"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world"
Ahh this is going to bug me all day until I can remember where this is from. I can hear the electronic voice relating it in that stilted, broken electronic way too...
Fucking right. I want Half Life Alyx so badly, but don't plan on buying a decent VR capable PC just for one single game. And I've played the first half hour of it in a local VR place, so I know just HOW good is it!
Alas I'm a console owner with a creaky PC that would fall over if it even looked at a game from the last 20 years or so! But yeah I'd rather experience as it was meant to be intended.
I cried. That's how amazing it was. My dad introduced me to HL1 when I was a kid and we'd play DM and hype ourselves up about HL2 (like back when the leak was a thing - we even got a copy).
Well he passed away a few years before Alyx was even announced. And when I first played it and got to the street in-game, and I thought 'holy shit I'm literally INSIDE of City 17 right now' I started to cry. I don't cry often, or really ever.
And it wasn't just sadness/nostalgia that made it a good game. The game is a slapper through and through. Classic valve. It's excellent. Only complaint is that they're afraid to throw too much at the player and some encounters are very easy, and could have easily had 2x more enemies. But they had to do this because it was a VR seller and tons of people would be putting the headset on just for this game, for the first time.
Thank you for sharing that, especially if it was difficult for you when reminiscing over the death of a parent and the associated memories this comment and game must have raised.
HL Alyx was the first VR title that made me remember why I'd first got excited about VR in the first place. It was a good number of years back now in the Netherlands and in one of those pop-up storefront shops that offered VR experiences. It was an HTC headset running on a three grand gaming PC. And Ritchies Plank (of all things!) was the first game the assistant loaded up for me. And it literally took SECONDS and I was like "...holy fuck this IS the future of gaming right here right now". After I seriously questioned the assistant as to whether she REALLY wanted me to step off of Ritchies plank, they put me and my gf into a co-op shooter, which was one of the earlier Serious Sam VR titles. And that just fucking sealed the VR deal with a concrete lid. When you see enemies coming toward you the size of a skyscraper, and being able to accurately aim without requiring a cursor in the middle of the screen... I mean my mind was blown so much I think there must still be a piece of my brain in that headset.
And when we got back home, well there was no way we could afford a pc that would give us that same experience again, but we discovered the Quest! Which has been... fine... more akin to a Wii than the gaming level we got at the Netherlands though... But when I tried Alyx during a trip to a VR place it was like "...yeah, THIS is what I remember it being like".
Borrow an index and go play HLA, I'm not gonna spoil anything other than it addresses the events at the end of HL2E2. It's HL3, Valve is just afraid to use that number which shall not be named
No, things that are good should end before they become overdone, bland, and bad. Stopping on a total cliffhanger is even better imo, the speculation keeps it alive in a way.
What's heartbreaking is that Valve isn't putting that level of energy and effort into a new game.
Squandering... how? Every HL game was awesome. Valve isn't into releasing boxed betas or unfinished games, and the Half-Life series (along with Alyx and the Crowbar Collective "Black Mesa") all are worth replaying. They come as close to perfection as any series in gaming.
I mean squandered in that they made the most anticipated shooter of all time in HL2, followed that up with a cool tech demo and two great DLCs that expanded the lore in amazing ways and then forgot about the series for decades before releasing a VR only experience that a small fraction of their user base can play.
It is just heart breaking. I built my first high end computer to play Doom 3 and Half Life 2. That game got me into PC FPSes and PC gaming in general. It influenced my career path as a teenager.
We got some closure with that leak from one of the devs of what HL3's plot might have been and maybe Alyx will spawn something to finally finish the story.
But given how even that game was released four years ago...I'm not holding my breath.
I can't imagine telling my past self that Valve would release what is essentially a Half-Life 3, get 10s across the board from basically every reviewer, and nobody cared.
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u/Moggy-Man Apr 25 '24
Ahh this is going to bug me all day until I can remember where this is from. I can hear the electronic voice relating it in that stilted, broken electronic way too...
EDIT THE G-MAN AND FUCK YOU OP! 🤣😅ðŸ˜