Beat Saber or Superhot VR took a single mechanic and polished it to exhaustion. Lone Echo taught that you could make a good story in virtual reality and it was a real graphic delight, but it lacked a rather bland gameplay. Asgard’s Wrath was finally offering an adventure of legendary proportions, but its mechanics were simple and its playable loop ended up boring. Games like Blade and Sorcery, Boneworks or Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades offer the most complex gameplay possible with limitless possibilities and extremely complex physics systems and interactions, but this effort for playability makes none of them offer a rich enough story.
Here comes Alyx. Almost stealthily Valve has been in contact with some of the best virtual reality developers for several years, specifically those with a more “sandbox” design, those who focused mainly on the interactivity of the medium and it is more than clear that during those meetings they had notepad in hand. This is not the epitome of physics in Virtual Reality. The weapons do not reach the complexity of Hotdogs and it is very clear that the level of physics is not that of Boneworks. The hand-to-hand combat system is conspicuous by its absence, partly because it is difficult to implement, partly according to Valve because of the need to distinguish Alyx from Gordon Freeman and his lever. If you look at the things that Alyx could do and does not do, they are enough.
But what Alyx does is perfect all those elements that it does take, polishing them to exhaustion and uniting them to create a whole that is indisputably superior to the sum of its parts. For this Valve uses a series of tricks that other developers seem to be unaware of but that raise every second of the experience. First of all there is a philosophy of "less is more". While most fans expected a bombastic production to take action from previous titles to the next installment of Half Life, here is a step back in terms of ammo quantity, enemies, etc. A necessary step perhaps given the limitations of current hardware and the additional requirements of Virtual Reality, but as necessary it should not be wrong. One did not expect that the next Half Life was more similar to survival horror than to its predecessors but the truth is that this is the direction that most of the game takes and does it with a success that puts it at the height of the greats of that gender. Ammunition is scarce, fair and we must always be careful not to waste bullets. Each encounter is tense, each enemy a threat and as soon as there is a group of them the thing becomes more than complicated. The variety of enemies is surprising, each one more creepy with some new additions that undoubtedly have little to envy other spawns of the saga. In addition, its intelligence has received a notable improvement, especially in the case of the Combine army, now capable of flanking and confusing the player and with much more distinction between units.
The combination of these mechanics with the new perspective gives rise to absolutely incredible situations, including some not premeditated by the developers. Thus, for example, we face a zombie possessed by a headcrab that came after us. To dispatch him quickly and save ammunition we used a grenade that we carried in our hands because we did not fit in the inventory. Unfortunately, we pull it a little too close to us, forcing us to take a few steps back to avoid the explosion, which in turn leads to one of the mythical Barnacles catching our heads, pulling us towards his gangrenous jaws. . We quickly draw our pistol and lunge at him until he is safe again. This series of unscheduled events happens constantly thanks to the almost infinite possibilities offered by the gameplay and the combat designs, occasionally having slapstick comedy overtones that will make us laugh out of the absurd way in which we will die more than once.
Each system in the game is designed not only to be enjoyable to use in virtual reality but also to magnify the visual impact in this new perspective. To give a simple example, to cure ourselves we will use machines in which we must insert a crystalline cylinder with a worm inside. By putting our virtual hand a mechanism crushes the worm inside the cylinder and syringes inject their sweet greenish nectar into our veins, filling our health bar. Said health bar, it is worth saying, is shown in our Russels or Gloves of Gravity, an invention of the eponym Russel that allows us to grab objects from a certain distance. The game lacks any interface outside of the pause menu, always choosing to display these items as part of the playable experience. Thus, we will keep our ammunition on a shoulder as if we were carrying a backpack and important objects can be stored on our wrists (one in each).
Fast-paced rhythm
What surprises Alyx the most, where his mastery really lies, is in its unique rhythm. Until now Virtual Reality games had a boring playable loop, always repetitive. Not so in Alyx, where we are constantly bombarded with new scenarios, mechanics, enemies, situations … Of the 11 chapters there are not two that give equal sensations, there is none that is over, nor any of repetitive. Each chapter brings something fresh, some more or less, but none leaves indifferent. One mission encourages us to carry an entire box full of grenades that we must place on the ground when fighting to free our hands while in another we must aim each dead Headcrab with our reflex peephole to confirm that it is indeed dead and not waiting patiently to cause a heart attack. The stages also have a surprising variety although they are always related by that famous Half Life aesthetic between cyberpunk and neoclassical. Special mention to the way organic life forms mix with artificial structures to create truly alien environments.
Virtual Reality helps to explore these environments thoroughly, opening any drawer, checking under any shelf, behind sofas, etc. There is no corner where we can be sure that some type of ammunition or a resin unit is not hidden (which we use to improve our weapons) and this scourge of certainty inspires us to constantly search. The result is that we will end up getting to know every corner of these sumptuous scenarios, traveling every inch of an exquisite living room or tortuous tunnel that we find. Far from cutting the rhythm, these search periods offer the necessary player rest between the busiest parts. And believe us, when things get tense, they get tense.
But at the end of the day this is But at the end of the day this is Valve showing the world that it is still in top shape. That the failure of Artifact and the absence of single-player releases has not rusted its gears. What Valve had in the past, capable of launching success after success, always surpassing the previous one, has not been lost. This is a designer putting the accumulation of decades of learning towards the perfection of a new way of understanding art and they have executed it masterfully, showing the world that it is still in top shape.
Finally, we would like to report on certain facets of the title that may not be so obvious. The game is available in Spanish but the voices are only (for now) dubbed in English. The subtitles appear in the lowest part of our point of view which can make it difficult to read. The game requires a good computer and virtual reality glasses but does not require Valve's Index glasses, but works with the vast majority of glasses on the market. Alyx offers a wide variety of options for comfort in virtual reality, perhaps the widest we have seen so far. We can play with continuous rotation or by degrees; with linear motion, teleportation, or a hybrid; sitting or standing; with head-based locomotion or any of the controls … enough options for anyone to have the experience that pleases them the most.
CONCLUSION
There are numerous moments of this adventure that it hurts us not to be able to comment on this Reviews. Rare is the first person game today capable of offering a memorable moment. And here, on the other hand, it is difficult to play a couple of hours without there being several. Entire chapters are indelibly marked in our minds, characters will undoubtedly be in the "hall of fame" of the video game, enemies will appear repeatedly in our nightmares. Almost a week after Alyx came onto the market, we have been playing this title for dozens of hours and the feeling is pure exhaustion. Not only physical for standing for so long, but also for the deep concentration that the title requires in some of its most tense parts. We have laughed, we have screamed of fright, of anxiety, sighing after a hard fight …
Alyx is a living video game story. A title that deserves to be played now and not later, a title that in the current context is unmatched. Like Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye, and countless other titles, over time it may lose some of its present luster. But in the meantime, we are facing an authentic masterpiece, a game whose drawbacks are few and always surpassed by its spectacular and almost insurmountable best moments. Half Life: Alyx is the best Virtual Reality experience so far, yes, but more surprisingly it is also the best Half Life experience so far. Our only request is that the continuation take a little less time to arrive.
THE BEST
- A story at the height of the saga
- Visually spectacular
- Exquisite gameplay that makes you constantly tense
- Fast paced action
- Highly polished mechanics
- Constant interaction with our surroundings
- Packed with unique moments
WORST
- Some visual errors
Masterpiece
A masterpiece that has mastered its genre to place itself on top of it. A colossus of his generation that will continue to be discussed and remembered in the future. The maximum note does not imply perfection, but is used to point to an absolute referent in which others can and should look at each other.
