It’s not just a good VR game it’s a good video game, period. It advances the series’s main plot, but it doesn’t come close to resolving it.īut if you keep these admittedly big reservations in mind, Alyx is a worthy addition to the Half-Life universe. While it’s about as long as the landmark Half-Life 2, with my game clocking in at 15 hours, it doesn’t feel as big or as narratively and mechanically fresh. The game is fighting VR’s inherent hardware limits, a pandemic-related headset shortage, and the difficulty of building a game for a new platform. That’s setting a very high bar, and, for now, I’m not sure Alyx clears it. Many series have VR adaptations or tie-ins, but Valve promised to deliver “the next part of the Half-Life story” in a package that could help take VR mainstream. These are answers to some big questions Valve Software raised last year when it announced the first new Half-Life game since 2007 - but exclusively for virtual reality.
And City 17’s exploding barrel industry is still going strong. It is a full-fledged game that expands the Half-Life universe. Half-Life: Alyx is definitely not Half-Life 3.
