ALYX IN WONDERLAND

Revisiting City 17 in VR is a thrill in HALF-LIFE: ALYX.

- Chris Livingston

I played the final three hours of Half-Life: Alyx in a single session. Before Alyx, I never used VR for more than 30 minutes at a time. I don’t get motion sick but I do get generally tired of VR. Tired of wearing a headset, tired of having to stand and stoop and awkwardly reach around. But I didn’t even think of taking a break during the final chapters of Half-Life: Alyx. I was completely enthralled and unwilling to stop playing.

When I played through the ending (no spoilers here, but trust me, you’ll want to keep your VR headset on through the credits), I reloaded my last autosave and played through the ending a second time. And then I went back to the beginning of the game and started playing again. I didn’t have much doubt Half-Life: Alyx would be a great VR experience – Valve makes its own VR headset and software, after all. But I was sceptical it could also be a great, proper Half-Life game, and I was thrilled to discover it really is.

While it’s sandwiched between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 the repercussions of its story extend well into whatever future there is for the Half-Life series, and its technical accomplishments will leave most other developers, once again, struggling to keep up.

ON A RAIL

Five years before the events of