When I saw this game release back in 2020, I knew I had to get a VR headset, it only took 6 Years and avoiding spoilers but the time finally arrived; Every Single cent I spent and time waiting was absolutely worth it, Half Life Alyx Completely blew the expectations I had, I've only played flatscreen games for about 8 years and I know VR has a huge factor here but this game is sincerely a unique experience, after playing for almost a week and finishing the game I wanna give a extensive honest review and I genuinely wanna thank everyone at valve for making this masterpiece. This is going to be a long review and I'll try to avoid giving any spoilers;
I'm going to start by talking about the biggest factor that plays in this experience, VR itself; The core game mechanics and interactions present completely show what VR can do and how familiar and even cool interactions you can make on the game, everything is to scale, depth perception and buildings look and feel as massive as they are in real life, you regularly may find items that you have held yourself in real life and they just feel real; you can interact with things in many dynamic ways or unique ways.
The fidelity itself whatsoever is one of the best I have witnessed so far, with my own 2 eyes ( no pun here ) ; I can already tell someone over there at valve put their heart and soul into making the textures look as good as they look, graphics wise, I don't think I'll have anything top it off for a while, I'm surprised my computer handled this game as smoothly as it did, they did some extreme optimization techniques to make everything look good yet not take up all of the GPU.
Now there might be some slight spoilers ahead into how combat plays out in this game and about the functions/interactions;
Level Design and Combat alone shines a lot in this game, and it makes this experience so unique and adds so much depth to it, whoever worked on the level design deserves an award; specially with the way they did loading levels, now combat, It will probably be a long time until I experience and immerse myself so much into it and I'm being honest here, flatscreen games and specially FPS don't depict combat as well as Half Life Alyx does, and well that's because after all you have to make every decision here, when to reload, how to reload, etc; I could recall a lot of times where it got intense and my hands got shaky, hit the wrong button in a panic reload and dropped the magazine instead of releasing the slide or just straight up forget to reload or suddenly realize you ran out of ammo, I will never see throwing grenades in FPS games the same again, but truly only VR can achieve this, HL:A makes it so that you have to precisely throw your grenades, angle, velocity, timing. Enemies present in the game are by far some of the best I have ever encountered, every encounter feels real and unique, you'll have to quickly think and make quick decisions to adapt and learn.
The Story of course didn't lack either, I won't be going into too much detail as not to spoil anything for anyone who wants to do a blind playthrough like me ( Please do! ) it is indeed "Story-Rich" and this is the one time I say a game tag on the steam store is spot on, I didn't have many questions left although many got raised but it got me extremely immersed into the story, and I'm very happy with it.
So my final considerations, do I recommend this game? Absolutely, it's not just a masterpiece, it's a testament to what's possible when you chase down your goals and values; it pushes boundaries where it can and genuinely is one of the best games I have ever experienced, of course, this is playing with a VR Headset, without it I'm not sure if the game would have hit as hard as it did without it, I'm very gratefully for the opportunity to play this game and I sincerely do recommend it. But I'm not just ending my review here;
I wanna give a big shoutout to the entire team behind this game and give a message, I played this game a bit slowly because I was taking in all the scenery and every detail this game had to offer and it never really disappointed me, I know how much effort goes into making a game and I know the team worked a lot to make this possible, I just genuinely wanna say that you pushed beyond your goals and made the environments in the game as immersive as they should, take in mind they could have made the entire game be 10-20 minutes long but decided to instead make a huge impact and show what's possible with both VR and making a game, so to the team! Know that every single trouble you had during this project, the long hours and deep tinkering moments, all led to a golden title of a game that this is, and I'm extremely grateful and thankful to be able to see and enjoy all that you guys have worked for in this game. Thank you guys so much for making this game as awesome as it is and Valve for being so amazing.
So thank you for reading my in depth review, or not so in-depth review, there were many moments that I just felt speechless while playing Half Life Alyx, and to the time of writting this review I have yet to find words and ways to describe how cool this game is and avoid spoiling anything; This game definitely inspired me and showed what VR can do, but for sure not every VR Game needs to be a goldmine that this is, but when it does, it's memorable, it'll stay with you. Thank you once again and I hope you have a awesome week/weekend.
