Half-Life: Alyx is Valve's VR return to the Half-Life series. It's the story of an impossible fight against a vicious alien race known as the Combine, set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Playing as Alyx Vance, you are humanity's only chance for survival.
The Combine's control of the planet since the Black Mesa incident has only strengthened as they corral the remaining population in cities. Among them are some of Earth's greatest scientists: you and your father, Dr. Eli Vance.
As founders of a fledgling resistance, you've continued your clandestine scientific activityperforming critical research, and building invaluable tools for the few humans brave enough to defy the Combine. Every day, you learn more about your enemy, and every day you work toward finding a weakness. ABOUT GAMEPLAY IN VR: Valve's return to the Half-Life universe that started it all was built from the ground up for virtual reality.
VR was built to enable the gameplay that sits at the heart of Half-Life. Immerse yourself in deep environmental interactions, puzzle solving, world exploration, and visceral combat. Lean to aim around a broken wall and under a Barnacle to make an impossible shot.
Rummage through shelves to find a healing syringe and some shotgun shells. Manipulate tools to hack alien interfaces. Toss a bottle through a window to distract an enemy.
Rip a Headcrab off your face and throw it at a Combine soldier. Extra content for Index owners Customers who have purchased Valve Index hardware by the end of 2019 will have access to unique bonuses starting early next year: * Explore environments from Half-Life: Alyx PC in your SteamVR Home space * Alternate gun skins to embellish Alyx's arsenal * Special Half-Life: Alyx-themed content for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 Community-built environments * A set of Source 2 tools for building new environments will ship with the game, enabling any player to build and contribute new environments for the community to enjoy. Hammer, Valve's level authoring tool, has been updated with all of the game's virtual reality gameplay tools and components.
UndeniablyREMI - Half-Life: Alyx
You know perfectly well that Valve wasn’t going to make a flagship VR title using its beloved Half-Life franchise and do a half-arsed job. A stunningly rich experience from start to finish, Half-Life: Alyx is one of the best VR titles available, a perfect showcase for what VR gaming is capable of. It doesn’t exactly break new ground, instead providing familiar Half-Life gameplay all wrapped up in a highly polished VR gift bag. Let’s just hope this is the start of things to come and Valve decides to make another Half-Life: Alyx.
Although it doesn´t perfect every single thing it does, the experience as a whole cannot be called anything short of a masterpiece.
A special mention should be made of the game's dialog, mainly consisting of Alyx herself and Russel, a scientist who Alex remains in constant communication with throughout the game. Their relationship feels genuine, the conversations between them are enjoyable, and almost all of the intended comedic moments land perfectly, which is something most video games seem to have trouble with.
This is a triumph in almost every way. This is the most detailed, deepest and most elaborate VR game yet. No other VR game has so much variety and depth at the same time, combined with such a perfect tempo.
With old friends, new enemies, and an exciting story, revisiting City 17 in VR is a thrill in Half-Life: Alyx.
What the game asks of you might be fairly standard shooter stuff, but the act of playing it out with your own hands lends it a fresh magic. That's Alyx in a nutshell: this is a Half-Life game almost to a fault, the old formula polished to a 2020 shine, made new again by the way you manipulate it. The Gloves aren't the new crowbar or Gravity Gun, the defining tool of Half-Life: Alyx. Your own hands are. [Issue#344, p.102]
Too often Half-Life: Alyx feels like baby's first VR shooter and for many — especially those who purchased VR hardware to play it — this isn't a dealbreaker. But trading off the Half-Life name for an introductory course to VR relegates HL: Alyx to spin-off territory when the characters involved and the story it tells could be so much more. Alyx Vance deserves better, and so too do VR gamers.
March 24, 2020
Half-Life 3 confirmed? Alyx seems to confirm that the title will be released.
March 3, 2020
Half Life Alyx shows off in a new gameplay video.
